Sheryl Sandberg On Finding Love And A Deeper Joy, After Loss

Sheryl Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly in 2015 from a cardiac arrhythmia while the family was on vacation in Mexico. He was 47. Their children were seven and ten. Thirty days later, Sandberg wrote a Facebook post declaring she would “never feel pure joy again.” But that turned out to be wrong. In this conversation with Anderson Cooper, she explains how grief reshaped her capacity for joy, why she believes adult children should give their surviving parents permission to find love again, and what she learned about resilience from psychologist Adam Grant.

Resilience is a muscle, not a fixed trait

In the early weeks after Dave’s death, Sandberg asked her friend Adam Grant how she could know whether she had enough resilience to survive the loss. Grant told her she was asking the wrong question. “Resilience is not something you have,” he said. “It is a muscle. You build it. The question is not how much resilience you have, the question is how much resilience you’re gonna build.”

This reframing became the foundation of her recovery. When a stranger told Sandberg, “I wish I could tell you it’s gonna get better. It never does,” she called Grant in a panic. He flew across the country without telling her and showed up at her kids’ soccer field. “I’m here to tell you not only is this going to get better,” he said, “but we are gonna make it better.”