How to live with loss: Learning from Sheryl Sandberg
At first sight you think oh no, Nora Ephron's dictum about everything is copy should not be followed by everyone. It may sound heartless but do we really need another lesson from Sheryl Sandberg on how to live our lives when we have all tried and mostly failed at leaning in? And gone back to finding our own paths and stumbling along?
But then that would be doing an injustice to both Sandberg's enormous personal loss and her significant work in making her grief public so we can all learn how to deal with loss. Not only the loss of death, though that is terrible, but also the loss of a dream, an idea, a childhood.
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, And Finding Joy is not just a memoir of grief, of which perhaps Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking is still possibly the best. It is a manifesto to finding how to live again, learning to continue the struggle of Sisyphus, no matter how many times the rock rolls down, or even falls on us and threatens to crush our limbs.
Written with Adam Grant, the book offers a guide to living, because "life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B, This book is to help us kick the shit out of it". Sandberg as most of the world knows already is the COO of Facebook and the book begins when her husband Dave is found dead on the floor of a gym of their holiday resort.
Then begins Sandberg's trauma, breaking it to her two young children, getting back to work, bringing herself and her young family back to breathing again. She lists the three problems which stunt recovery: personalisation (it's all our fault); pervasiveness (the grief will overcome every aspect of our life and make normal life impossible) and permanence (the shock will last forever and the fog of grief will never lift).
Everyone will find their own steps to recovery in the book. Here I list my own, in no particular order:
#1. Learn to breathe again: When you want to break through the waves of anxiety, breathe in for a count of six, hold your breath for a count of six, and then exhale for a count of six. This will help in losing misery's shadow. I have to say it works.
#2. Know that suffering is inevitable. Learn to love your demons, even make friends with them.
#3. Be grateful, not just for what you receive but for what you can contribute to life.
#4. Share your grief. Talk about it to family, friends, co workers. It lessens the pain. It does, believe me. Misery loves company but ensure share your small joys as well.
#5. Help others when they're similarly stricken. Acknowledge their pain. Be there for them.
#6. Form concentric circles of support around you. Psychologist Susan Silk calls it the ring theory. Write down the names of people in the centre of the tragedy and draw a circle around them.Keep adding.
#7. Have compassion for yourself. Realise that you are imperfect and that it is part of being human. If you cry uncontrollably at work or fall asleep during meetings or scream at friends, it happens. Get over it.
#8. Write letters to yourself.
#9. Take one turn at a time on the road to recovery. It will not be instant. Celebrate the small victories.
#10. Don't give up the things you used to enjoy. Take them back. Joy is the ultimate act of defiance, to quote Bono.
#11. Laugh together. Humour is a great way of levelling your pain.
And don't feel guilty — and remember survivor guilt can happen even if there is no death. Sometimes it's the guilt of not doing enough for someone else. But that was Option A. Now that you don't have, you know what to do with Option B.