Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

Most of the couples’ fights weren’t about money or sex but about “failed bids for connection.”

Harriet Braiker was a therapist who published many books on love.

She often said there were three parties in any relationship: you, the other person, and the relationship itself. The relationship is a meaningful entity that needs to be protected and nurtured. Part

Resilience in love means finding strength from within that you can share with others. Finding a way to make love last through the highs and lows. Finding your own way to love when life does not work out as planned. Finding the hope to love and laugh again when love is cruelly taken from you. And finding a way to hang on to love even when the person you love is gone.

I now believe what Davis Guggenheim told me that first month: grief has to unfold. Writing this book and trying to find meaning have not replaced my sadness.

But just as grief crashes into us like a wave, it also rolls back like the tide. We are left not just standing, but in some ways stronger. Option B still gives us options. We can still love…and we can still find joy.

As Allen Rucker wrote about his paralysis, “I won’t make your skin crawl by saying it’s a ‘blessing in disguise.’ It’s not a blessing and there is no disguise. But there are things to be gained and things to be lost, and on certain days, I’m not sure that the gains are not as great as, or even greater than, the inevitable losses.”

Tragedy does not have to be personal, pervasive, or permanent, but resilience can be. We can build it and carry it with us throughout our lives.

Things will never be the same—but the world is better for the years Dave Goldberg lived.

Yes, the world is better for the years Dave Goldberg lived. I am better for the years we spent together and for what he taught me—both in life and in death.