Confronting the ‘elephant in the room’
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy
BARBARA ORTUTAY
NEW YO R K Though perhaps best known as Facebook’s No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg is also a mentor, a mother, a billionaire and an author. When her husband,Dave Goldberg, died suddenly in 2015 while they were vacationing in Mexico, she added widow to the list.
“The grief felt like a void, like it was sucking me in and pushing on me, pulling me in and I couldn’t even see or breathe,” she said. “People who have been through things like this told me it gets better. And I really didn’t believe them. … I want other people going through things to believe it does get better.”
Her new book — Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy, written with psychologist Adam Grant — chronicles the devastating loss, her grief and how she emerged with a new perspective. A humbled followup to her first book, Lean In, it’s also a howto, drawing from studies and the experiences of others to describe techniques for building strength and resilience and ways to support those going through hard times.
It became the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon on Monday, the day it was published.
The most affecting parts of the book recount not just Sandberg’s grief, but that of her children when their father died. Arriving at the cemetery for his funeral, they “got out of the car and fell to the ground, unable to take another step. I lay on the grass, holding them as they wailed.”
It did get better, though slowly. Sandberg returned to Facebook in a haze, unable to summon her previous self-confidence.
“I couldn’t understand when friends didn’t ask me how I was. I felt invisible, as if I was standing in front of them but they couldn’t see me,” she wrote, adding later, that by staying silent in such situations “we often isolate friends, family and co-workers.”
At Facebook, Sandberg has long been an advocate of “bringing your whole self to work,” meaning a willingness to share your personal life with co-workers. But this can get tricky when it comes to trauma. Sandberg found it difficult, and even considered carrying around a stuffed pachyderm to encourage co-workers and friends to talk about the “elephant in the room.”
Then one day, about a month after Goldberg died, she decided to post on Facebook about her grief, her gratitude toward her friends and her related tumultuous feelings — for instance, coming to believe she would never again feel real joy. She wrote it out, not planning to share it publicly. After some more thought, she decided it couldn’t possibly make things worse.
The change was immediate. Friends, co-workers and strangers — many of whom had suffered loss themselves — began reaching out. It helped, Sandberg wrote. The post has been shared more than 400,000 times and has some 74,000 comments. It started a conversation.
“I know it almost sounds silly because I certainly work at Facebook and I know what Facebook’s mission is,” she said. “But experiencing it for myself was a very … deep experience.”
Talking about these things, as difficult as it might be, can be a lifeline. As is getting help at work, something Sandberg acknowledged not everyone can. Facebook has recently extended its bereavement policies to allow employees more time off after the death of a loved one. But Sandberg says sup- porting people once they are back at work is just as important.
“Death is not the only kind of adversity that summons up the elephant,” Sandberg wrote. “Anything that reminds us of the possibility of loss can leave us at a loss for words. Financial difficulties. Divorce. Unemployment. Rape. Addiction. Incarceration. Illness.”
Sandberg said she believes strongly in pre-traumatic growth — people’s ability to build up resilience before something bad happens. She has peppered the book with anecdotes and studies about resilience, from the story of Malala Yousafzai, the 19-year-old Pakistani activist and Nobel Peace laureate, to that of the survivors of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes described in the book (and movie) Alive.
“Tragedy does not have to be personal, pervasive or permanent, but resilience can be,” she wrote. “We can build it and carry it with us throughout our lives.”