Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

Joe learned that post-traumatic growth could take five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities. But Joe wanted to do more than study Tedeschi and Calhoun’s findings; he wanted to live them.

am more vulnerable than I thought, but much stronger than I ever imagined.” When we face the slings and arrows of life, we are wounded and the scars stay with us. But we can walk away with greater internal resolve. I can’t imagine. People continued to say this to me and I agreed with them. It was all I could do to live through the moments when it hurt so much. In the depths of acute grief, I did not think I would be capable of growing stronger. But as excruciating days turned into weeks and then months, I realized that I could imagine because I was living it. I had gained strength just by surviving. In the words of an old adage: “Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”

“I went through chemo and buried my young friend. That gives you perspective whether you’re looking for it or not. The little things don’t stress me out. I am much stronger, much more centered and reasonable now. Something that sent me spinning before I now see as relative to what could have been and I am like, ‘Ah, that’s nothing. I am here.’ ”

He told me that in his eulogy he explained, “I worry that we might be tempted, in the face of such obliterating darkness, to retreat from the world, but…I heard this quote that I think is very important here. It goes, ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’

On the days that I’m okay, I now appreciate that I’m walking without pain.

After loss, the emptiness of birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays can be especially hard. Brooke encouraged me to see these milestones as moments to be cherished. I used to celebrate my birthday every five years, feeling like only the birthdays with the zeros and fives were special occasions. Now I celebrate every one because I no longer take for granted that the next birthday will come.

Some of her friends have followed her lead, showing pre-traumatic growth. They learned lessons in life that I learned only from death.

We don’t have to wait for special occasions to feel and show gratitude. In one of my favorite studies, people were asked to write and deliver a thank-you note to someone who had shown them unusual kindness. This pleased the receivers but it also made the note writers feel significantly less depressed, and the gratitude afterglow stayed with them for a month. When Adam shared this research with me, I realized why it works: in the moments I spend thanking my friends and family, my sadness is pushed into the background.

My friend Steven Levitt lost his one-year-old son Andrew to meningitis in 1999. Sixteen years later, he told me that “with each passing year, the balance tipped a little more toward an appreciation of what there once was and away from the horror of what was lost.” As time has passed, I too have greater appreciation for the time Dave and I spent together and for the time I have now.

And he had no idea.” Looking at each other through tears, we asked how he would have lived if he had known he had only eleven days left—and if we could live going forward with the understanding of how precious every single day is.

But tragedy can also motivate people to develop new and deeper relationships. This is the third area of post-traumatic growth. Soldiers who experience significant losses during war are more likely to have friendships from their service forty years later.

When people endure tragedies together or endure the same tragedy, it can fortify the bonds between them. They learn to trust each other, be vulnerable with each other, depend on each other. As the saying goes: “In prosperity our friends know us. In adversity we know our friends.”

The fourth form of post-traumatic growth is finding greater meaning in life—a stronger sense of purpose rooted in a belief that one’s existence has significance. In Viktor Frankl’s words, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”

During his eulogy for Dave, our friend Zander Lurie was describing Dave’s generosity when he stopped midsentence and did something that none of us had ever seen before at a funeral: he asked everyone to “raise your hand if Dave Goldberg did something to change your life for the better—provided a key insight, a valuable connection, help when you were down.”

After being reminded of their mortality, survivors often re-examine their priorities, which in some cases results in growth. A brush with death can lead to a new life. It’s not an easy pivot. Trauma often makes it harder to pursue new possibilities.

Our possible selves—who we hoped to become—can be collateral damage. Although it can be extremely difficult to grasp, the disappearance of one possible self can free us to imagine a new possible self.

While studying for his master’s degree, Joe created a therapeutic process called “co-destiny,” which encourages bereaved parents to view their child’s life in a larger framework so that death does not become the end of the story. Parents who seek purpose and meaning from their tragedies can go on to do good, which then becomes part of their child’s impact on the world. As Joe explained, “I realized that my destiny was to live my life in a way that would make my son proud. The awareness that I could add goodness to my son’s life by doing good in his name motivates me to this day.”

“The week Dave died, Scott said, ‘This is the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next.’ I didn’t tell you then because I didn’t think you would’ve believed him. But I have believed it all along…and so should you.”

Dave will always be, as the song says, “a handprint on my heart.” He changed me in profound ways by his presence. And he changed me in profound ways by his absence.

Survivor guilt is a thief of joy—yet another secondary loss from death. When people lose a loved one, they are not just wracked with grief but also with remorse.

life chasing pleasure without meaning is an aimless existence. Yet a meaningful life without joy is a depressing one. Until that moment on the dance floor, I did not realize I’d been holding myself back from happiness.

My son got upset and tried to take them away from her, insisting, “That was Daddy’s color. You can’t be gray!” I held his hand and said, “She can be gray. We take things back.” “We take it back” became our mantra. Rather than give up the things that reminded us of Dave, we embraced them and made them an ongoing part of our lives.

Tragedy breaks down your door and takes you prisoner. To escape takes effort and energy. Seeking joy after facing adversity is taking back what was stolen from you. As U2 lead singer Bono has said, “Joy is the ultimate act of defiance.”

“Both deaths are woven into the fabric of my life, but they’re not what define me,” she said. “Joy is very important to me. And I can’t count on joy to come from my daughter or anyone else. It has to come from me. It is time to kick the shit out of Option C.”

