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The Light in Sheryl Sandberg’s Post on Grief


<strong>Spotlight on Grief<strong>

By now, you may have read Sheryl Sandberg’s Facebook post from June 3rd that she wrote to mark the end of sheloshim – a period of religious mourning – for her late husband, Dave Goldberg. (See Sheryl’s original Facebook Post.)

On May 1st, Dave died in a gym accident while on vacation with his family. He was 47. Sheryl’s profoundly personal, deeply touching post is all the more poignant when you consider that she wrote it so shortly after losing her husband. And I can only imagine that many of the thoughts, emotions, and revelations that she shared will continue to inform each and every day, in some way or another, for the rest of her life.

While Sheryl’s post has been widely credited with starting a public conversation about grief – and indeed made an extra splash given Sheryl’s prominent role in social media – the conversation is a familiar one to those who have already experienced an overwhelming loss. Over the last few years, I have talked with many people stricken by grief and have found that, for as personal a journey as it is, much of the experience that emerges from grief is common to all of us. In exposing her grief to the light of public discussion, Sheryl does a phenomenal job of putting into words what many of us have felt.

Devastation of Loss

For many, the earliest phases of grief are marked by sheer devastation. Sheryl writes about consciously choosing life and meaning over “the void” or “the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe.” In my case, I would not have believed that I could ever survive the death of one of my children. Then my 19-year-old daughter, Emma, died suddenly in 2011, and I learned firsthand that the human being has a remarkable ability to find a way to keep standing, even after being knocked down by what many would agree is the ultimate blow.

As a friend said to me – when something this bad happens, you have three choices: you can let it 1) define you, 2) destroy you, or 3) strengthen you. Even if you can never “get over it” or “move on,” you can simply go on, and many days that will feel like enough. The death of someone we love as profoundly as Sheryl loves Dave and I love Emma becomes the start of a new “normal.” This normal will probably never feel as good as what you once had, but it is what you have and, from the moment you open your eyes that first day after your loss, you have begun the journey of living with it.

Depletion of Joy

Another early dimension of grief is the remarkable absence of joyful feelings, and Sheryl acknowledges this aspect when she writes about how, in her new normal, she knows she “will never feel pure joy again.” I remember this emotion vividly, and in fact I still don’t believe that I will ever experience unfettered joy again – I expect that good times will always be connected to a layer that says “Emma should be here.”

On the other hand, after almost four years, I’m no longer startled by happiness, nor do I feel the guilt I initially felt the first few times I recognized it. I’m more aware of happiness, joy, and laughter when they come, though they are much rarer than they once were and I’ve had to work hard to let them in. In an important way, that makes them all the more special.

Perhaps this is part of the experience of gratitude that Sheryl attributes to her husband’s death. “Real gratitude,” she writes, “for the things I took for granted before – like life. As heartbroken as I am, I look at my children each day and rejoice that they are alive. I appreciate every smile, every hug. I no longer take each day for granted.”

I have no idea how many days I have left, but one thing I learned from Emma’s death is that each day is special. To take it one step further, so much of what I’ve learned from mourning is about living, and living the right way, and living in a way that brings honor to you and the people you love.

Strength with Time

I “lean into” each day now. Some days it’s giving into the tears, embracing the grief that can still stagger me, learning new kinds of sadness over the loss of my youngest child. Other days, it’s finding new ways to let happiness wash over me, opening myself to the signs that say my daughter is still with me, or learning ways to shape my newfound strength. The important thing is that I, like Sheryl and so many others, have chosen – and still choose – life.

The one aspect of grief that Sheryl hasn’t yet experienced is how grief weathers the passage of several years, and often the changes are hard to discern. But, when I read Sheryl’s post, I realized how far I’ve traveled on my journey, and how much stronger I’ve become. Given the insights that Sheryl has already found and so generously shared, I have little doubt that, despite the utter depletion that her grief has caused, she will continue to regain her amazing strength over time in new and significant ways.

See Donna’s Other “Wisps of Hope”

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WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
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