Sheryl Sandberg offers advice on loss in ‘Option B’
Facebook COO leans in to moving on after grief
The last words Sheryl Sandberg said to her husband Dave Goldberg were, “I’m falling asleep.”
The two were on vacation in Mexico in 2015. While Sandberg napped, Goldberg ’s heart gave out in the fitness center. She went there a happily married wife, and returned home to her two children a widow.
Now the Facebook COO who urged women to lean in at work is trying to help people move on after grief. Sandberg ’s Lean In, a No. 1 USA TODAY best seller, launched a movement.
She hopes the new book she co-wrote with friend and psy
chologist Adam Grant, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Knopf ), can change how our culture treats grief.
USA TODAY spoke with Sandberg, 47. Q You’re doing a ton of promotion right now for this book and presumably you’re being asked a lot of personal and possibly painful questions. How are you doing ? A My
husband — you didn’t know him — but he was a really unbelievable man. To this day, I meet people who don’t just say to me “I knew him,” but say “he changed my life and here’s why.” (Goldberg was CEO of SurveyMonkey, an online survey software company.) And this is the unimaginable, right? The pain feels like you’re never ever ever going to get through it, and in the early days I didn’t believe I was. ... I miss him. I miss him all the time. It would have been our 13th wedding anniversary on (April 17), but when I get to think about Op
tion B and the ways in which we can come together and help
each other — missing him happens anyway. Q You wrote an emotional post on Facebook about Dave a month after he died. What did it feel like to share that? A After
Dave died it wasn’t just the overwhelming grief, it was this real feeling of isolation. I used to drop my kids at school and everyone waves walking to work, and everyone chit-chats. And there was just a lot of silence. I felt like a big elephant was following me around. I felt like a ghost. People would look at me and they were so afraid to say anything wrong, that they wouldn’t say much at all. And I understood that because I used to do the same thing. I used to think if I brought up something hard, I was reminding the person. You can’t remind me Dave died. I know Dave died. ... I wrote that post really for myself, kind of a “here’s what I would say if I was going to say something.”
Q Why do you think we find it so hard to talk about death? A There is this deep irony to the fact that it’s the most basic human experience, right? There’s life and there’s death. Yet it’s so uncomfortable. I think one of the reasons is we’re afraid of bringing up something bad. Q When you look at your kids, what are you most proud of ? A I’m
proud of them for having empathy for others. My daughter went to bed the night she learned her father died saying, “I feel bad for Grandma Paula and Uncle Rob.” She was 7. ... My son’s basketball team — they lost the playoffs a little bit ago — and a lot of the other kids were pretty broken up. And so I looked at my son and said, “Are you OK?” He goes, “Mom, this is sixth-grade basketball. I’m fine.” That’s perspective, and I wouldn’t wish it on him in a million years, but he has it.