Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg:
Successful Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg suddenly had to face the devastating loss of her beloved husband. She tells Celina Edmonds how her experience of grief has shaped who she is now, and of the value of reaching out to others who face adversity.
dealing with my husband’s death
Sheryl Sandberg is midsentence when her phone begins to vibrate. “Give me one second,” she says. “My daughter is Face Timing me... I always take these – so sorry.” The second-in-charge of Facebook explains – “That’s one change after my husband died, I always take my kids’ calls.”
It’s one of many changes Sheryl has had to make since “the unimaginable” happened. In May 2015, her husband of 11 years, Dave Goldberg – whom she describes as her “rock” – died suddenly at just 47. The couple was
attending a friend’s 50th birthday celebration in Mexico.
A former Vice-President at Google and once Chief of Staff at the US Department of Treasury, Sheryl is hot property. Last year, US business bible Fortune magazine ranked the 47-year-old number six in its list of “50 Most Powerful Women in Business”.
Sheryl’s first book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, published in 2013, catapulted the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook to a new level, as she amassed a Facebook following of close to two million people. Four years on, she has a second book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, which has just been released in New Zealand.
Promoting books is nothing new for Sheryl, but this latest offering is different, because it’s deeply personal.
“I mean, in a million years you never would have expected what was a special and celebratory day for a close friend to turn into what is one of the worst moments of my life,” she says.
Sheryl writes in heartbreaking and sometimes painful detail about her husband – their life, romance and being excited to be on an “adults-only weekend” while her parents looked after their children. It was Sheryl who found Dave on the gym floor next to a cross-training machine and started CPR. A frantic dash to hospital only resulted in the worst news. Sheryl was faced with the horrific task of telling their young children that their father was dead. Her husband had died of an undiagnosed heart condition.
It’s absorbing reading, which anyone who’s suffered any kind of loss can relate to.
“Option B is for anyone who’s facing hardship, might face hardship or knows anyone who’s faced hardship,” says Sheryl. “I think this is pretty universal.”
At times Sheryl’s writing brings you to tears. She captures the rawness of grief, describing it as her “demanding companion” with a “vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe.”
“I saw Dave lying on the gym floor,” she writes. “I saw his face in the sky. At night I called out to him, crying into the void: Dave, I miss you. Why did you leave me? Please come back. I love you...”
Thankfully, while her sadness is often overwhelming, Sheryl’s sense of humour also comes through. She recounts that when she complained about struggling to sleep, her hairdresser put down his scissors, reached into his bag and offered her sleeping tablets in all shapes and sizes – which she declined. Sheryl complained to her father that all the books about grief had dreadful titles like, Death is of Vital Importance and Moving to the Centre of the Bed.
Not surprisingly, the title of Sheryl’s own book was carefully considered. Sheryl and a friend were discussing who could fill in for her husband for a father-child activity. While Sheryl lamented she wanted Dave, her friend comforted her, saying – “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.”
Sheryl’s inspiration for the book came exactly 30 days after Dave’s death, the end of the Jewish mourning period Shloshim.
“At that point it wasn’t just grief I was facing, but real isolation,” she says. “When I came back to work I felt like people were looking at me – like I was a ghost. No one was talking to me. When I went to drop my kids at school, it felt awkward.”
Out of “real desperation”, Sheryl made a decision to write about how she was feeling on Facebook.
“It helped me a tonne and I think it helped other people,” she says. “A friend told me she’d been driving past my house but not coming in because she didn’t know if I wanted
“It wasn’t just grief I was facing, but real isolation.”
her to come in, and I needed her support. Strangers posted to other people – a woman posted that she had lost one twin and was working hard to give a surviving twin a great life.”
The overwhelming response that Sheryl received made her realise “the power of sharing”.
“The grief wasn’t gone but the isolation was. People stopped asking me, ‘How are you?’ and started saying, ‘How are you today?’”
Sheryl’s co-writer is friend and author Adam Grant – a professor and psychologist whom she leant on after Dave’s death. Adam reassured her that while grief was unavoidable, “the darkness would pass” and there were things she could do to “lessen the anguish”. Her experience is woven with the research surrounding grief and stories of how others have relied on resilience and recovery.
They were “incredible stories of other people who’ve faced all kinds of challenges,” explains Sheryl. “From sexual assault to incarceration, and the book talks a lot about how we help each other recover.”
Sheryl hopes it’s useful to those who’ve suffered tragedy. “Resources do help – we need to do better,” she says. “How do you help a friend? How do you help build resilience in your children? How do you build it in your companies? How do you build it in your communities?”
Sheryl is a creature of Silicon Valley, so it’s not surprising she’s set up a website to encourage a sharing community. She did the same with Lean In, which boasts an online family of more than 1.5 million people. In April, Sheryl launched OptionB.org – an online community “to help people build resilience in the face of adversity... because no one’s life is perfect”. Her CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, paid tribute to her as “deeply inspiring”. On Facebook he wrote – “We love you, Sheryl, and thanks for all you do for the world.”
Those who’ve experienced loss will be encouraged by Sheryl’s efforts to redefine common terminology – she rejects the concept of “bouncing back”.
“It’s not a question of bounce back because there is no bounce back,” she says. “If I could bounce backwards and have Dave back, I would do it.”
Instead, Sheryl argues the case for post-traumatic growth. “We bounce forward in that we grow. Psychologists have studied that people can have, along with lingering sadness, post-traumatic growth – deeper relationships, more meaning and greater gratitude in their lives.”
For Sheryl, it’s been about rediscovering joy. “Great adversity takes the joy away because you feel guilty,” she explains. “How can I smile or tell a joke when I’ve lost
Dave? People feel guilty doing the most basic things that make them happy.”
Prompted by her co-author Adam, Sheryl says since January 2016 she’s gone to bed each night and forced herself to think of three things she’s grateful for.
“Even in the midst of great trauma, there’s usually – even if it’s a second – one moment of joy: the way your coffee tastes, a smile from my daughter, a hug from my son.
“I know that by paying attention to those moments of joy, we give ourselves what we need to recover.”
“Great adversity takes the joy away because you feel guilty.”