Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy Hardcover – Illustrated, April 24, 2017

Option B is one of THE most absorbing books I’ve ever read.1. Option B is so well written, absorbing and warm, it could make anyone grieving feel less lonely – I know it did me. I have one child who has very significant special needs, and both my parents died expectantly many years ago. I miss them every single day. I’ve never read anything like Option B that has helped me acknowledge these challenges. I’m amazed by how a book could validate my feelings of loss – for what might have been – while also encouraging me to consider what is possible.Option B is a beautiful, persuasive call to action, honoring our sadness without allowing those feelings to overwhelm us. In the immediate hours after finishing Option B, I began to think it was possible not just to resist feelings of despair but how to become stronger.You can’t manufacture hope. You can’t dictate emotion. You just have to feel it, and I urge anyone who is staggered by grieving to read Option B as soon as you can.2. Option B teaches us about resilience. I thought I understood resilience, but I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought. Perseverance, I learned, is not simply a random trait, but it can be discovered and nurtured. That’s a powerful thought, and a reminder that this book has so much density of goodness.3. The theory of Option B is fascinating – as I understand it, that is Grant’s domain, the research.In addition to teaching us about what resilience really is, Option B contends that everyone actually can become more resilient. Looking through all the endnotes (175 of them), I am grateful that Grant sorted through this research (much of it is his or his colleagues) and that he and Sandberg wove it into the narrative. I want to read many of the sources in the endnotes, learn more, and continue on this journey. Oh my God – who can make readers want to read endnotes! These brilliant thinkers and doers can.4. Option B is also a stunning parenting book and a wonderful way to look in the mirror. While I thought this was going to be a book about grief, it was far more. I felt so much relief reading such practical advice about children and grief and children and loss and children and doing what will help children grow rather than just what will make me feel better as a parent.5. Option B really teaches SO much important stuff in such a kind way. For example, I’m one of those many parents who thought they understood Carol Dweck’s “mindset” work. I now get that I’m just at the start of this. And Sandberg and Grant help us without making us feel stupid or inadequate as some other parenting books do (though not by design of course).So many people like me will be able to become better parents and workers and friends from Option B. It’s like the authors both have modeled all this amazing stuff for the world through this remarkable page-turner – by telling us Sheryl’s story. How incredible the degree to which Option B just helped me identify changeable stuff in the last two hours. I’m hopeful about changing my behavior now that I see what can come of it, especially for my children, and the rest of my family.Thank you to the authors for opening this remarkable window into resilience and for providing so much research about it. I was so moved that Sandberg could be so brave and share so much about her husband Dave’s death in the name of teaching others.Reading Option B (and I’ve been reading it nonstop since I got it) makes me understand how I can be a better person. Thank you to the authors for making this possible and for writing this absolutely arresting book. It's a tour de force - get it as soon as you can! And get it for someone who you think is grieving, either in the traditional sense, or maybe very non-traditional sense.

Appreciated the vulnerability and perspective of the stories shared. As someone who hasn’t suffered tragic loss, it was extremely helpful to understand how to show up better for those who have. Also liked the self compassion and resilience lessons in the book. Overall great book.

