April 27, 2017 • 54 mins
After her husband died suddenly from a cardiac arrhythmia, Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In) thought she would never experience true joy again. Nearly two years later, she is out with a new book, Option B, that delves into how she proved herself wrong— and how others can build resilience in the face of trauma, too. Sandberg wrote Option B with her friend Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and Wharton professor. They both join Katie onstage at 92Y (92Y.org) in Manhattan to discuss insights from the book, including how to support grieving children, dating after loss, and the "three P's" that can hinder recovery.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
I used to think if someone was going through something hard,
the first time I saw them, I would say I'm sorry,
and then I would never bring it up again, because
you know, they should bring it up if they wanted
to talk. Right, you're afraid you're going to hurt them
or re traumatized. Right, I'm going to remind them. You
can't remind me Dave died. To this day, you can't
remind me if you say I'm sorry. If you're a loss,
I'm not like, oh, Dave died. Hi, Brian. That was
(00:27):
Cheryl Sandberg during a conversation at the Street Why And
to quote Bill O'Reilly, you were doing it live. I
was doing it live with Cheryl and her co author
Adam Grant, who's an organizational psychologist who teaches at the
University of Pennsylvania at the Wharton School, and together they
have written a book called Option B. And I have
(00:49):
to say it was a very personal interview in front
of a live audience at the Y. It was kind
of a meeting of the minds in some ways, in
a meeting of the hearts. Tragically, you and Cheryl have
a lot in common in that respect. You both lost
your husband's young her husband, Dave Goldberg, died a couple
of years ago due to a cardiac arrhythmia while they
(01:11):
were on vacation, and this book really came out in
the wake of that tragedy and her family trying to
pick up the pieces and figure out how to go on.
The book is a deeply personal account of what it's
like to lose someone you love at such a young
age and so suddenly. And I think what Cheryl is
trying to do with this book is to not only
(01:33):
tell her personal story, but to help people deal with
all kinds of hardships and how you can be resilient,
how you can find joy. But there are certain concrete
steps you can take that may help speed up the
healing process in a way. Well, that's something else you
have in common. You both try to take these these
horrible circumstances and turn them into something productive for other people.
(01:56):
You in terms of your your advocacy for cancer research
and and her in terms of helping others build resilience
after a tragedy. She is arguably the most well known
and successful female executive in this country, and people are
extremely interested in her. But the fact that she's opened
up and shown this vulnerability I think has made people
(02:19):
see a very different side of her, and we certainly
did when I interviewed her and Adam at the Street Wide.
Let's take a listen. Hi everyone, good evening. Nice to
see all of you here tonight. Um really looking forward
to this conversation, and I know many of you are
as well. So Cheryl, let me start with you because
(02:41):
I want to explain sort of your relationship with Adam,
and I know you and Dave got to know Adam
after Dave had read one of his books. He asked
Adam to come speak at his company, survey Monkey, and
he was incredibly supportive. Adam was, you're getting very emotional,
(03:01):
are you okay? Okay? But I think according to the book,
when you all really bonded was when you called Adam
after you received a letter that left you utterly devastated.
Tell us about that. It was a few weeks after
Dave died, and you know a lot of people Adam
(03:25):
kept saying even before that, you kept saying it gets better,
but it didn't feel like it would ever get better.
I felt like there's a void closing in on me.
My brother in law Rob described it as a boot
pushing on his chest, and you've been through it. Grief
is really overwhelming, you feel. I felt like I wasn't
going to live through a day, a minute, a week.
(03:48):
And then I got this letter from a woman who
I know. She meant well, she was older, she lost
her husband, and what she wrote was, I wish I
had something to say to you, but I don't because
it's been years and it really doesn't get much easier.
And a friend of mine lost her husband ten years ago,
and it doesn't get easier. And I was not strong
(04:09):
enough to read that letter. And actually I'm sitting on
the stage with the two people I called. I called you, Katie,
and you were a dear friend, and you told me
she was wrong particularly helpful. Either it was very helpful.
I was helpful. She wasn't it right. She was wrong
and unhelpful, but she meant well, you know, And I'm
(04:33):
still grateful that she took the time to write. She
was trying. And I learned something important after that, and
I called Adam and Adam said she was wrong. And
then the next day, when I was at my son's
football game. You know, Adam lives in Philadelphia. I live
in California, Adam walked in and I said, what are
you doing here? Like, what are you doing here? He's
on like the football field in Palo Alto, and he
(04:54):
said he needed to tell me in person that this
wasn't true and that it was isn't going to be
true for me. Adam, tell me what else you told
Cheryl when you saw her on that football field. I
remember I remember describing the person who wrote the letter,
who I don't know, using some words that I can't
stay on stage tonight. But she meant, well, I'm sure
(05:17):
she did. I thought she was evil, but uh what
I think the main thing that I said to Cheryl is,
look that that does not have to be your experience
right there. There are people who end up, you know,
just suffering for years or decades, um. But this is
something that you can you can gain control over. And
the question is really, what are you going to do
(05:39):
to build resilience, not not just for yourself but also
for your children? Um. And that started this conversation that's
now been going on for two years, which really was
the genesis for this book. I think the combination of
your Facebook post that got received incredible outpouring and then
Adams sound advice and expertise in this area. You decided
(06:00):
you wanted to to share your experiences to help other people,
but we decided to write the book away later. But
I think the genesis was the first. Adam came to
the funeral and everyone else kind of left my house,
and I asked him to stay because he was my
friend who is a psychologist, and I remember looking at
him and saying, you know, how do I get my
(06:20):
kids through this? What do I do? You know, tell
me what to do? And Adam did what was incredibly
useful for me as he started summarizing the research and
sending me here, there's been a longitudinal study of children
who lost parents and head parents who were divorced. Here's
what it says you do, and here's what psychologists teach
us about grief and resilience and building it. And I
(06:43):
mean anyone. I'm sure there's so many people in this
audience who have been through real trauma and real tragedy,
and there's a lot to it, but one of the
core things is this unbelievable feeling of loss of control.
You just have no control, You can't fix it, it
can't go away. And knowing there was something you could do,
even if it won't because it entirely but even take
one step to make it a little bit better. It
(07:03):
was something I desperately needed and couldn't find anywhere else where.
Why we wrote the book. We're going to talk about
some of those things in a moment. But I liked
what the rabbi who led Day's Day's funeral told you.
He said, lean into the suck, correct, which was a
very different kind of leaning in, right, Carol, I looked
at him in shock. I said, that wasn't what we meant.
(07:28):
What did he mean by that? Well, it was really
good advice because as much as I was trying to
gain some sense of control and take some steps, I
also had to know that I couldn't control this, and
the grief would come, and it would come for me
and it would come for my children, and I just
had to accept those feelings. And when he told me
to lean into the suck, it was saying no, the
(07:48):
grief will come, and stop fighting it. And when I
stopped fighting it, it definitely got easier. Because I think
what happens is you're grief stricken, and then you're grieving.
You're grieving, you're anxious, and then you're anxious. You're anxious,
and so the feelings pylon and pylon, and when I
just accepted, Okay, this completely sucks and I am going
to have horrible times, horrible moments to to stay accepting
(08:11):
those feelings. Lets me process them and they pass more quickly.
I know that you write grief is a demanding companion. Uh,
and Adam, you described three things in the book that
can really keep people from emerging from the abyss, and
you call them the three piece. Can you tell us
briefly what those are? Yeah, this is I think this
is the kind of friendship that we all want, right
(08:33):
when you're in severe pain and one of your friends
says to you, here, I know it will cheer you up.
Data it worked for me. Yeah, in Cheryl's case it did.
Maybe maybe the only person where that would be true.
But um, this is something that's always been resonant for me.
In Psychologist, it's Marty Seligman's work who said, look, there
(08:54):
are these three traps that we all run into when
something goes bad in our lives. The first one is
as personal as I and saying this is all my fault.
The second one is pervasiveness. This is going to ruin
every part of my life. And then the third one
is permanence. I'm going to feel this way forever. And
when you get into those traps, it's really hard to recover.
And so we started talking about, you know, how do
(09:14):
you overcome those traps and move forward. It seems to me, Cheryl,
that the personalization, the idea that oh, I should have
gotten Dave to eat a healthier diet, or I should
have been in the gym that day, or I should
have should have should have that you were able to
kind of understand that it wasn't your fault pretty quickly. Well,
I wish that were the case. I really didn't at first.
(09:36):
I mean, the initial reports told us that Dave had
died falling off an exercise machine. And my brother is
a neurosurgeon, and he kept saying to me an increasing volume,
that is not true. A man Dave's age did not
fall off an exercise machine. He would have broken an arm.
Something happened, And then we had got the autopsy back,
but that took a while, and we learned he died
(09:57):
of a cardiac arrhythmia. So then it was why didn't
I know he had coronary artery disease. Forget his doctors.
Why didn't I diagnose it diddy of chest pains. It
sounds silly, but I spent a lot of time with
doctors medical records trying to figure out how I blew
the most important thing in my life. And then once,
(10:17):
you know, my family not so gently pointed out that
I wasn't a doctor and I couldn't have done that.
Everyone else in my family is a doctor, by the way.
They You know, I blame myself for everything else. My
mother gave up her life. She's here with me tonight
to stay with me. For a month, people were covering
all my client meetings at Facebook. I had lots to
blame myself for. And then it was Adam who looked
at me and explained personalization and said, here's the thing.
(10:40):
If you don't stop blaming yourself, your kids can't recover
because if you don't recover, they can't recover it. And
he said, you gotta stop saying sorry. Oh, that's right.
In fact, you kept saying I'm sorry to everyone all
the time. Why was that because you felt like you
were a burden, You felt that you had disrupted their lives. Yeah,
a huge burden. I mean I went back to work
and I was only there the hours my kids were
(11:02):
at school, so very limited schedule. I did no travel
for six months. I did no dinners. I still do
basically no dinners because I have to be home with
my children. You know, I'm an only parent now, and
so you know, I had a lot to apologize for.
And at home, people were coming over to help me
go to sleep. I couldn't walk into my room that
I shared with Dave for a very long time by myself.
(11:24):
So my friends and sister had a schedule of coming
over so literally like go to sleep with me as
if I was a child. And I just felt terrible
all the time, and it was my fault. It was
my fault. I was such a burden on everyone. Personalization, though,
was so common. I think it's the guilt. Why could have,
would have? Should have I have that with Jay? Why
didn't I notice he was getting thin? Why didn't I
(11:44):
have him get a colonoscopy? I mean, all these things
that I think you blame yourself for. I think primarily
because guilt, anger, and all these other emotions adam are
easier to handle than profound sadness. Yeah, I think they
often are. And you know, I remember Cheryl calling and
saying things like I'm really sorry, and I'm like, who
(12:05):
is this? There's no introduction, it's it's just a policy
right after that, and it's so common, right, It is
really hard to deal with with emotions that you can
do nothing about. Right to just say, yeah, you know what,
David has gone, I can't bring him back might be
a much harder thing to accept than to say, you
know what, maybe you know there's something that I could
(12:25):
have done differently permanence though I know Cheryl from reading
the book that that was really the most challenging of
the piece for you, the idea that you would never
be happy, that the kids would never have a father,
all those things that kind of haunted you. How were
you able to escape from those feelings? And that's sort
of the chains of that particular p What was people
(12:49):
telling me it would get better? You, Katie, were a
great friend, and I know we were friendly but not
as close before, but you jumped in and called me
and said I've been through this, and you kept telling
me it got better, and you were more credible than
other people because you have been through the same thing.