In a twelve-year study of bereaved spouses in Australia, 26 percent managed to find joy after loss as often as they had before. What set them apart was that they re-engaged in everyday activities and interactions. “How we spend our days,” author Annie Dillard writes, is “how we spend our lives.” Rather than waiting until we’re happy to enjoy the small things, we should go and do the small things that make us happy.

Then Adam suggested a new idea: write down three moments of joy every day. Of all the New Year’s resolutions I’ve ever made, this is the one I’ve kept the longest by far.

“A day of joy is fifteen minutes. A day of pain is fifteen years,” he said. “No one pretends this is easy, but the job of life is to make those fifteen minutes into fifteen years and those fifteen years into fifteen minutes.”

Just as labeling negative emotions can help us process them, labeling positive emotions works too. Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people’s moods and decrease their visits to health centers a full three months later.

There are more refugees today than there have been at any time since World War II; more than 65 million people have had their lives viciously torn apart. If Option B for me means coping with the loss of a spouse, Option B for refugees means coping with loss upon loss upon loss: loss of loved ones, home, country, and all that is familiar.

Whether you see joy as a discipline, an act of defiance, a luxury, or a necessity, it is something everyone deserves. Joy allows us to go on living and loving and being there for others. Even when

Tim followed his dad’s advice and learned to respond to embarrassment with humor. He discovered that his own reaction to his disability influenced how others reacted, which meant he could control how he was perceived.

She suggested that I first let my kids know that I had very sad news and then tell them what had happened simply and directly. She said it was important to reassure them that many parts of their lives would be just like before: they still had the rest of their family, they would still go to school with their friends. She told me to follow their lead and answer their questions and that they might ask if I was going to die too. I was grateful she had prepared me for this since it was one of my daughter’s first questions. Carole advised me not to make a false promise to them that I would live forever, but rather explain to them that it was very unusual for someone to die so young.

We can start by helping children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; and (4) they have real strengths to rely on and share.

These resilient children shared something: they felt a strong sense of control over their lives. They saw themselves as the masters of their own fate and viewed negative events not as threats but as challenges and even opportunities. The same holds true for children who aren’t at risk: the most resilient ones realize they have the power to shape their own lives. Their caregivers communicate clear and consistent expectations, giving them structure and predictability, which increases their sense of control.

They can take little steps every day to make their lives better. I try to inspire them to put on the shoes they want to walk in and know that they still have choices to make.”

When kids have a growth mindset, they see abilities as skills that can be learned and developed. They can work to improve. “I may not be a natural actor, but if I rehearse enough I can shine on the stage.”

But when kids were praised for trying, they worked harder on the challenging test and made more of an effort to finish it.

She calls this “normalizing struggle.” When parents treat failure as an opportunity to learn rather than an embarrassment to be avoided, kids are more likely to take on challenges.

The third belief that affects children’s resilience is mattering: knowing that other people notice you, care about you, and rely on you.

But it made such a difference for a teacher to take an interest in him and a friend to bond with him.” Mattering was a counterweight to the external bullying and internal anxiety.

The children learn empathy by hearing others’ perspectives and reflecting on how their behavior affects those around them. They are taught to think, “How do others feel? And how do my actions make them feel?”

With the right support, beliefs can fuel action and become self-fulfilling. Believe you can learn from failure and you become less defensive and more open. Believe you matter and you spend more time helping others, which helps you matter even more. Believe you have strengths and you start seeing opportunities to use them. Believe you are a wizard who can cross the

Even in the worst moments of their lives, my kids—like Mindy—had the capacity to think of others. And that gave me hope.

I thought it might help to create “family rules,” which we could put on the wall to remind us of the coping mechanisms we would need. We sat down to write them out together.

That it’s okay to say to anyone that they did not want to talk about it now. That they should know we did not deserve this. I wanted to make sure guilt did not cloud any moment when my kids could have a break from grief, so we agreed that it was okay to be happy and to laugh.

Once I had my own children, I understood how right they were. When we’re tired, we’re physically and mentally weaker, more likely to be irritable, and we literally lack the energy to feel joy. Sleep matters even more in adversity because we need to marshal all our strength, so I stuck as close as I could to their regular bedtimes. When my kids had trouble falling asleep, I tried to teach them to count six breaths in and out, just as my mom had taught me.

The year before, my daughter and I had attended a Girls Leadership workshop and learned about “fast double-sorries”—when two people hurt each other’s feelings, you both apologize quickly so that you forgive each other and yourselves. Feeling deep grief and anger meant we all got upset much more easily, so we relied on this strategy a lot. When we lost control of our emotions, we would say we were sorry right away. Then we would “mirror” each other: the first person would explain what was upsetting, and the second person would repeat it back and apologize.

When they didn’t dwell on yesterday’s grief, they could approach today as a new day. We vowed to do this, like everything else, as a team.

The family rules still hang above the kids’ cubbies, but only recently did I notice that asking for help is in all four categories. Now I see that this is at the heart of building resilience. When children feel comfortable asking for help, they know they matter. They see that others care and want to be there for them. They understand that they are not alone and can gain some control by reaching out for support. They realize that pain is not permanent; things can get better.

But I have a deep desire to keep Dave’s memory alive, and when I mention him he remains present. Because our children were so young, I realize—and this completely breaks my heart—that their memories of their father will fade, so it’s up to me to make sure they know him.