Given that I highlighted a passage in almost every other chapter in Sheryl Sandberg’s OPTION B: FACING ADVERSITY, BUILDING RESILIENCE, AND FINDING JOY, you could say that I felt connected to her and pretty much everything that she had to say. While I haven’t lost a spouse and certainly my life was not upended like hers was, I unfortunately know grief, and it has impacted me in ways that I didn’t see coming and had a hard time coping with it. There are two major points in the book that Sandberg addressed that I felt especially comforted by. By comfort, I mean validated. But first, I want to say to those who might think that you have to be suffering from the grief of losing a spouse to want to read this book or to gain any insight from it, it’s not the case. Not only is this book not exclusive to this particular group or to those grieving or those having grieved in the past for anyone, whether a parent, sibling, or close friend, it is for anyone who has suffered a tragedy such as a trauma, disease, divorce, or other life change that has altered their existence. Together with a friend, who is a psychologist, Adam Grant, who helped Sandberg after her husband died, they co-wrote about feelings that you experience, how to ask for what you need from family and friends, how to resume life as you know it in a new world as life as it is now, along with sharing numerous cases of those who have suffered the loss of a loved one, as well as those who have endured terrible tragedies of other kinds.Sandberg, naturally writes about how challenging it was just to come to terms with the sudden loss of her husband and how she was going to explain the news to her young children. How they were going to get through the funeral, how would she, this strong woman who wrote about co-parenting and working in this modern world, do the same as a single parent, how she would face her colleagues at work, when was the right time to go back to work. So many unknowns. Her new world was so unfamiliar. The things that struck me were her feelings about how isolated she felt. She has a big extended family, including her husband’s. Many friends. Many work friends. Yet, she felt alone. People were scared to talk to her. Or if they asked how she was doing, they didn’t want to hear that she was not ok. It was ‘depressing.’ Asking how are you doing, is not really inquiring about the person on a personal level. You know they are not ok. Try to phrase it to the here and now. How did you get through today? Many people offer to do something but not many just do it. When you lose a loved one, she writes, and this is so true, don’t say “What can I do for you?” Just do something. Leave food for the person’s family so they don’t have to think about cooking, send some beautiful flowers, bring an uplifting book, take their kids out if they are up for it, so that your friend can rest, anything even taking on the most mundane task, just something that shows you care, that they didn’t have to ask for. Sandberg talks about a friend of a friend who lost a loved one and a friend showed up every day in the lobby of his building and asked what he didn’t want on his burger. He wasn’t imposing, wasn’t asking to see his friend, just let him know that he was bringing him lunch.In the past, before I experienced grief first-hand, I am sure that I was guilty of asking the too general “how are you?” and “what can I do for you?” without ill intentions, but because I didn’t know what to do. Sandberg is well aware that most people do not act to hurt you. As she says, “they’re not piling it on,” but that is how it feels. I do know that when I did offer simple acts of kindness, it went a long way, and vice versa. I can remember a time when a dear friend’s father passed away and friends and family gathered at their house. I asked what her father’s favorite dessert was. Blueberry pie. I promptly baked one and brought it over. Her mother told me numerous times over the years how comforting that was to her. The same has been done for me after losing my mother. A friend knew that there was a cookie recipe in my mom’s cookbook that was a cookie ‘made with love’ and she sent home a batch in my son’s backpack the week after her funeral. I was so touched and comforted at the same time. I will never forget that gesture of kindness. Another friend, would send me a note every week, just to tell me that she was thinking of me. Having endured much heartache, herself, she knew that once the period of Shiva is over, people don’t often check on you. She continued to check on me and this made me feel not only loved but as if she were hugging me. The day after my father died, I received a text from a good friend, who lives in the city where I do, and offered to come to Chicago, where my father lived. I will never forget how deeply this touched me. To know that a friend would do this for me, without my asking. Just as two of my closest, oldest friends did exactly that, flew across the country to be by my side when my mother passed away, will forever be fixed in my memory and in how I managed the initial shock. This is one way in which we are able to ‘build resilience’.Sandberg shares many of her own stories about how she ‘faced adversity,’ what people have done for her, such as her mother staying at her house for a month, and when she couldn’t be there, her sister-in-law took over. How her boss, yes, Jeff Zuckerberg, and his wife, invited her family to spend time with them on vacation so that they could just get away. When it was time to clean out her husband Dave’s closet, his own mother came to help her.If you or a friend is in need of a relatable book that can show you that you are not alone, that does not tell you what to do but shows you what others have experienced, and that while some pain never goes away, healing can come.

Thank you for your amazing openness and honesty in sharing this great loss with us Cheryl! I just lost my beloved best friend, partner and husband a year and a half ago. I related to every words you wrote and every feeling you felt. Having the support of loved ones is invaluable.I believe this book is for everyone because it give tremendous insight in to how to be with people who are grieving since everyone is different and needs and wants different things. One of the insights was rather than asking people what they need, which puts the burden on them to come up with something, make suggestions like, "should I pick up your dog and take him for a walk or would you like to join me and do it together?" or "I"m at the grocery can I drop off some food?" "Can I pick up the kids and give you some time or would you like some company, I'm in the neighborhood.?"I so appreciated your openness about regrets like "I should have been with him on that last hike in Mexico rather than walking with my girlfriend." I breathed a sigh and new that everyone had those same kind of regrets that I had when my husband died and that there is no such thing as the perfect wife.I appreciate your saying that because you find someone else does not in any way minimize what you had or negate the pain of the loss. I know that both Dave and Morty (my husband) would want us to be happy.