Let's talk for a minute. I just want to. I
actually had this question earlier but got off track of
(13:12):
it because I want to. I want to talk that
Dave for a minute. Dave, I think was so beloved.
It was such a special person, incredibly generous. I didn't
know Dave well. My husband, actually, who's here, sat next
to him at some Bluebird event and Dave turned to
John and said, what are you doing here? And John said,
(13:32):
I'm married to Katie Curtic, and he said, what are
you doing here? She I'm married to Cheryl Samberg and
they both started laugh which was so funny. They're very
accomplished in their own right, by the way. But you know,
I don't think i've heard anybody Sheryl ever say an
unkind word about Dave. What were the qualities that made
(13:54):
him so special and so beloved by so many and
most of all you, I mean, Dave. Dave was amazing.
He was brilliant and funny. But I think the reason
he is and was so beloved is he was really generous.
At the funeral, I've never seen this done. Our friend
Zander stood up in his eulogy and looked at the
(14:15):
crowd and said, how many people here had their life
changed by Dave coltwork and like all these hands went up.
See of hands. And to this day I meet people
not every month, every week who will say not I
met your husband. He said something interesting, It was Dave
changed my life and here's how, And he really did.
He went out of his way for so many people.
(14:36):
He was so generous with his he gave such good advice.
Mark Zuckerberg said this of him. Mark said that some
people are generous and want to give a lot of advice,
and some people give really good advice. But very rarely
do those two things come together because the people who
can give the really good advice don't of the time
to give a lot of it. And he said Dave
(14:56):
was unique because Dave gave incredible advice and would put
incredible amounts of time in it. And so a lot
of people have asked me, you know, kind of why
why are you writing a book on grief and talking
about this. I know I'm doing this, and I'm doing
this because if Dave Goldberg were alive just in the
last two years, he would have helped so many people
because he did it all the time. And so if
(15:19):
option B can help anyone else, even one person face
adversity and find resilience. It extends Dave Goldberg's life because
nothing could honor his legacymore. We're going to take a
quick break now, but we'll be back with more from
(15:40):
Chryl Sandberg and Adam Grant right after this. And now
back to our interview with Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant.
What motivated you to post that incredible, doubly personal Facebook
(16:02):
post and really sharing with people in a way Cheryl
that I don't think, you know, many people would feel
comfortable sharing. Um, it was extraordinary, But tell me about
the thought process that went into that. It was approaching
the thirty day mark after the burial, which in the
Jewish tradition is shallow shame. It's the Jewish period of
morning for a spouse, So it was supposed to be over,
(16:24):
and I couldn't feel less like it was over. And
it wasn't just the grief, but it was the isolation,
you know. I used to drop my kids off at
school and everyone would say hi, and I'd walk into
work and everyone chit chat, and after Dave died, most
of that was fun because I think people were so
afraid to say the wrong thing, that they didn't say
anything at all, and you know, rooms were quiet when
I walked in, and you could see the quiet around
(16:46):
me in the school, you know, kid kid drop offline.
And so I had been journaling, and so I wrote
a post which was what I would say if I
would say something. And I went to sleep the night
before thinking there's zero chance on posting this. This is
a way too way too personal. And I woke up
the next morning and it was so bad that I
thought this can't get that worse and it might get better.
And even then I realized I work at Facebook, and
(17:07):
I realized I posted it publicly. I didn't really realize
how public it would be. I felt like, I know,
I knew I was posting it publicly. I just didn't
think so many people would pay attention. I thought the
people who would read it were the people who worked
at Facebook, the people were walking by me and not
saying hi anymore, and the people at the school. They
would read it. That's why I was posting it publicly,
not just to my friends. I didn't realize like a
(17:28):
lot of strangers and news media and stuff would write
about it. I know, we're not always that smart, but
I was speaking to the people I was going through
my life interacting with, and it really helped, despite how
broad it was, and that was uncomfortable at the time.
Um a friend of mine at work told me that
she had been driving by my house and not coming
(17:48):
in for a month, almost every day, and she started
coming in strangers. A woman posted from the Niku that
she had just lost one of two twins and she
was finding the strength inside her to give the surviving
twin of great life. And another woman said, I lost
one of two twins. Do you want to talk? And
it definitely did not take away any of the grief,
(18:11):
but it changed the isolation, and it really changed it
in very deep ways. Everyone started talking to me again.
People would say how are you today? Even strangers I
passed would say how are you today? And while I
didn't mean to do it that broadly, I'm so glad
I did because it really changed it for me. I
took away the horror of the isolation. Let's talk about that,
(18:34):
about the fact that when people are suffering or dealing
with tragedy or faith themselves are sick. Because I think
Jay had this experience, he said, being sick like this
is the loneliest experience in the world. But also if
you lose someone, people feel very uncomfortable. So, Cheryl, you
learned firsthand about the different approaches that you shouldn't do.
(18:59):
So why don't you talk about the things that people
said or did that made you feel lonely or and
more isolated? Because I think this is such an important
conversation because I think so many of us now. I
don't feel this way because I've been through it, but
a lot of people just don't feel comfortable with death
or grieving or loss and it I think it reminds
(19:19):
them of their own mortality, honestly, and they just really
want to keep it at arms length. So let's talk
about first what people did that they shouldn't do, and
then we'll talk about what people can do. Right. I
did an interview for the book that's coming out in
print in in a few days, and the first reporter
first question she asked me, she said, so everyone dies,
and everyone knows someone who dies, yet we never we
(19:42):
don't know how to talk about death. Why it's like
such a good question, I don't know. But it's not
just death. You want to silence a room, get diagnosed
with cancer, lose a job, go to prison, have your
father go to prison. Any of these things. They ussered
this you would elephant kind of walking behind us. And
(20:03):
we don't know what to say, so often we say
nothing at all. So the most important, one of the
most important things, is acknowledge the pain. And I got
this wrong before. I used to think if someone was
going through something hard, the first time I saw them,
I would say I'm sorry, and then I would never
bring it up again, because you know they should bring
it up if they wanted to talk. Right, you're afraid
you're going to hurt them or re traumatize. Right, I'm
(20:23):
going to remind them. You can't remind me Dave died
to this day, you can't remind me if you say
I'm sorry, if you're a loss, I'm not like, oh,
Dave died, I forgot. I didn't forget. I know that.
And so when people didn't acknowledge it, so much better
thing to say was I know you're hurting. You may
(20:45):
or may not want to talk, but I know you're hurting,
even the second time you see me, or the third
month or the second year. Your kids were seven and
ten when Dave died. I know you flew home from Mexico.
You write about it in the book and it's a
(21:05):
gut wrenching and heartbreaking seeing. How could it not be
when you have to tell your kids that their dad
has died. So, I mean you had to do that too. Yeah,
but Ellie was six and Carrie was too, so it's
a little different. You know, every situation is different. But
yes I did, I did have to do that. But
(21:26):
you know, there was something that they said that night
when you were tucking them in, that each of them
at separate times, I guess during the course of the
day that took your breath away and gave you incredible
hope for them. Tell us what those were. I mean,
telling your children they will not see their father again
(21:46):
is horrific. People have asked what was the worst moment
of your life? There are many contenders for that prize,
but this might be it. Um. Carol Geitner is here tonight,
and that's her job, is to counsel grieving children. So
I had the great, unbelievable fortune of knowing someone who
could help me, and she told me what to say,
and I tried to follow her advice. Um, and Thank
(22:11):
god I did, because I would just have completely not
been prepared. Um. But then my son said, thank you
for coming home to tell me yourself. And when I
was putting my daughter to bed that night, she said,
I'm not just sad for us, I'm sad for Grandma
Paula and Uncle Rob because they lost them too. I
thought to myself, I have a seven and a ten
(22:32):
year old who have just been told they will never
see their father again. So it is the worst time
of their lives, hopefully, and they can think of anyone else.
They are actually capable of thanking me or thinking of
their grandma and their uncle, and that gave me so
much hope. And in the really hard moments that followed,
and there were many, I tried to remember that, and
(22:52):
I didn't always. I can't say I did. You know.
When they would cry, I would fast forward. You know.
My son would be crying that his father wasn't going
to basketball, and I would remember he would never go
to basketball again. My daughter would cry that all the
other fathers were at soccer, and I would know he
would never be there again. But when I could coming
(23:15):
back to the fact that they could think of other
people gave me a lot of hope. We always hear
Adam that children are incredibly resilient when it comes to
loss or hardship and setbacks. So how can how were
you able to help Cheryl help her kids? And how
can we all help kids sort of exercise that resiliency
(23:36):
muscle if you will. But I don't know that it helped.
But one of the things that we we talked about
a lot is this idea of mattering that kids need
to know first and foremost is that they matter, and
mattering his three components. It's basically knowing that other people
notice you, care about you, and rely on you. And
this is something that I think we all try to
(23:58):
do with with our children as parents everyday. But it
becomes even more important in the face of tragedy and
adversity because you know, they just lost somebody who was
at the center of their world. You know, we we
talked about what can you do to make sure that
your kids still know how much you care about them,
but also that you're relying on them right that you're
gonna work through this together. And Cheryl had I thought
(24:19):
an amazing idea to create family rules to help with this. Yeah,
my kids and I following advice Carol had given me.
We meet family rules there and Marker, they still hang
up there and in all of the rules. Respecting your feelings.
It's okay to be angry, It's okay to be happy.
It's okay to be jealous of other kids who still
have fathers. Um was you can ask for help. Teaching
(24:41):
kids that they are not going through it alone, that
we are going through it together is so important. And
it's not just important in trauma. This is important every
single day as we teach our kids to try to
grow up and face whatever adversity they will face. You
talk about post traumatic growth, which is an expression I've
never heard, which I really love. And how are they
(25:02):
doing now? And are the sad moments a lot more
and frequent than they were? I've definitely compared to the
beginning crying and the screaming. I mean, we couldn't get
through an hour. Um. Post traumatic growth is how we
go through trauma and we grow. There are ways in
which we grow, and one of them is that we
(25:23):
gain perspective. The other day, a few weeks ago, my
son's basketball team lost the playoffs, and you know, a
lot of the little boys were upset. A couple were
crying and I looked at my son, I said, are
you okay? And he goes a mom, this is sixth
grade basketball. I'm fine. They don't know now. Do I
(25:49):
want him to have that perspective? Noe? But is it perspective? Yes?
