HEALING after loss
In a new book, ‘Lean In’ author and Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg tells how she coped after her husband’s tragic death
In the weeks after Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg, died at 47, her mind kept returning to the horror. On May 1, 2015, Goldberg had headed for a workout at the Mexican resort where the couple were staying. Panicking when she realised he had been gone for hours, Sandberg ran to the gym and found him on the floor by the treadmill. “In the middle of a meeting [at work], an image of Dave’s body on the gym floor would flash before my eyes,” the Lean In author writes in her new book, Option B. “Even when I was not seeing his image, I was crying constantly. Lean in? I could barely stand up.”
Today, two years after a cardiac arrhythmia robbed her of the man she calls “my rock,” Sandberg, 47, is back on her feet, though still fragile. “I might cry,” she warns visitors to Facebook’s offices in Menlo Park, California. “I lost my husband and it’s a horrific thing to live through. I sat down with my children—they were 7 and 10—and I said, ‘You will never see your father again.’ ” But the trauma has also taught her invaluable lessons and Option B— written with psychologist Adam Grant and subtitled Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy— is her way of sharing what she has learnt. “It’s me trying to help other people get through what I have,” she says. “And to get some meaning from the tragedy. Dave was such a giving person. If his death can help anyone else—that’s who he was.”
Sandberg and Goldberg, CEO of Surveymonkey when he died, were best friends before they became romantic partners. Sandberg had been divorced and says she “wasn’t ready” when they met in 1996. “But I said to my mom, the person who marries Dave Goldberg will be the luckiest person in the world.” They wed in 2004 and though both had highpowered careers, Dave was an involved husband and dad, helping to inspire the “Make Your Partner a Real Partner” chapter of Lean In, Sandberg’s 2013 bestseller that urged women to push for their own professional advancement. (“I realise now how hard that must have been to read if you were a single mom,” she says now. “I didn’t get it.”)
After Dave’s death, in addition to crippling grief and fears that her kids “could never have a happy childhood,” she felt isolated even as friends and family rallied around her. “People didn’t know what to say to me,” she says, “so they often didn’t say anything at all.” Opening up about her pain in a Facebook post helped people feel more comfortable approaching her. Keeping a journal helped channel her sorrow, as did learning from future co-author Grant that “resilience is something we can build, like muscle,” she says, “in ourselves and our children.”(for her tips on coping with grief, visit people.com/option-b-tips.)
Slowly the burden lightened. “That feeling of not being able to breathe is not forever,” Sandberg says. “I want people to know that.” She now has a boyfriend—bobby Kotick, who runs the gaming company Activision Blizzard. “I found someone who has brought me joy and laughter,” she says. “People judge women much more than men if they start dating again. And that is unfair.”
Her kids are doing well, too. “I travel when I have to, but I want to put them to bed—i want to be home at night,” she says. So has she switched over to leaning out? Not a chance. Suffering the gut punch of grief led her to establish more generous bereavement leave at Facebook and “we know that companies run by women have better family-friendly policies,” she says. “I’ve definitely learnt how hard it can be to lean in when you’re struggling at home. But I deeply believe—maybe even more—in the importance of female leadership.”