NEW YORK (AP) – 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 in an interview with The Associated Press. “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 from it with a new perspective on life. A humbled follow-up to her first book, “Lean In ,” it’s also a how-to, 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.
Sandberg also uses the new book to address what she now sees as shortcomings in the career advice she offered women in “Lean In.” Surveying the world as a wealthy corporate executive rendered her oblivious to the circumstances faced by less fortunate women, she acknowledged. Not everyone can lean in; not everyone wants to.
“I didn’t get it,” she wrote. “I didn’t get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home.”