And being able to celebrate the good and keep the
bad in perspective is a very, very valuable lesson. And
we've talked a lot, not just about post traumatic growth,
but about pre traumatic growth. And this is why we
wrote this book so it can we take the lessons
that people do learn in trauma and give them to
(26:11):
people who don't face the trauma. So gratitude. So it
is the most counterintuitive thing in the world to lose
your husband and feel more grateful. I thought I should
look for positive thoughts, and one day Adam looked at
me and said, you should think about how things could
be worse. Now. Adam is literally one of the most
brilliant people I've ever met, but I looked at him like,
you are a total idiot. My husband just died and
(26:33):
nothing could be worse. And he said, well, Dave could
have had that cardiac arrhythmia driving your children and in
that moment, I said up, I'm like, I'm good, kids
are alive, I'm fine. Like I literally was like, I'm okay.
And the question is can we appreciate life? What would
I do to give one day and go back and
(26:56):
live it with Dave. How would I appreciate that day?
I can't have that, but I can appreciate this day.
I can appreciate your friendship and Adam's friendship and that
we're all here talking about this. My cousin, Laura, lives
in New York and she turned fifty on Valentine's Day
and I called her and I said, Laura, I'm calling
to say happy birthday, but I'm also calling to say
in case you woke up with that, Oh my god,
(27:17):
I'm fifty thing right? How many people have done that
in your life? Oh my god, I'm turning older? I
said to her and said, this is the year day
of Goldberg won't turn fifty. Turns out there's two choices,
two options. We grow older or we don't. I will
never make another joke about growing old again. And if
anyone makes it in my presence, even if I don't
know them, I kind of turned around, like, don't say that,
(27:41):
because it is a gift, and I appreciate life in
a way I never did before this happened. And the
question is can people do that who haven't experienced the trauma,
and we believe they can. Let's talk about confidence, because
I know, you know, I think probably you're one of
the most confident people I know, but you're offidence was
shaken after J after Jay, after Dave died. Um. Why
(28:06):
why do you think that was the case? Is that
sort of because you're a classic overachiever and you didn't
feel like you were doing grief? Well? No, I mean
it was actually one of the more surprising things that
happened is that, you know, I had not experienced grief,
but I had read about it, So when the anger came,
I wasn't shocked, even though more of it came than
I would have expected. When the sadness came, at least
(28:27):
I had heard of that. But what totally surprised me
is it completely destroyed my confidence in every other aspect.
And I wrote lean in. I had like studied confidence
at work. I was supposed to understand it, but you know,
I went back to work and I could barely get
through a meeting without crying. So how could I do
my job? And I had two children parenting as hard
before this when I had a great supportive partner, and
(28:49):
I don't have the financial challenges so many single moms have.
But being a single mother of two grieving children, I
had no experience with this was was hard. And what
I really is is that you know, Mark Zuckerberg did this.
What I needed to build up my confidence wasn't just
permission to be a mess, but also reassurance that sometimes
I wasn't. So when someone at worked before was going
(29:10):
through something hard, what I would say to them is,
just take the pressure off. You need time off. Can
we take that project off you? Oh? Of course, you
can't think straight with everything you're going through. I did
that all with good intentions, but on the other side,
when people said that to me, it was proof that
I absolutely couldn't do my job. Mark did you don't
have to come in if you don't want to take
(29:31):
the time you want. But I think you made a
good point in that meeting. There's no way I made
a good point in that meeting. Trust me that it
was the kindest thing, and you did it over and over.
In other words, you're needed here and that made you
feel so much better. So now when people are going
through things that are hard, and when you look, it's everywhere,
(29:51):
I both give them time off, but if they're there,
I go out of my way. If they do anything
that I can praise, I praise it. You also are
serious journal or or you're do journaling. I've never done journaling.
I don't even like that word actually, but but but
it is talented. It was incredibly helpful to you through
this this horrible time. But right, I mean it was
(30:14):
a gift. Tell me why it was so important, Adam,
and why you recommend what I never do. Well, Look,
when when most of us sit down to journal, we
you know, we do it for a few minutes and
then we kind of get bored and we move on.
When Show Sandberg sits down to write a journal, it's
a hundred thousand words. But I think that you know,
the the impulse to journal, which which a lot of
(30:35):
people have during intense experiences, turns out to be a
really healthy one. Um. There are hundreds of experiments showing
that if you even just write a few times for
fifteen minutes each about a traumatic experience, that in the
short run, in the next few days, you will feel
worse because it is not fun to relive tragedy. But
in the weeks and months that follow, not only does
your happiness improve, but also your physical health tends to increase.
(30:59):
It also can help with with forming a story right,
finding some coherence, and saying, look, i may never feel
this happen for a reason, but I'm going to use
this experience to find a reason to keep living and
to find a deeper sense of purpose. And charl I
thought that was a theme that came through. And a
lot of your journal interests tell us about writing in
that journal because I know it. First cheryld you said
(31:19):
all you did was work, take care of the kids,
and write journal. Yeah. I always wanted to keep a journal.
I have boxes of them. I would do five days
after New Year's and that's it. But after Dave died,
I I really I wrote, and I needed to write,
and if I did not write for just a couple
of days, I felt like I was gonna burst. And
it was later when Adam and I started doing the
research for the book that I saw the research that
(31:40):
said how helpful that can be in processing emotions. And
then people have asked if the book was hard to write.
The personal parts of the book were mostly written for
my journal, so I didn't have to write them for
the book. So writing the book itself was writing the
stories of amazing people who have gone through other forms
of hardship learning the research, and that part was really cathartic.
(32:04):
You also have a chapter called uh I think it's
taking that joy? Is that the name of the chapter?
And and Cheryl, you tell a very poignant story. I
think we can all kind of put ourselves in your
shoes in some ways. Where you were at at a
botto mitzvah, a childhood the daughter of a childhood friend,
and a certain song came on and there was a
(32:24):
certain high school crush there and tell us what happened next.
So it's that four months after Dave died and a
friend and I went on to the dance floor and
I danced and like a minute later I just burst
into tears. You have to say what song it was?
It was September by Earphone and fire, which I know
makes me a little I think it creates them, creates them. Yeah,
(32:45):
but I literally kind of collapsed and he had to
kind of take me outside, and I couldn't figure out
what was wrong. And what I realized was, oh my god,
I was happy for one minute, and then I just
felt so guilty. How can I be happy? Even those
four months later when Dave was on And what I
realized was that I needed permission. My brother in law
(33:07):
called me right around then with tears in his voice.
He was crying on the phone, and he said, all
Day've ever wanted was for you and your children to
be happy. Don't take that away from him and death.
And I think that when we think about being there
for people, and a lot of this book is about
what we do for other people who are going through adversity,
(33:27):
we think about holding them while they cry, bringing dinner
to the hospital, but we forget the other side, helping
them come back to work and build up their confidence,
giving them permission and experiences that are joyful because we
all deserve those, and we are hoping that option be
gives people permission to feel joy, no matter what's happened
(33:50):
to them, no matter what mistakes they've made, no matter
what life has handed them. That on the other side,
there's laughter, there's friendship. There are moments when we can
feel joy and we can notice those and live those
and I think, you know, some of finding joy again
was actually taking back things that were joyful before um
And actually, Charlott, I learned so much from this the
(34:11):
way that you said, look, here are the things that
you know that that we used to do with Dave
that made us happy, and we're not going to lose those. Yeah,
we decided after I realized, you know, I think when
we think about happiness, we think about the big stuff.
We're gonna get a promotion, have a baby, take a
big trip. Happiness. Adam taught me this. It's the little
things every day and noticing them. And so after this
(34:34):
experience where I realized this, I started taking things back.
We started cheering for the Warriors again. Dave and I
and our family we played Settlers of Katan a lot.
Everyone in Silicon Valley does. People out here may not,
but if you don't, you should. But Dave and I
had been playing the last time I saw him, and
so that was put away, and I took the board
(34:54):
out without saying that my kids and said who wants
to play? And they all said they did, and then
U we took out the pieces and Dave was always
gray and my daughter took gray, and my son said,
you can't be gray. Daddy was great, and I said,
yes we can. She wants to be gray. We do
that in Dave's honor, and I realized watching TV playing scrabble,
(35:15):
these were the things I did with Dave that brought
me joy. And I wasn't doing any of them because
they were going to remind me of David. So I
took them back one by one. You also write, Cheryld
that that humor is the third rail of grief, and
that again you've fell a little guilty, but that at times,
even early on, humor was so helpful to you, even
(35:37):
the day of Jay's God I cot Dave's funeral. Sorry,
it's okay, Sorry, there's actually something. There's a sort of weird,
isn't it that I actually think it's meaningful that you're
saying that, because I think we all live these experiences
over I find it very touching. Okay, thank you, UM
that the day of Dave support a good well you are, UM.
(35:59):
And also he told told a funny story about when UM,
I think your sister in law, you all were upstairs
in your room crying, and then you made a joke.
You guys had very different tastes in movies and television.
I thank you and Dave, So what did you say
to your sister? I said, well, at least I don't
have to watch Dave's bad TV anymore. And then I gasped.
(36:22):
And actually the first joke I made, Adam reminded me
I made it because I guess he heard you made it.
A friend of mine walked in. He was an ex
boyfriend who now dates men, married a man, and he
walked in and I said, well, this is your fault.
You were supposed to be straight, we were supposed to
get married and none of this would have happened. And
gasped both of us. It is a really good joke, right,
(36:45):
But I gasped because joking. But you know what, There's
a reason people tell jokes at funerals, and now I
know what it is, which is that that joke gives
us that one minute of release. And again, we want
Option B to give people not just permission to grief
and support in grieving, but permission to laugh. Let's talk
(37:07):
about let me take some of the questions, because I
think some of the questions I had are being asked
by people in the audience. Um, you talk a lot
about the need for quality partnership as a career woman
and mom and lean in. How is your thinking and
reality changed on this since Dave passed, especially as it
relates to your working life. Yeah, I really did think
(37:31):
about this. I wrote about different forms of family and
lean in, but I also wrote a whole chapter called
make your Partner a Real partner. And once I lost Dave,
I thought about how that must have been super hard
to read if you didn't have a partner. In fact,
you write in the book, I just didn't get it.
I didn't get it, and I did a post on
this and that one I knew I was doing publicly,
(37:51):
and I wanted to do very publicly for Mother's Day
where I said I didn't get this and we need
to do better for single mothers, single mothers in this
country living poverty, if you're Black or Latina, people do
not get the support they need. And understanding that Father's
Day is hard for people around you, Understanding that someone
doesn't have someone to go to the father daughter dances
(38:12):
with from the very basics of the education and the
healthcare and the food. Huge numbers of people. You've worked
on this, and I've worked on this have food and
security in this in this country, the basics to the
kind of emotional support. I don't think I understood this
fully and I wanted to publicly apologize. Um, you mentioned
(38:32):
a single mother, and you know you are a single mother,
and obviously a lot of your your focus has been
on being a good mother. But also I think you're
very much like I am, Cheryl. You your parents are lovely,
they're here tonight, happily married, had been married a long time,
and you're you're what we call the marrying kind, just
(38:54):
like me. And uh, well, I mean I wanted to
be Mary. It took me a long time. But this
is not about me. So but tell me about how
you That is very tricky. And I think whether you're
divorced or uh you're a widow or even a widower,
and you have children, young children, that is very tough
(39:16):
to navigate. So and you you write about how women
are often judged a lot more harshly than men when
they start to kind of go there. Tell us about
how you made these decisions and how you were able
to help your kids kind of deal with that, because
that's another adjustment that's really tough. Yeah, you know, when
(39:37):
people date after losing a spouse, it's worth remembering it's
not a choice they made. I know who I wanted
to spend my life with, and I don't have that choice.
