Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

THE LAST THING I ever said to him was, “I’m falling asleep.”

Still, Dave gave me the experience of being deeply understood, truly supported, and completely and utterly loved. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life resting my head on his shoulder.

When we arrived at the cemetery, my children 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. Their cousins came and lay down with us, all piled up in a big sobbing heap with adult arms trying in vain to protect them from their sorrow.

Grief is a demanding companion.

“No one ever told me,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “that grief felt so like fear.”

The fear was constant and it felt like the grief would never subside.

I don’t know anyone who has been handed only roses. We all encounter hardships. Some we see coming; others take us by surprise. It can be as tragic as the sudden death of a child, as heartbreaking as a relationship that unravels, or as disappointing as a dream that goes unfulfilled. The question is: When these things happen, what do we do next?

I thought resilience was the capacity to endure pain, so I asked Adam how I could figure out how much I had.

explained that our amount of resilience isn’t fixed, so I should be asking instead how...

Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity—and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengt...

Loss, grief, and disappointment are profoundly personal.

We haven’t. There is no right or proper way to grieve or face challenges, so we don’t have perfect answers. There are no perfect answers.

Recovery does not start from the same place for everyone.

Wars, violence, and systemic sexism and racism decimate lives and communities. Discrimination, disease, and poverty cause and worsen tragedy. The sad truth is that adversity is not evenly distributed among us; marginalized and disenfranchised groups have more to battle and more to grieve.

To fight for change tomorrow we need to build resilience today.

This book is about the capacity of the human spirit to persevere.

“But I want Dave.” He put his arm around me and said, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.”

Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B. This book is to help us all kick the shit out of it.

Breathing Again You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. —SAMUEL BECKETT

After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P’s can stunt recovery: (1) personalization—the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence—the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever. The three P’s play like the flip side of the pop song “Everything Is Awesome”—“everything is awful.” The loop in

Hundreds of studies have shown that children and adults recover more quickly when they realize that hardships aren’t entirely their fault, don’t affect every aspect of their lives, and won’t follow them everywhere forever. Recognizing that negative events aren’t personal, pervasive, or permanent makes people less likely to get depressed and better able to cope.

I stressed that not everything that happens to us happens because of us.

No one thought I should apologize for crying. Once I tried to stop saying “sorry,” I found myself biting my tongue over and over and started letting go of personalization.

Just as the body has a physiological immune system, the brain has a psychological immune system.

Seligman found that words like “never” and “always” are signs of permanence. Just as I had to banish “sorry” from my vocabulary, I tried to eliminate “never” and “always” and replace them with “sometimes” and “lately.” “I will always feel this awful” became “I will sometimes feel this awful.” Not the most cheerful

A psychiatrist friend explained to me that humans are evolutionarily wired for both connection and grief: we naturally have the tools to recover from loss and trauma.

Now Scotty explained that in his forty years of helping people through loss, he has seen that “turning to God gives people a sense of being enveloped in loving arms that are eternal and ultimately strong. People need to know that they are not alone.”

My mom taught me how to breathe through the waves of anxiety: breathe in for a count of six, hold my breath for a count of six, then exhale for a count of six. My goddaughter Elise, in a touching reversal of our relationship, held my hand and counted aloud with me until the panic subsided.

When I felt down, I also felt down that I was down. When I felt anxious, I felt anxious that I was anxious. “Part of every misery,” C. S. Lewis wrote, is “misery’s shadow…the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.”

Following Dave’s death, I had stronger second-derivative negative feelings than ever before.

Acknowledging blessings can be a blessing in and of itself.

Widows of all backgrounds are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as married women. And that number is even higher for black and Latina widows due to the inequalities they experience throughout their lives. This is one of the many reasons why it’s important to erase the wage gap for all women and especially women of color.

Even being aware of all my blessings, I was still consumed by the pain.

Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us.

Sometimes we have less control than we think. Other times we have more.

2 Kicking the Elephant Out of the Room

The Non-Question-Asking Friend, who never, ever, ever asks you anything about your life.” Sometimes these friends are self-absorbed. Sometimes they’re just uncomfortable having intimate conversations.

Avoiding feelings isn’t the same as protecting feelings.

Parents who have suffered the worst loss imaginable often share this sentiment. Author Mitch Carmody said after his nine-year-old son Kelly died from a brain tumor, “Our child dies a second time when no one speaks their name.” This is why the Compassionate Friends, one of the largest bereavement organizations in the

Openers can make a big difference in times of crisis, especially for those who are normally reticent.

Writer Anna Quindlen observes that grief is discussed among “those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.”

“Grief,” she writes, is “a whisper in the world and a clamor within.

Adam pointed out that I would often answer “How are you?” with “Fine,” and that didn’t encourage people to ask further questions. He said if I wanted others to be more open with me, I needed to be more open with them.

Until we acknowledge it, the elephant is always there. By ignoring it,

those who are grieving isolate themselves and those who could offer comfort create distance instead.

sides need to reach out. Speaking with empathy and honesty is a good place to start. You can’t wish the elephant away, but you can say, “I see it. I see you’re suffering. And I care ...

When people are in pain, they need a button. After

Writer Allen Rucker observed both reactions after being suddenly paralyzed by a rare disorder. “As some friends checked in daily with deli sandwiches, the complete films of Alfred Hitchcock, or just kindness, others were curiously absent,” he wrote. “It was my first indication that my new condition could breed fear in people other than myself.” For some, his physical paralysis triggered emotional paralysis.

“Why haven’t I heard from you?” she asked. “Oh,” explained her friend, “I wanted to wait until you felt better.” Her friend didn’t understand that withholding comfort actually added to the pain.

But what we learn from the stress experiment is that the button didn’t need to stop the noise to relieve the pressure. Simply showing up for a friend can make a huge difference.