Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

The grief and anxiety built throughout the day to that moment when I knew I’d have to crawl—and I mean crawl—into bed alone. By showing up night after night, and making it clear that they would always be there when I needed them, my family and friends were my button.

I learned that at times, caring means that when someone is hurting, you cannot imagine being anywhere else.

There’s no one way to grieve and there’s no one way to comfort. What helps one person won’t help another, and even what helps one day might not help the next. Growing up, I was taught to follow

“Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried,”

That means consoling the people who are closer to the tragedy than

you are and reaching out for support from those who are farther removed.

I was torn by similar conflicting emotions. I hated asking for help, hated needing it, worried incessantly that I was a huge burden to everyone, and yet depended on their constant support.

I was suffering from

so many insecurities that I almost started a People Afraid of Inconveniencing Others support group, until I realized that all the members would be afraid of impo...

Before, I defined friendships by what I could offer: career advice, emotional support, suggestions for old (and Dave would have added bad) TV shows to watch. But this all changed and I needed so much help. I did n...

Grief doesn’t share its schedule with anyone; we all grieve differently and in our own time.

Anger is one of the five stages of grief famously defined by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. In the face of loss, we’re supposed to start in denial and move to anger, then to bargaining and depression. Only after we pass through these four stages can we find acceptance.

They are five states that don’t progress in a linear fashion but rise and fall. Grief and anger aren’t extinguished like flames doused with water. They can flicker away one moment and burn hot the next.

“We are going to get through this.” When he was away, he sent emails, sometimes with just one line: “You are not alone.” One

I used to think there was one set of footprints because my friends were carrying me through the worst days of my life. But now it means something else to me. When I saw one set of footprints, it was because they were following directly behind me, ready to catch me if I fell.

4 Self-Compassion and Self-Confidence Coming to Grips with Ourselves

She attempted suicide. Catherine had dedicated herself to helping people get a second chance. She had fostered compassion for ex-offenders. Now she needed to find compassion for someone else—herself.

Self-compassion isn’t talked about as much as it should be, maybe because it’s often confused with its troublesome cousins, self-pity and self-indulgence.

Neff describes self-compassion as offering the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to a friend. It allows us to respond to our own errors with concern and ...

None of us can change what we have already done.

Self-compassion comes from recognizing that our imperfections are part of being human. Those who can tap into it recover from hardship faster. In a study of people whose marriages fell apart, resilience was not related to their self-esteem, optimism, or depression before divorce, or to how long their relationships or separations had lasted. What helped people cope with distress and move on was self-compassion.

Self-compassion is associated with greater happiness and satisfaction, fewer emotional difficulties, and less anxiety. Both

As psychologist Mark Leary observes, self-compassion “can be an antidote to the cruelty we sometimes inflict on ourselves.”

Although it can be hard to shake, guilt keeps us striving to improve. People become motivated to repair the wrongs of their past and make better choices in the future.

Shame has the opposite effect: it makes people feel small and worthless, leading them to attack in anger or shrink away in self-pity. Among college students, the shame-prone were more likely than the guilt-prone

and “I can allow other people to care for me—and I need to take care of myself.”

Self-confidence is critical to happiness and success. When we lack it, we dwell on our flaws. We fail to embrace new challenges and learn new skills.

What we don’t see coming—or at least I didn’t—is that trauma can also lead to self-doubt in all aspects of our lives. This loss of confidence is another symptom of pervasiveness: we are struggling in one area and suddenly we stop believing in our capabilities in other areas. Primary loss triggers secondary losses. For me, my confidence crumbled overnight. It reminded me of watching a house in my neighborhood that had taken years to build get torn down in a matter of minutes. Boom. Flattened.

Now it’s clear that my compulsion to write was guiding me in the right direction. Journaling helped me process my overwhelming feelings and my all-too-many regrets. I thought constantly about how if I’d known that Dave and I had only eleven years,

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood backward but it must be lived forward.

Journaling helped me make sense of the past and rebuild my self-confidence to navigate the present and future. Then Adam suggested that I should also write down three things that I’d done well each day.

In a more recent study, people spent five to ten minutes a day writing about things that went “really well” and why; within three weeks, their stress levels dropped, as did their mental and physical health complaints.

Adam and his colleague Jane Dutton found that counting our blessings doesn’t boost our confidence or our effort, but counting our contributions can.

Adam and Jane believe that this is because gratitude is passive: it makes us feel thankful for what we receive. Contributions are active: they build our confidence by reminding us that we can make a difference. I

Self-doubt sneaks up even on those who see it coming.

Self-confidence at work is important and often discussed, but self-confidence at home is just as crucial and often overlooked. Being a single parent was uncharted territory for me.

Since the early 1970s, the number of single mothers in the United States has nearly doubled. Today almost 30 percent of families with children are headed by a single parent—84 percent of whom are women.

Almost a third of single mothers and their children experience food insecurity.

Working moms, especially those who are single, are put at a disadvantage from the start. The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not provide paid maternity leave.

I didn’t have to help them cope with a lifetime’s worth of sadness every time they cried. I just had to help them with what they were facing right then. I did

5 Bouncing Forward The One I Become Will Catch Me

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation,” psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “we are challenged to change ourselves.”

It seems hard to believe, but as time passed, instead of post-traumatic stress, some of the parents experienced post-traumatic growth.

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.

“I am more vulnerable than I thought, but much stronger

than I ever imagined.”

the words of an old adage: “Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”

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.

Tragedy does not always leave us appreciating the people in our lives. Trauma can make us wary of others and have lasting negative effects on our ability to form relationships.