I was lucky. The people that talk to me about
it were actually my mother in law brother in law,
both of whom said, we want this for you, but
can you dis er Jeck cheryld this the passage about
(39:59):
your mother in law, Paula, when you finally have the
courage to go through Dave's closet and you found a
particularly kind of ratty sweater that he used to wear
a lot, a gray sweater, And I thought this exchange
was so I just I don't know your mother in law,
but I love her anyway, tell us about the conversations. Incredible.
(40:21):
So my mother in law, Paula had lost her husband
sixteen years before, she lost one of her two sons.
And if anyone who's ever been through this, and we've
talked about this, the cleaning out of the closet is
just one of those things we dread it, we put
it off. Some of us do it sooner, some of
us do it later. I did it a couple of
months in where I just could not walk by that
stuff anymore. Um, I did it with my mother in
(40:43):
law and brother in law and I broke down in
that closet and I looked at her and I said,
how are you okay? How are you okay? This is
your second closet And she said, I am and I'm
I did not die, she said, melded and Dave did.
But I am alive and I will live. And she
(41:04):
lives a very full life. She runs a nonprofit, She
has friends, she travels. She's with my kids this week
and they love being with her. And that is the lesson,
the lesson of she knows that she didn't die. She
didn't just say though. She said, I'm alive, and you're alive,
(41:25):
and you will remarry. She said that, She said one
day you'll remarry, and I will be there. And it
was permission to date. And I didn't do it for
months and months and months. I mean it was a
way early, but the fact that it came from her,
but she lost someone. And I think again, as we
think about supporting people, we dry their tears, we help
(41:48):
them get through the hard stuff, but give them permission
and support to date, particularly if they're a woman and
they want to help them find laughter, even if it's
about death. These are the things that make us human.
These are the moments where we find our humanity and
we find the joy. I knew early on. People told
(42:09):
me that, and you told me this, that children feel guilty.
Children feel guilty was one of the things Carol Geitner
said when they've lost a parent, they feel guilty being happy.
So I told my kids right away it was in
our family rules. Daddy would want you to be happy,
but it's hard to give that permission to yourself. On
what would have been Dave's birthday, after he died, I
(42:30):
went to his grave with um, my siblings and my
parents and Paula and I just looked at the grave
and it was such the most obvious, basic lesson. But
we are all headed there. Absolutely, we all die. And
as I looked at all the tombstones, Jewish graves tend
(42:50):
to be pretty crowded, so you can see the dates
all there. Um, you know, some were young, some of
the some were older, and those different has almost seemed
not as significant, But you have that feeling of I
only have so many days left, and I hope everyone
here walks out of here and just lives a little
(43:11):
bit more. I always say everyone's terminal and a lovely
positive thought. Um, I'm just looking through some other audience questions. Um, oh,
do you think women are judged more harshly when they
(43:32):
move on after a loss? I know that online they
had some few choice words for you when word got
out that you were seeing someone. And I know that
you brought a date to a family wedding and somebody
at the wedding said, I'm so glad you're finally over
Dave's death. Yeah. I think one of the biggest lessons
(43:52):
for me is that all of these things exists together.
You can love someone after they you still love Jay,
I still love Dave, I always will. You can have
children who play one minute and cry and next that
because of the joy, we have the sadness. Because of
the sadness, we have the joy, and we actually wouldn't
(44:14):
have one without the other. So, yes, we are all terminal,
and in knowing that our lives are limited is where
we can try to live each day to its fullest.
How does this was a question I actually asked you
both on the phone, and someone healthily from the audience
asked it, Um, how does the shocking death like Dave's,
(44:36):
differ from a loss that's anticipated anticipated due to illness.
For example, Well, we have two living examples of those situations.
My husband was diagnosed with cancer and died nine months later,
and you can imagine how excruciating that was, but not shocking.
Yours was shocking and excruciating. Um. But but how do
(44:58):
people manage these different situa rations and how how are
they different? Kitty, I I'd like to hear you come
in a little bit more on what your experience was
like I will say, you know, people assume that it's
going to be easier when you have time to say goodbye,
and it's very often not the case. You never really
want to say goodbye to someone you love. And yes,
(45:20):
it's true that the shock and the immediate despair might
be less when you had a chance to prepare for it,
but more often than not, nothing can you really prepare
you for what it's like to have someone you love
gone forever. And so I actually think that the two
end up being much more similar than than people let on.
But what would your take be? Well, I mean, I
think they're both horrendous and horrific, and I think that
(45:42):
I mean for me, I was living with a vice
around my heart for nine months and taking care of
my kids. But I think I relate so much to
so much you know of the things that Cheryl writes
in this book, but it is excruciating, lee painful to
see someone you love, uh, you know, waste away and
get sicker and sicker. And I know Jay said to
(46:05):
me this is no way to live. And so that
has its own form of heartbreak. I think, Uh, someone
wrote thank you for being here and for the candid conversation.
Her question is how has been vulnerable, honest and open
with friends helped in this process? What end really with everyone, Cheryl,
not just your friends? What has it changed or taught you?
(46:30):
I mean, the most important thing this has done for
me is one of the ways we have post traumatic
growth is we find meaning and doing this and forming.
We formed option be dot org. If people want to
come check it out. It's a community. There are already
lots of people in it. We launched last week um
in groups around grief and loss and hate and violence
(46:52):
and sexual solve and divorce and trying to find ways
to do good. And I'm not the only person I did.
Is you work on cancer for a reason. Right, You've
raised so much money and so much awareness. I remember
your colonoscopy on TV. No, I'm serious, thank you, but
(47:15):
that was before whelm you. But no, let's talk about that.
That was incredibly brave and what you did has got
a whole lot of people to go. You were trying
to save lives and you were hurting where you were hurt. Um.
A friend of my mom's, her son died by suicide
a few years ago, and she joined one of the
groups on option b dot org and she found herself
(47:39):
connected to a man who was thinking of committing suicide,
and she felt like she really helped him. And she said,
it's the very first time she feels like anything good
has come from her son's staff. And so I think
we try to find meaning. And these option B groups
that you're establishing really kind of like the lean in
(48:00):
community in a way. You're you're trying to connect people
to help each other. Is that the primary goal of
of what you're going to do beyond the book itself? Yeah,
The idea is if you got option be dot org,
there's resources, educational materials. Adam and a whole bunch of
experts did a great job curating stuff that might help,
(48:21):
but also helping people join groups where they can connect
connect with each other around these issues. And it is
trying to kick lots of elephants out of lots of rooms,
and we want to help bring people together to support
each other. I think the overwhelming message of this book
is we're a lot more resilient than we think we are,
(48:42):
but there are things that we can do for ourselves
and for other people who are hurting that will really
allow that resilience to bloom. Is that an accurate sort
of description of it. I wish we had written it.
You can you can steal that. I think it's a
beautiful description. And yeah, I mean I think we we
(49:03):
walked away just amazed by the capacity of the human
spirit to persevere, and you know, we wanted to try
to explain to people how that happens and how we
can help others do it well. Since earlier I asked
you about Dave. When John and I read the book,
he mentioned the conclusion to your eulogy to Dave, which
(49:24):
was just so wonderful, and I think it encapsulates all
the qualities that you really need to become whole and
healthy again. Um, and so I asked you if you
would mind reading it sort of as we close, because
I think it's nice to remember, Dave, and Um, I
think the message really reflects what you were trying to
(49:47):
say in this book. So are you okay? I'm gonna try.
Katie mentioned this right before, so I'm in it. You
got reading glasses, not yet, I will. It's close. You'll notice,
I'm not going to hold the book here here, um
(50:07):
says the end of the book. And this is uh
my eulogy. The end of my eulogy, Dave. I have
a few promises I make to you today. I promise
I will raise your children as Vikings fans, even though
I know nothing about football and I'm pretty sure that
team never wins. I promised to take them to Warriors
(50:29):
games and pay attention enough to cheer only when the
Warriors score. I promised to let our son continue to
play online poker, even though you let him start at
eight years old, and most fathers would have discussed with
the mother whether it was appropriate for such a young
child to play online poker in the first place. And
(50:49):
to our daughter, when you are eight, but not one
minute before, you can play online poker too. Dave, I
promised to raise your children so that they know who
you were, and everyone here can help me do that
by sharing your stories with us, and Dave, I will
raise your children so that they know what you wanted
(51:11):
for them, and that you love them more than anything
in the world. Dave, I promised to try to live
a life that would make you proud, A life of
doing my best, being the friends you were to our friends,
following your example, and trying to make the world a
better place, and always but always cherishing your memory and
(51:33):
loving our family. Today we will put the love of
my life to rest, but we will bury only his body.
His spirit, his soul. His amazing ability to give is
still with all of us. I feel it in the
stories people are sharing of how he touched their lives.
(51:55):
I see it in the eyes of our family and friends,
and above all, it is in the spirit and resilience
of our children. Things will never be the same, but
the world is better for the years. Dave Goldberg lift Well,
(52:21):
I was gonna say, Cheryl, I don't know how well
you're doing on the Vikings and warriors part, but I
think you're doing pretty damn well on all those other things.
Cheryl and Adam, thank you both so much for coming
to the ninety swo Straight Wine talking to Yah. We'd
(52:41):
like to say a big thank you to the ninety
two Street Why for hosting this episode's conversation. Thanks to
Gianna Palmer the lovely and talent to Gianna Palmer for
producing this show and I have to say everybody's lovely,
did Jared O'Connell, who's hot and studley for mixing and engineering,
and Nora Richie who's charming and lightsome livesome. Isn't that
(53:05):
a word for additional production assistance. Thanks also to our
social media maven Alison Bresnick, and to the Ivory soap
Girl Emily Beana for her part in producing the show.
If you all saw Emily, you would say it does
look like an Ivory girl. And Mark Phillips thank you
as always for our fantastic and addictive theme music available
(53:27):
on iTunes. No, actually it's not available on iTunes. I'd
give it a ninety five for dancing though. Katie Kurrik
and I are the executive producers of the show. And
remember you can also email us at comment at Currek
podcast dot com. Find us on social media. Katie is
at Katie Kirk on Twitter and Instagram with like a
basilion followers. I'm at Goldsmith b with like dozens of
(53:51):
very excited many relatives who enjoy reading my tweets. Katie's
also on Snapchat at Katie dot curric. I don't do
Snapchat because I'm not as young and gruby as Katie is.
