Kerri Miller picks four favorites
The Thread's Must-Read
“Option B"by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
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When we scheduled The Thread Live event with Sheryl Sandberg, I anticipated an intimate, poignant and ultimately hopeful conversation.
Her new book, written with Wharton School psychologist Adam Grant, is about the sudden death of Sandberg’s husband, Dave. It explores how she made sense of that loss to herself and to their young children, and what she learned about what seems like a depthless grief. Sandberg writes about eventually going back to work as COO of Facebook: “I needed cry breaks… I took them on the side of the road in my car...at work...at board meetings.”
"Option B," she tells us, is how you make the most of your life when tragedy and sorrow collide with your plans and dreams.
What I didn’t expect was how Sandberg and Grant’s book would be a generous guidepost in my own life when I needed it most.
A good friend of mine is enduring the kind of loss that turns a life into before and after. She describes it as a “dark, unimaginable abyss.” I’ve had enough on-air conversations about loss and grief to know that my friend needs space and time and steady strength from me. But I’ve privately anguished over how to be present for her as her grief evolves.
Sandberg reminds me that I’ll need to talk openly and unflinchingly with my friend about the person who died, even if we’ll both cry as we do it. “I’ve watched adults flinch,” Sandberg writes, “as if it’s too painful for them to be reminded.”
She also confides that the only way to keep living with a loss like hers and like my friend’s is through resilience. Friends, she says, can be an essential part of that. “Collective resilience requires more than just shared hope,” she says. “It is also fueled by shared experiences, shared narratives and shared power.”
My conversation with Sandberg is available online at The Thread.
-K.M.
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