Best of all, you can rate and review us on
Apple Podcasts, not iTunes anymore, but Apple Podcasts, So don't
forget to subscribe and we'll talk to you next time.
(54:12):
Lata
I used to think if someone was going through something hard,
the first time I saw them, I would say I'm sorry,
and then I would never bring it up again, because
you know, they should bring it up if they wanted
to talk. Right, you're afraid you're going to hurt them
or re traumatized. Right, I'm going to remind them. You
can't remind me Dave died. To this day, you can't
remind me if you say I'm sorry. If you're a loss,
I'm not like, oh, Dave died. Hi, Brian. That was
(00:27):
Cheryl Sandberg during a conversation at the Street Why And
to quote Bill O'Reilly, you were doing it live. I
was doing it live with Cheryl and her co author
Adam Grant, who's an organizational psychologist who teaches at the
University of Pennsylvania at the Wharton School, and together they
have written a book called Option B. And I have
(00:49):
to say it was a very personal interview in front
of a live audience at the Y. It was kind
of a meeting of the minds in some ways, in
a meeting of the hearts. Tragically, you and Cheryl have
a lot in common in that respect. You both lost
your husband's young her husband, Dave Goldberg, died a couple
of years ago due to a cardiac arrhythmia while they
(01:11):
were on vacation, and this book really came out in
the wake of that tragedy and her family trying to
pick up the pieces and figure out how to go on.
The book is a deeply personal account of what it's
like to lose someone you love at such a young
age and so suddenly. And I think what Cheryl is
trying to do with this book is to not only
(01:33):
tell her personal story, but to help people deal with
all kinds of hardships and how you can be resilient,
how you can find joy. But there are certain concrete
steps you can take that may help speed up the
healing process in a way. Well, that's something else you
have in common. You both try to take these these
horrible circumstances and turn them into something productive for other people.
(01:56):
You in terms of your your advocacy for cancer research
and and her in terms of helping others build resilience
after a tragedy. She is arguably the most well known
and successful female executive in this country, and people are
extremely interested in her. But the fact that she's opened
up and shown this vulnerability I think has made people
(02:19):
see a very different side of her, and we certainly
did when I interviewed her and Adam at the Street Wide.
Let's take a listen. Hi everyone, good evening. Nice to
see all of you here tonight. Um really looking forward
to this conversation, and I know many of you are
as well. So Cheryl, let me start with you because
(02:41):
I want to explain sort of your relationship with Adam,
and I know you and Dave got to know Adam
after Dave had read one of his books. He asked
Adam to come speak at his company, survey Monkey, and
he was incredibly supportive. Adam was, you're getting very emotional,
(03:01):
are you okay? Okay? But I think according to the book,
when you all really bonded was when you called Adam
after you received a letter that left you utterly devastated.
Tell us about that. It was a few weeks after
Dave died, and you know a lot of people Adam
(03:25):
kept saying even before that, you kept saying it gets better,
but it didn't feel like it would ever get better.
I felt like there's a void closing in on me.
My brother in law Rob described it as a boot
pushing on his chest, and you've been through it. Grief
is really overwhelming, you feel. I felt like I wasn't
going to live through a day, a minute, a week.
(03:48):
And then I got this letter from a woman who
I know. She meant well, she was older, she lost
her husband, and what she wrote was, I wish I
had something to say to you, but I don't because
it's been years and it really doesn't get much easier.
And a friend of mine lost her husband ten years ago,
and it doesn't get easier. And I was not strong
(04:09):
enough to read that letter. And actually I'm sitting on
the stage with the two people I called. I called you, Katie,
and you were a dear friend, and you told me
she was wrong particularly helpful. Either it was very helpful.
I was helpful. She wasn't it right. She was wrong
and unhelpful, but she meant well, you know, And I'm
(04:33):
still grateful that she took the time to write. She
was trying. And I learned something important after that, and
I called Adam and Adam said she was wrong. And
then the next day, when I was at my son's
football game. You know, Adam lives in Philadelphia. I live
in California, Adam walked in and I said, what are
you doing here? Like, what are you doing here? He's
on like the football field in Palo Alto, and he
(04:54):
said he needed to tell me in person that this
wasn't true and that it was isn't going to be
true for me. Adam, tell me what else you told
Cheryl when you saw her on that football field. I
remember I remember describing the person who wrote the letter,
who I don't know, using some words that I can't
stay on stage tonight. But she meant, well, I'm sure
(05:17):
she did. I thought she was evil, but uh what
I think the main thing that I said to Cheryl is,
look that that does not have to be your experience
right there. There are people who end up, you know,
just suffering for years or decades, um. But this is
something that you can you can gain control over. And
the question is really, what are you going to do
(05:39):
to build resilience, not not just for yourself but also
for your children? Um. And that started this conversation that's
now been going on for two years, which really was
the genesis for this book. I think the combination of
your Facebook post that got received incredible outpouring and then
Adams sound advice and expertise in this area. You decided
(06:00):
you wanted to to share your experiences to help other people,
but we decided to write the book away later. But
I think the genesis was the first. Adam came to
the funeral and everyone else kind of left my house,
and I asked him to stay because he was my
friend who is a psychologist, and I remember looking at
him and saying, you know, how do I get my
(06:20):
kids through this? What do I do? You know, tell
me what to do? And Adam did what was incredibly
useful for me as he started summarizing the research and
sending me here, there's been a longitudinal study of children
who lost parents and head parents who were divorced. Here's
what it says you do, and here's what psychologists teach
us about grief and resilience and building it. And I
(06:43):
mean anyone. I'm sure there's so many people in this
audience who have been through real trauma and real tragedy,
and there's a lot to it, but one of the
core things is this unbelievable feeling of loss of control.
You just have no control, You can't fix it, it
can't go away. And knowing there was something you could do,
even if it won't because it entirely but even take
one step to make it a little bit better. It
(07:03):
was something I desperately needed and couldn't find anywhere else where.
Why we wrote the book. We're going to talk about
some of those things in a moment. But I liked
what the rabbi who led Day's Day's funeral told you.
He said, lean into the suck, correct, which was a
very different kind of leaning in, right, Carol, I looked
at him in shock. I said, that wasn't what we meant.
(07:28):
What did he mean by that? Well, it was really
good advice because as much as I was trying to
gain some sense of control and take some steps, I
also had to know that I couldn't control this, and
the grief would come, and it would come for me
and it would come for my children, and I just
had to accept those feelings. And when he told me
to lean into the suck, it was saying no, the
(07:48):
grief will come, and stop fighting it. And when I
stopped fighting it, it definitely got easier. Because I think
what happens is you're grief stricken, and then you're grieving.
You're grieving, you're anxious, and then you're anxious. You're anxious,
and so the feelings pylon and pylon, and when I
just accepted, Okay, this completely sucks and I am going
to have horrible times, horrible moments to to stay accepting
(08:11):
those feelings. Lets me process them and they pass more quickly.
I know that you write grief is a demanding companion. Uh,
and Adam, you described three things in the book that
can really keep people from emerging from the abyss, and
you call them the three piece. Can you tell us
briefly what those are? Yeah, this is I think this
is the kind of friendship that we all want, right
(08:33):
when you're in severe pain and one of your friends
says to you, here, I know it will cheer you up.
Data it worked for me. Yeah, in Cheryl's case it did.
Maybe maybe the only person where that would be true.
But um, this is something that's always been resonant for me.
In Psychologist, it's Marty Seligman's work who said, look, there
(08:54):
are these three traps that we all run into when
something goes bad in our lives. The first one is
as personal as I and saying this is all my fault.
The second one is pervasiveness. This is going to ruin
every part of my life. And then the third one
is permanence. I'm going to feel this way forever. And
when you get into those traps, it's really hard to recover.
And so we started talking about, you know, how do
(09:14):
you overcome those traps and move forward. It seems to me, Cheryl,
that the personalization, the idea that oh, I should have
gotten Dave to eat a healthier diet, or I should
have been in the gym that day, or I should
have should have should have that you were able to
kind of understand that it wasn't your fault pretty quickly. Well,
I wish that were the case. I really didn't at first.
(09:36):
I mean, the initial reports told us that Dave had
died falling off an exercise machine. And my brother is
a neurosurgeon, and he kept saying to me an increasing volume,
that is not true. A man Dave's age did not
fall off an exercise machine. He would have broken an arm.
Something happened, And then we had got the autopsy back,
but that took a while, and we learned he died
(09:57):
of a cardiac arrhythmia. So then it was why didn't
I know he had coronary artery disease. Forget his doctors.
Why didn't I diagnose it diddy of chest pains. It
sounds silly, but I spent a lot of time with
doctors medical records trying to figure out how I blew
the most important thing in my life. And then once,
(10:17):
you know, my family not so gently pointed out that
I wasn't a doctor and I couldn't have done that.
Everyone else in my family is a doctor, by the way.
They You know, I blame myself for everything else. My
mother gave up her life. She's here with me tonight
to stay with me. For a month, people were covering
all my client meetings at Facebook. I had lots to
blame myself for. And then it was Adam who looked
at me and explained personalization and said, here's the thing.
(10:40):
If you don't stop blaming yourself, your kids can't recover
because if you don't recover, they can't recover it. And
he said, you gotta stop saying sorry. Oh, that's right.
In fact, you kept saying I'm sorry to everyone all
the time. Why was that because you felt like you
were a burden, You felt that you had disrupted their lives. Yeah,
a huge burden. I mean I went back to work
and I was only there the hours my kids were
(11:02):
at school, so very limited schedule. I did no travel
for six months. I did no dinners. I still do
basically no dinners because I have to be home with
my children. You know, I'm an only parent now, and
so you know, I had a lot to apologize for.
And at home, people were coming over to help me
go to sleep. I couldn't walk into my room that
I shared with Dave for a very long time by myself.
(11:24):
So my friends and sister had a schedule of coming
over so literally like go to sleep with me as
if I was a child. And I just felt terrible
all the time, and it was my fault. It was
my fault. I was such a burden on everyone. Personalization, though,
was so common. I think it's the guilt. Why could have,
would have? Should have I have that with Jay? Why
didn't I notice he was getting thin? Why didn't I
(11:44):
have him get a colonoscopy? I mean, all these things
that I think you blame yourself for. I think primarily
because guilt, anger, and all these other emotions adam are
easier to handle than profound sadness. Yeah, I think they
often are. And you know, I remember Cheryl calling and
saying things like I'm really sorry, and I'm like, who
(12:05):
is this? There's no introduction, it's it's just a policy
right after that, and it's so common, right, It is
really hard to deal with with emotions that you can
do nothing about. Right to just say, yeah, you know what,
David has gone, I can't bring him back might be
a much harder thing to accept than to say, you
know what, maybe you know there's something that I could
(12:25):
have done differently permanence though I know Cheryl from reading
the book that that was really the most challenging of
the piece for you, the idea that you would never
be happy, that the kids would never have a father,
all those things that kind of haunted you. How were
you able to escape from those feelings? And that's sort
of the chains of that particular p What was people
(12:49):
telling me it would get better? You, Katie, were a
great friend, and I know we were friendly but not
as close before, but you jumped in and called me
and said I've been through this, and you kept telling
me it got better, and you were more credible than
other people because you have been through the same thing.
Let's talk for a minute. I just want to. I
actually had this question earlier but got off track of
(13:12):
it because I want to. I want to talk that
Dave for a minute. Dave, I think was so beloved.
It was such a special person, incredibly generous. I didn't
know Dave well. My husband, actually, who's here, sat next
to him at some Bluebird event and Dave turned to
John and said, what are you doing here? And John said,
(13:32):
I'm married to Katie Curtic, and he said, what are
you doing here? She I'm married to Cheryl Samberg and
they both started laugh which was so funny. They're very
accomplished in their own right, by the way. But you know,
I don't think i've heard anybody Sheryl ever say an
unkind word about Dave. What were the qualities that made
(13:54):
him so special and so beloved by so many and
most of all you, I mean, Dave. Dave was amazing.
He was brilliant and funny. But I think the reason
he is and was so beloved is he was really generous.
At the funeral, I've never seen this done. Our friend
Zander stood up in his eulogy and looked at the
(14:15):
crowd and said, how many people here had their life
changed by Dave coltwork and like all these hands went up.
See of hands. And to this day I meet people
not every month, every week who will say not I
met your husband. He said something interesting, It was Dave
changed my life and here's how, And he really did.
He went out of his way for so many people.
(14:36):
He was so generous with his he gave such good advice.
Mark Zuckerberg said this of him. Mark said that some
people are generous and want to give a lot of advice,
and some people give really good advice. But very rarely
do those two things come together because the people who
can give the really good advice don't of the time
to give a lot of it. And he said Dave
(14:56):
was unique because Dave gave incredible advice and would put
incredible amounts of time in it. And so a lot
of people have asked me, you know, kind of why
why are you writing a book on grief and talking
about this. I know I'm doing this, and I'm doing
this because if Dave Goldberg were alive just in the
last two years, he would have helped so many people
because he did it all the time. And so if
(15:19):
option B can help anyone else, even one person face
adversity and find resilience. It extends Dave Goldberg's life because
nothing could honor his legacymore. We're going to take a
quick break now, but we'll be back with more from
(15:40):
Chryl Sandberg and Adam Grant right after this. And now
back to our interview with Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant.
What motivated you to post that incredible, doubly personal Facebook
(16:02):
post and really sharing with people in a way Cheryl
that I don't think, you know, many people would feel
comfortable sharing. Um, it was extraordinary, But tell me about
the thought process that went into that. It was approaching
the thirty day mark after the burial, which in the
Jewish tradition is shallow shame. It's the Jewish period of
morning for a spouse, So it was supposed to be over,
(16:24):
and I couldn't feel less like it was over. And
it wasn't just the grief, but it was the isolation,
you know. I used to drop my kids off at
school and everyone would say hi, and I'd walk into
work and everyone chit chat, and after Dave died, most
of that was fun because I think people were so
afraid to say the wrong thing, that they didn't say
anything at all, and you know, rooms were quiet when
I walked in, and you could see the quiet around
(16:46):
me in the school, you know, kid kid drop offline.
And so I had been journaling, and so I wrote
a post which was what I would say if I
would say something. And I went to sleep the night
before thinking there's zero chance on posting this. This is
a way too way too personal. And I woke up
the next morning and it was so bad that I
thought this can't get that worse and it might get better.
And even then I realized I work at Facebook, and
(17:07):
I realized I posted it publicly. I didn't really realize
how public it would be. I felt like, I know,
I knew I was posting it publicly. I just didn't
think so many people would pay attention. I thought the
people who would read it were the people who worked
at Facebook, the people were walking by me and not
saying hi anymore, and the people at the school. They
would read it. That's why I was posting it publicly,
not just to my friends. I didn't realize like a
(17:28):
lot of strangers and news media and stuff would write
about it. I know, we're not always that smart, but
I was speaking to the people I was going through
my life interacting with, and it really helped, despite how
broad it was, and that was uncomfortable at the time.
Um a friend of mine at work told me that
she had been driving by my house and not coming
(17:48):
in for a month, almost every day, and she started
coming in strangers. A woman posted from the Niku that
she had just lost one of two twins and she
was finding the strength inside her to give the surviving
twin of great life. And another woman said, I lost
one of two twins. Do you want to talk? And
it definitely did not take away any of the grief,
(18:11):
but it changed the isolation, and it really changed it
in very deep ways. Everyone started talking to me again.
People would say how are you today? Even strangers I
passed would say how are you today? And while I
didn't mean to do it that broadly, I'm so glad
I did because it really changed it for me. I
took away the horror of the isolation. Let's talk about that,
(18:34):
about the fact that when people are suffering or dealing
with tragedy or faith themselves are sick. Because I think
Jay had this experience, he said, being sick like this
is the loneliest experience in the world. But also if
you lose someone, people feel very uncomfortable. So, Cheryl, you
learned firsthand about the different approaches that you shouldn't do.
(18:59):
So why don't you talk about the things that people
said or did that made you feel lonely or and
more isolated? Because I think this is such an important
conversation because I think so many of us now. I
don't feel this way because I've been through it, but
a lot of people just don't feel comfortable with death
or grieving or loss and it I think it reminds
(19:19):
them of their own mortality, honestly, and they just really
want to keep it at arms length. So let's talk
about first what people did that they shouldn't do, and
then we'll talk about what people can do. Right. I
did an interview for the book that's coming out in
print in in a few days, and the first reporter
first question she asked me, she said, so everyone dies,
and everyone knows someone who dies, yet we never we
(19:42):
don't know how to talk about death. Why it's like
such a good question, I don't know. But it's not
just death. You want to silence a room, get diagnosed
with cancer, lose a job, go to prison, have your
father go to prison. Any of these things. They ussered
this you would elephant kind of walking behind us. And
(20:03):
we don't know what to say, so often we say
nothing at all. So the most important, one of the
most important things, is acknowledge the pain. And I got
this wrong before. I used to think if someone was
going through something hard, the first time I saw them,
I would say I'm sorry, and then I would never
bring it up again, because you know they should bring
it up if they wanted to talk. Right, you're afraid
you're going to hurt them or re traumatize. Right, I'm
(20:23):
going to remind them. You can't remind me Dave died
to this day, you can't remind me if you say
I'm sorry, if you're a loss, I'm not like, oh,
Dave died, I forgot. I didn't forget. I know that.
And so when people didn't acknowledge it, so much better
thing to say was I know you're hurting. You may
(20:45):
or may not want to talk, but I know you're hurting,
even the second time you see me, or the third
month or the second year. Your kids were seven and
ten when Dave died. I know you flew home from Mexico.
You write about it in the book and it's a
(21:05):
gut wrenching and heartbreaking seeing. How could it not be
when you have to tell your kids that their dad
has died. So, I mean you had to do that too. Yeah,
but Ellie was six and Carrie was too, so it's
a little different. You know, every situation is different. But
yes I did, I did have to do that. But
(21:26):
you know, there was something that they said that night
when you were tucking them in, that each of them
at separate times, I guess during the course of the
day that took your breath away and gave you incredible
hope for them. Tell us what those were. I mean,
telling your children they will not see their father again
(21:46):
is horrific. People have asked what was the worst moment
of your life? There are many contenders for that prize,
but this might be it. Um. Carol Geitner is here tonight,
and that's her job, is to counsel grieving children. So
I had the great, unbelievable fortune of knowing someone who
could help me, and she told me what to say,
and I tried to follow her advice. Um, and Thank
(22:11):
god I did, because I would just have completely not
been prepared. Um. But then my son said, thank you
for coming home to tell me yourself. And when I
was putting my daughter to bed that night, she said,
I'm not just sad for us, I'm sad for Grandma
Paula and Uncle Rob because they lost them too. I
thought to myself, I have a seven and a ten
(22:32):
year old who have just been told they will never
see their father again. So it is the worst time
of their lives, hopefully, and they can think of anyone else.
They are actually capable of thanking me or thinking of
their grandma and their uncle, and that gave me so
much hope. And in the really hard moments that followed,
and there were many, I tried to remember that, and
(22:52):
I didn't always. I can't say I did. You know.
When they would cry, I would fast forward. You know.
My son would be crying that his father wasn't going
to basketball, and I would remember he would never go
to basketball again. My daughter would cry that all the
other fathers were at soccer, and I would know he
would never be there again. But when I could coming
(23:15):
back to the fact that they could think of other
people gave me a lot of hope. We always hear
Adam that children are incredibly resilient when it comes to
loss or hardship and setbacks. So how can how were
you able to help Cheryl help her kids? And how
can we all help kids sort of exercise that resiliency
(23:36):
muscle if you will. But I don't know that it helped.
But one of the things that we we talked about
a lot is this idea of mattering that kids need
to know first and foremost is that they matter, and
mattering his three components. It's basically knowing that other people
notice you, care about you, and rely on you. And
this is something that I think we all try to
(23:58):
do with with our children as parents everyday. But it
becomes even more important in the face of tragedy and
adversity because you know, they just lost somebody who was
at the center of their world. You know, we we
talked about what can you do to make sure that
your kids still know how much you care about them,
but also that you're relying on them right that you're
gonna work through this together. And Cheryl had I thought
(24:19):
an amazing idea to create family rules to help with this. Yeah,
my kids and I following advice Carol had given me.
We meet family rules there and Marker, they still hang
up there and in all of the rules. Respecting your feelings.
It's okay to be angry, It's okay to be happy.
It's okay to be jealous of other kids who still
have fathers. Um was you can ask for help. Teaching
(24:41):
kids that they are not going through it alone, that
we are going through it together is so important. And
it's not just important in trauma. This is important every
single day as we teach our kids to try to
grow up and face whatever adversity they will face. You
talk about post traumatic growth, which is an expression I've
never heard, which I really love. And how are they
(25:02):
doing now? And are the sad moments a lot more
and frequent than they were? I've definitely compared to the
beginning crying and the screaming. I mean, we couldn't get
through an hour. Um. Post traumatic growth is how we
go through trauma and we grow. There are ways in
which we grow, and one of them is that we
(25:23):
gain perspective. The other day, a few weeks ago, my
son's basketball team lost the playoffs, and you know, a
lot of the little boys were upset. A couple were
crying and I looked at my son, I said, are
you okay? And he goes a mom, this is sixth
grade basketball. I'm fine. They don't know now. Do I
(25:49):
want him to have that perspective? Noe? But is it perspective? Yes?
And being able to celebrate the good and keep the
bad in perspective is a very, very valuable lesson. And
we've talked a lot, not just about post traumatic growth,
but about pre traumatic growth. And this is why we
wrote this book so it can we take the lessons
that people do learn in trauma and give them to
(26:11):
people who don't face the trauma. So gratitude. So it
is the most counterintuitive thing in the world to lose
your husband and feel more grateful. I thought I should
look for positive thoughts, and one day Adam looked at
me and said, you should think about how things could
be worse. Now. Adam is literally one of the most
brilliant people I've ever met, but I looked at him like,
you are a total idiot. My husband just died and
(26:33):
nothing could be worse. And he said, well, Dave could
have had that cardiac arrhythmia driving your children and in
that moment, I said up, I'm like, I'm good, kids
are alive, I'm fine. Like I literally was like, I'm okay.
And the question is can we appreciate life? What would
I do to give one day and go back and
(26:56):
live it with Dave. How would I appreciate that day?
I can't have that, but I can appreciate this day.
I can appreciate your friendship and Adam's friendship and that
we're all here talking about this. My cousin, Laura, lives
in New York and she turned fifty on Valentine's Day
and I called her and I said, Laura, I'm calling
to say happy birthday, but I'm also calling to say
in case you woke up with that, Oh my god,
(27:17):
I'm fifty thing right? How many people have done that
in your life? Oh my god, I'm turning older? I
said to her and said, this is the year day
of Goldberg won't turn fifty. Turns out there's two choices,
two options. We grow older or we don't. I will
never make another joke about growing old again. And if
anyone makes it in my presence, even if I don't
know them, I kind of turned around, like, don't say that,
(27:41):
because it is a gift, and I appreciate life in
a way I never did before this happened. And the
question is can people do that who haven't experienced the trauma,
and we believe they can. Let's talk about confidence, because
I know, you know, I think probably you're one of
the most confident people I know, but you're offidence was
shaken after J after Jay, after Dave died. Um. Why
(28:06):
why do you think that was the case? Is that
sort of because you're a classic overachiever and you didn't
feel like you were doing grief? Well? No, I mean
it was actually one of the more surprising things that
happened is that, you know, I had not experienced grief,
but I had read about it, So when the anger came,
I wasn't shocked, even though more of it came than
I would have expected. When the sadness came, at least
(28:27):
I had heard of that. But what totally surprised me
is it completely destroyed my confidence in every other aspect.
And I wrote lean in. I had like studied confidence
at work. I was supposed to understand it, but you know,
I went back to work and I could barely get
through a meeting without crying. So how could I do
my job? And I had two children parenting as hard
before this when I had a great supportive partner, and
(28:49):
I don't have the financial challenges so many single moms have.
But being a single mother of two grieving children, I
had no experience with this was was hard. And what
I really is is that you know, Mark Zuckerberg did this.
What I needed to build up my confidence wasn't just
permission to be a mess, but also reassurance that sometimes
I wasn't. So when someone at worked before was going
(29:10):
through something hard, what I would say to them is,
just take the pressure off. You need time off. Can
we take that project off you? Oh? Of course, you
can't think straight with everything you're going through. I did
that all with good intentions, but on the other side,
when people said that to me, it was proof that
I absolutely couldn't do my job. Mark did you don't
have to come in if you don't want to take
(29:31):
the time you want. But I think you made a
good point in that meeting. There's no way I made
a good point in that meeting. Trust me that it
was the kindest thing, and you did it over and over.
In other words, you're needed here and that made you
feel so much better. So now when people are going
through things that are hard, and when you look, it's everywhere,
(29:51):
I both give them time off, but if they're there,
I go out of my way. If they do anything
that I can praise, I praise it. You also are
serious journal or or you're do journaling. I've never done journaling.
I don't even like that word actually, but but but
it is talented. It was incredibly helpful to you through
this this horrible time. But right, I mean it was
(30:14):
a gift. Tell me why it was so important, Adam,
and why you recommend what I never do. Well, Look,
when when most of us sit down to journal, we
you know, we do it for a few minutes and
then we kind of get bored and we move on.
When Show Sandberg sits down to write a journal, it's
a hundred thousand words. But I think that you know,
the the impulse to journal, which which a lot of
(30:35):
people have during intense experiences, turns out to be a
really healthy one. Um. There are hundreds of experiments showing
that if you even just write a few times for
fifteen minutes each about a traumatic experience, that in the
short run, in the next few days, you will feel
worse because it is not fun to relive tragedy. But
in the weeks and months that follow, not only does
your happiness improve, but also your physical health tends to increase.
(30:59):
It also can help with with forming a story right,
finding some coherence, and saying, look, i may never feel
this happen for a reason, but I'm going to use
this experience to find a reason to keep living and
to find a deeper sense of purpose. And charl I
thought that was a theme that came through. And a
lot of your journal interests tell us about writing in
that journal because I know it. First cheryld you said
(31:19):
all you did was work, take care of the kids,
and write journal. Yeah. I always wanted to keep a journal.
I have boxes of them. I would do five days
after New Year's and that's it. But after Dave died,
I I really I wrote, and I needed to write,
and if I did not write for just a couple
of days, I felt like I was gonna burst. And
it was later when Adam and I started doing the
research for the book that I saw the research that
(31:40):
said how helpful that can be in processing emotions. And
then people have asked if the book was hard to write.
The personal parts of the book were mostly written for
my journal, so I didn't have to write them for
the book. So writing the book itself was writing the
stories of amazing people who have gone through other forms
of hardship learning the research, and that part was really cathartic.
(32:04):
You also have a chapter called uh I think it's
taking that joy? Is that the name of the chapter?
And and Cheryl, you tell a very poignant story. I
think we can all kind of put ourselves in your
shoes in some ways. Where you were at at a
botto mitzvah, a childhood the daughter of a childhood friend,
and a certain song came on and there was a
(32:24):
certain high school crush there and tell us what happened next.
So it's that four months after Dave died and a
friend and I went on to the dance floor and
I danced and like a minute later I just burst
into tears. You have to say what song it was?
It was September by Earphone and fire, which I know
makes me a little I think it creates them, creates them. Yeah,
(32:45):
but I literally kind of collapsed and he had to
kind of take me outside, and I couldn't figure out
what was wrong. And what I realized was, oh my god,
I was happy for one minute, and then I just
felt so guilty. How can I be happy? Even those
four months later when Dave was on And what I
realized was that I needed permission. My brother in law
(33:07):
called me right around then with tears in his voice.
He was crying on the phone, and he said, all
Day've ever wanted was for you and your children to
be happy. Don't take that away from him and death.
And I think that when we think about being there
for people, and a lot of this book is about
what we do for other people who are going through adversity,
(33:27):
we think about holding them while they cry, bringing dinner
to the hospital, but we forget the other side, helping
them come back to work and build up their confidence,
giving them permission and experiences that are joyful because we
all deserve those, and we are hoping that option be
gives people permission to feel joy, no matter what's happened
(33:50):
to them, no matter what mistakes they've made, no matter
what life has handed them. That on the other side,
there's laughter, there's friendship. There are moments when we can
feel joy and we can notice those and live those
and I think, you know, some of finding joy again
was actually taking back things that were joyful before um
And actually, Charlott, I learned so much from this the
(34:11):
way that you said, look, here are the things that
you know that that we used to do with Dave
that made us happy, and we're not going to lose those. Yeah,
we decided after I realized, you know, I think when
we think about happiness, we think about the big stuff.
We're gonna get a promotion, have a baby, take a
big trip. Happiness. Adam taught me this. It's the little
things every day and noticing them. And so after this
(34:34):
experience where I realized this, I started taking things back.
We started cheering for the Warriors again. Dave and I
and our family we played Settlers of Katan a lot.
Everyone in Silicon Valley does. People out here may not,
but if you don't, you should. But Dave and I
had been playing the last time I saw him, and
so that was put away, and I took the board
(34:54):
out without saying that my kids and said who wants
to play? And they all said they did, and then
U we took out the pieces and Dave was always
gray and my daughter took gray, and my son said,
you can't be gray. Daddy was great, and I said,
yes we can. She wants to be gray. We do
that in Dave's honor, and I realized watching TV playing scrabble,
(35:15):
these were the things I did with Dave that brought
me joy. And I wasn't doing any of them because
they were going to remind me of David. So I
took them back one by one. You also write, Cheryld
that that humor is the third rail of grief, and
that again you've fell a little guilty, but that at times,
even early on, humor was so helpful to you, even
(35:37):
the day of Jay's God I cot Dave's funeral. Sorry,
it's okay, Sorry, there's actually something. There's a sort of weird,
isn't it that I actually think it's meaningful that you're
saying that, because I think we all live these experiences
over I find it very touching. Okay, thank you, UM
that the day of Dave support a good well you are, UM.
(35:59):
And also he told told a funny story about when UM,
I think your sister in law, you all were upstairs
in your room crying, and then you made a joke.
You guys had very different tastes in movies and television.
I thank you and Dave, So what did you say
to your sister? I said, well, at least I don't
have to watch Dave's bad TV anymore. And then I gasped.
(36:22):
And actually the first joke I made, Adam reminded me
I made it because I guess he heard you made it.
A friend of mine walked in. He was an ex
boyfriend who now dates men, married a man, and he
walked in and I said, well, this is your fault.
You were supposed to be straight, we were supposed to
get married and none of this would have happened. And
gasped both of us. It is a really good joke, right,
(36:45):
But I gasped because joking. But you know what, There's
a reason people tell jokes at funerals, and now I
know what it is, which is that that joke gives
us that one minute of release. And again, we want
Option B to give people not just permission to grief
and support in grieving, but permission to laugh. Let's talk
(37:07):
about let me take some of the questions, because I
think some of the questions I had are being asked
by people in the audience. Um, you talk a lot
about the need for quality partnership as a career woman
and mom and lean in. How is your thinking and
reality changed on this since Dave passed, especially as it
relates to your working life. Yeah, I really did think
(37:31):
about this. I wrote about different forms of family and
lean in, but I also wrote a whole chapter called
make your Partner a Real partner. And once I lost Dave,
I thought about how that must have been super hard
to read if you didn't have a partner. In fact,
you write in the book, I just didn't get it.
I didn't get it, and I did a post on
this and that one I knew I was doing publicly,
(37:51):
and I wanted to do very publicly for Mother's Day
where I said I didn't get this and we need
to do better for single mothers, single mothers in this
country living poverty, if you're Black or Latina, people do
not get the support they need. And understanding that Father's
Day is hard for people around you, Understanding that someone
doesn't have someone to go to the father daughter dances
(38:12):
with from the very basics of the education and the
healthcare and the food. Huge numbers of people. You've worked
on this, and I've worked on this have food and
security in this in this country, the basics to the
kind of emotional support. I don't think I understood this
fully and I wanted to publicly apologize. Um, you mentioned
(38:32):
a single mother, and you know you are a single mother,
and obviously a lot of your your focus has been
on being a good mother. But also I think you're
very much like I am, Cheryl. You your parents are lovely,
they're here tonight, happily married, had been married a long time,
and you're you're what we call the marrying kind, just
(38:54):
like me. And uh, well, I mean I wanted to
be Mary. It took me a long time. But this
is not about me. So but tell me about how
you That is very tricky. And I think whether you're
divorced or uh you're a widow or even a widower,
and you have children, young children, that is very tough
(39:16):
to navigate. So and you you write about how women
are often judged a lot more harshly than men when
they start to kind of go there. Tell us about
how you made these decisions and how you were able
to help your kids kind of deal with that, because
that's another adjustment that's really tough. Yeah, you know, when
(39:37):
people date after losing a spouse, it's worth remembering it's
not a choice they made. I know who I wanted
to spend my life with, and I don't have that choice.
I was lucky. The people that talk to me about
it were actually my mother in law brother in law,
both of whom said, we want this for you, but
can you dis er Jeck cheryld this the passage about
(39:59):
your mother in law, Paula, when you finally have the
courage to go through Dave's closet and you found a
particularly kind of ratty sweater that he used to wear
a lot, a gray sweater, And I thought this exchange
was so I just I don't know your mother in law,
but I love her anyway, tell us about the conversations. Incredible.
(40:21):
So my mother in law, Paula had lost her husband
sixteen years before, she lost one of her two sons.
And if anyone who's ever been through this, and we've
talked about this, the cleaning out of the closet is
just one of those things we dread it, we put
it off. Some of us do it sooner, some of
us do it later. I did it a couple of
months in where I just could not walk by that
stuff anymore. Um, I did it with my mother in
(40:43):
law and brother in law and I broke down in
that closet and I looked at her and I said,
how are you okay? How are you okay? This is
your second closet And she said, I am and I'm
I did not die, she said, melded and Dave did.
But I am alive and I will live. And she
(41:04):
lives a very full life. She runs a nonprofit, She
has friends, she travels. She's with my kids this week
and they love being with her. And that is the lesson,
the lesson of she knows that she didn't die. She
didn't just say though. She said, I'm alive, and you're alive,
(41:25):
and you will remarry. She said that, She said one
day you'll remarry, and I will be there. And it
was permission to date. And I didn't do it for
months and months and months. I mean it was a
way early, but the fact that it came from her,
but she lost someone. And I think again, as we
think about supporting people, we dry their tears, we help
(41:48):
them get through the hard stuff, but give them permission
and support to date, particularly if they're a woman and
they want to help them find laughter, even if it's
about death. These are the things that make us human.
These are the moments where we find our humanity and
we find the joy. I knew early on. People told
(42:09):
me that, and you told me this, that children feel guilty.
Children feel guilty was one of the things Carol Geitner
said when they've lost a parent, they feel guilty being happy.
So I told my kids right away it was in
our family rules. Daddy would want you to be happy,
but it's hard to give that permission to yourself. On
what would have been Dave's birthday, after he died, I
(42:30):
went to his grave with um, my siblings and my
parents and Paula and I just looked at the grave
and it was such the most obvious, basic lesson. But
we are all headed there. Absolutely, we all die. And
as I looked at all the tombstones, Jewish graves tend
(42:50):
to be pretty crowded, so you can see the dates
all there. Um, you know, some were young, some of
the some were older, and those different has almost seemed
not as significant, But you have that feeling of I
only have so many days left, and I hope everyone
here walks out of here and just lives a little
(43:11):
bit more. I always say everyone's terminal and a lovely
positive thought. Um, I'm just looking through some other audience questions. Um, oh,
do you think women are judged more harshly when they
(43:32):
move on after a loss? I know that online they
had some few choice words for you when word got
out that you were seeing someone. And I know that
you brought a date to a family wedding and somebody
at the wedding said, I'm so glad you're finally over
Dave's death. Yeah. I think one of the biggest lessons
(43:52):
for me is that all of these things exists together.
You can love someone after they you still love Jay,
I still love Dave, I always will. You can have
children who play one minute and cry and next that
because of the joy, we have the sadness. Because of
the sadness, we have the joy, and we actually wouldn't
(44:14):
have one without the other. So, yes, we are all terminal,
and in knowing that our lives are limited is where
we can try to live each day to its fullest.
How does this was a question I actually asked you
both on the phone, and someone healthily from the audience
asked it, Um, how does the shocking death like Dave's,
(44:36):
differ from a loss that's anticipated anticipated due to illness.
For example, Well, we have two living examples of those situations.
My husband was diagnosed with cancer and died nine months later,
and you can imagine how excruciating that was, but not shocking.
Yours was shocking and excruciating. Um. But but how do
(44:58):
people manage these different situa rations and how how are
they different? Kitty, I I'd like to hear you come
in a little bit more on what your experience was
like I will say, you know, people assume that it's
going to be easier when you have time to say goodbye,
and it's very often not the case. You never really
want to say goodbye to someone you love. And yes,
(45:20):
it's true that the shock and the immediate despair might
be less when you had a chance to prepare for it,
but more often than not, nothing can you really prepare
you for what it's like to have someone you love
gone forever. And so I actually think that the two
end up being much more similar than than people let on.
But what would your take be? Well, I mean, I
think they're both horrendous and horrific, and I think that
(45:42):
I mean for me, I was living with a vice
around my heart for nine months and taking care of
my kids. But I think I relate so much to
so much you know of the things that Cheryl writes
in this book, but it is excruciating, lee painful to
see someone you love, uh, you know, waste away and
get sicker and sicker. And I know Jay said to
(46:05):
me this is no way to live. And so that
has its own form of heartbreak. I think, Uh, someone
wrote thank you for being here and for the candid conversation.
Her question is how has been vulnerable, honest and open
with friends helped in this process? What end really with everyone, Cheryl,
not just your friends? What has it changed or taught you?
(46:30):
I mean, the most important thing this has done for
me is one of the ways we have post traumatic
growth is we find meaning and doing this and forming.
We formed option be dot org. If people want to
come check it out. It's a community. There are already
lots of people in it. We launched last week um
in groups around grief and loss and hate and violence
(46:52):
and sexual solve and divorce and trying to find ways
to do good. And I'm not the only person I did.
Is you work on cancer for a reason. Right, You've
raised so much money and so much awareness. I remember
your colonoscopy on TV. No, I'm serious, thank you, but
(47:15):
that was before whelm you. But no, let's talk about that.
That was incredibly brave and what you did has got
a whole lot of people to go. You were trying
to save lives and you were hurting where you were hurt. Um.
A friend of my mom's, her son died by suicide
a few years ago, and she joined one of the
groups on option b dot org and she found herself
(47:39):
connected to a man who was thinking of committing suicide,
and she felt like she really helped him. And she said,
it's the very first time she feels like anything good
has come from her son's staff. And so I think
we try to find meaning. And these option B groups
that you're establishing really kind of like the lean in
(48:00):
community in a way. You're you're trying to connect people
to help each other. Is that the primary goal of
of what you're going to do beyond the book itself? Yeah,
The idea is if you got option be dot org,
there's resources, educational materials. Adam and a whole bunch of
experts did a great job curating stuff that might help,
(48:21):
but also helping people join groups where they can connect
connect with each other around these issues. And it is
trying to kick lots of elephants out of lots of rooms,
and we want to help bring people together to support
each other. I think the overwhelming message of this book
is we're a lot more resilient than we think we are,
(48:42):
but there are things that we can do for ourselves
and for other people who are hurting that will really
allow that resilience to bloom. Is that an accurate sort
of description of it. I wish we had written it.
You can you can steal that. I think it's a
beautiful description. And yeah, I mean I think we we
(49:03):
walked away just amazed by the capacity of the human
spirit to persevere, and you know, we wanted to try
to explain to people how that happens and how we
can help others do it well. Since earlier I asked
you about Dave. When John and I read the book,
he mentioned the conclusion to your eulogy to Dave, which
(49:24):
was just so wonderful, and I think it encapsulates all
the qualities that you really need to become whole and
healthy again. Um, and so I asked you if you
would mind reading it sort of as we close, because
I think it's nice to remember, Dave, and Um, I
think the message really reflects what you were trying to
(49:47):
say in this book. So are you okay? I'm gonna try.
Katie mentioned this right before, so I'm in it. You
got reading glasses, not yet, I will. It's close. You'll notice,
I'm not going to hold the book here here, um
(50:07):
says the end of the book. And this is uh
my eulogy. The end of my eulogy, Dave. I have
a few promises I make to you today. I promise
I will raise your children as Vikings fans, even though
I know nothing about football and I'm pretty sure that
team never wins. I promised to take them to Warriors
(50:29):
games and pay attention enough to cheer only when the
Warriors score. I promised to let our son continue to
play online poker, even though you let him start at
eight years old, and most fathers would have discussed with
the mother whether it was appropriate for such a young
child to play online poker in the first place. And
(50:49):
to our daughter, when you are eight, but not one
minute before, you can play online poker too. Dave, I
promised to raise your children so that they know who
you were, and everyone here can help me do that
by sharing your stories with us, and Dave, I will
raise your children so that they know what you wanted
(51:11):
for them, and that you love them more than anything
in the world. Dave, I promised to try to live
a life that would make you proud, A life of
doing my best, being the friends you were to our friends,
following your example, and trying to make the world a
better place, and always but always cherishing your memory and
(51:33):
loving our family. Today we will put the love of
my life to rest, but we will bury only his body.
His spirit, his soul. His amazing ability to give is
still with all of us. I feel it in the
stories people are sharing of how he touched their lives.
(51:55):
I see it in the eyes of our family and friends,
and above all, it is in the spirit and resilience
of our children. Things will never be the same, but
the world is better for the years. Dave Goldberg lift Well,
(52:21):
I was gonna say, Cheryl, I don't know how well
you're doing on the Vikings and warriors part, but I
think you're doing pretty damn well on all those other things.
Cheryl and Adam, thank you both so much for coming
to the ninety swo Straight Wine talking to Yah. We'd
(52:41):
like to say a big thank you to the ninety
two Street Why for hosting this episode's conversation. Thanks to
Gianna Palmer the lovely and talent to Gianna Palmer for
producing this show and I have to say everybody's lovely,
did Jared O'Connell, who's hot and studley for mixing and engineering,
and Nora Richie who's charming and lightsome livesome. Isn't that
(53:05):
a word for additional production assistance. Thanks also to our
social media maven Alison Bresnick, and to the Ivory soap
Girl Emily Beana for her part in producing the show.
If you all saw Emily, you would say it does
look like an Ivory girl. And Mark Phillips thank you
as always for our fantastic and addictive theme music available
(53:27):
on iTunes. No, actually it's not available on iTunes. I'd
give it a ninety five for dancing though. Katie Kurrik
and I are the executive producers of the show. And
remember you can also email us at comment at Currek
podcast dot com. Find us on social media. Katie is
at Katie Kirk on Twitter and Instagram with like a
basilion followers. I'm at Goldsmith b with like dozens of
(53:51):
very excited many relatives who enjoy reading my tweets. Katie's
also on Snapchat at Katie dot curric. I don't do
Snapchat because I'm not as young and gruby as Katie is.
Best of all, you can rate and review us on
Apple Podcasts, not iTunes anymore, but Apple Podcasts, So don't
forget to subscribe and we'll talk to you next time.
(54:12):
Lata
Host
Katie Couric
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