Full transcript: Sheryl Sandberg talks grief, resilience and ‘Option B’ on Recode Decode

On this episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg stopped by to talk about the events that led to her new book, “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.” When her husband, entrepreneur and beloved Silicon Valley fixture Dave Goldberg, died suddenly in 2015, she found that the people around her didn’t necessarily know how to express their concern for her in constructive ways, and that she had to find out how to accept the kindness of strangers. “Option B,” written in tandem with a psychologist, presents what she experienced and learned.

You can read some of the highlights from the interview at that link, or listen to it in the audio player below. We’ve also provided a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation.

If you like this, be sure to subscribe to Recode Decode on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, TuneIn or Stitcher.

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Kara Swisher: Today in the red chair is Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, who I have known for a very long time, probably too long, Sheryl. She's also the author of her 2013 book, “Lean In,” which was a best seller about women in the workplace. Her new book, which she co wrote with Adam Grant, is called “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.” Sheryl, welcome to the show.

Sheryl Sandberg: Thank me for having me, Kara.

We're broadcasting from one of your Facebook empire buildings, correct? Building 20.

We're podcasting from my conference room.

Conference room, right here, which is great. I love coming to Facebook. It's so funny, because I was telling the person in front that I hadn't ... It's so weird to look at this, because I was there before you got to Facebook, in the tiny little office in Palo Alto. It's kind of weird to see all this growth all around you. It must be odd for you, too.

Well, I remember when I met Mark and he said, "What do you think about our downtown distributed offices?", which were all these different buildings in different parts of downtown Palo Alto.

Yeah, I remember the one you were in.

I looked at him and said, "Ridiculous. Get yourselves into one building." He said, "What do you mean? People love it." I said, "Well, but you can't work together. It seems like the point of work is working together." It took us many years.

Now it's even not big enough, right? You've got distributed buildings again.

But they're next to each other, as much as possible.

They're next to each other. Yeah. But it's so huge. It's such a weird thing to see. Same thing with Google. Let's go back a little bit, because we do have a long relationship. We met at Google, a long time ago, when you were running ad services there. I didn't know you in Washington, when you were a big Washington muckity muck. It's been a very long career and you've done a lot of different things in your career, especially Facebook.

Let's talk about this book that you were writing. Let's first talk about “Lean In.” Can you talk a little bit about the implications of that, and the results of that and how you feel about how that did?

I remember talking to you about writing this book.

Yes, you refused to take my excellent advice to write it. Yeah, I remember.

For a long time, you told me to write a book. I was not going to write a book.

You had given that amazing speech at TED, was it TED Women?

I gave a TED Talk, which they titled "Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders."

You said that was enough. You said the video did really well. It had millions of thing. I said it should be a book. You refused to do it until Oprah convinced you. You said, "Oprah convinced me." I'm like, "What? Why does Oprah get the credit for this?"

Really, the person who convinced me was Jennifer Walsh. She runs book publishing for WME. She got me to give a speech to her people. She followed me into the ladies' room. She said, "You have to write this as a book." I said, "I don't write books." Then she said something really important. She said, "You're waiting for someone else to do this, but this speech, at least, has to come from you."

Yeah, because it had a lot of resonance. The video did, absolutely. You thought you'd said it all in that video, I remember you saying.

I was like, "I have nothing left to say," but then, I did have more to say. Due to your encouragement, and Jennifer's and others', I wrote “Lean In.” I loved writing the book. I actually turned out to love writing. I've been writing a lot ever since.

I believe very deeply that the world would be a better place if it weren't run as it's currently run, which is by men. I love how when I say the world is still run by men, and sometimes I say the world is still run by white men, people gasp as if that's news. That's not news. That's obvious.

I think we would be stronger if half our countries and companies were run by women and half our homes were run by men. We're a long way from getting there. Writing “Lean In” was part of my voice in trying to say this is important.

Probably the best thing that's happened since then is really the “Lean In” Circles. We hoped we'd have a thousand. We formed my non-profit. Anyone can start one. All the materials are free. Think ten people who meet once a month to support each other. Mostly women, some men, even though the one in Houston has hundreds of people because they say everything's bigger in the state of Texas.

We were hoping for a thousand. Today, there are 33,000 in 150 countries. We grow by almost a hundred a week. The women in them, two-thirds will take on a new challenge because of the encouragement of their circle.

Is it a support group? It's a circle. It's a support group, essentially.

People have called it book club with a purpose. People have called it support group. People have called it a friend group. It's a place for women to be explicitly ambitious. Not to hide it, not to apologize for it, but to have a group of peers and people who they can say, "Here's what I want to do. Here's what I believe I can do. Here's what someone is telling me I can't do." I think that matters.

So you find those helpful. You've continued to give them tools and things like that, through the “Lean In” non-profit, correct?

Yeah, we put up educational materials, whether they're videos or lectures, or recommend articles, or write out Q&A's, negotiating advice, here's how you give a great speech, that type of real concrete things people can do.

The circles self form. It's incredible, just in the last week, I was in Boston and D.C. I got to meet with the Boston and D.C. chapters, which are the umbrella organizations.

What happens when you show up? Is it like Beyonce showing up to these “Lean In” Circles? "Sheryl."

No, what happens is women tell me about the challenges they face and how they are more able to meet them because they have this formal group they're meeting with every month. I really believe this. It goes to this book, too. We can't do anything alone. We need support. Women do not get enough support to lead. We tell women over and over they shouldn't lead. We need to tell them they should. These circles are doing that.

How would you assess, because at the time of the book, you got a lot of push back. They go, "corporate feminism". How do you ... Did you ignore the critics of it? I remember you and I discussing a New York Times piece that I thought was unfair because they discussed your shoes in a way that I thought was ridiculous. It doesn't matter what shoes you wear. You got a lot of push back to it. Did you feel like you answered that well enough, or do you feel like ... ?

Like always, some of the push back was stuff that was hard to read. Some of it was true. One of the most important things that happened, and it's in this book, is I lost Dave. Sorry, that's not one of the most important thing that happens, that's the most important thing for me.

One of the most important things that happened after that was my really thinking about some of the things I had done and said before. In “Lean In,” I wrote about different forms of family structure.

You talked about Dave, about having a partner that was very helpful.

That's what I did. I wrote a whole chapter called "Make Your Partner a Real Partner" and even with all other things I wrote in that book about different forms of family structure, that chapter must have been really hard to read.

I find Father's Day brutal. Just Father's Day, the fact that it exists. The fact that it's coming up again this year and I know it's going to come next year. It really made me think about it. I wrote a post for Mother's Day last year where I wrote, "I got this wrong and I'm sorry about that. I've had a chance to think about things differently."

Before we move to “Option B,” what do you think now of the strides, or lack of strides, women have made? You've just said there's not enough women in places. What do you imagine we should do? Where do you see women right now in the workplace? Silicon Valley is now rife with stories of sexual harassment, sexism. Same old, same old, it seems. Or worse, often.

Yeah, sexual harassment needs to not happen. We need more women at the top of organizations. We need more under represented minorities at the top of organizations. We need to use —

Or we need men to be able to understand not to do this or to stop people from doing this, at the same time.

Of course. The terrible behavior that shouldn't exist anymore, that still does, needs to be gone and out, and out quickly. We need more full representation. We'll build better products. We'll be better employers and better colleagues.

I remain, in the face of all the challenges, both a believer and an optimist because I think it will be better for families and for the world —

Have we made strides? Do you think ...

In some ways. Not enough. But some ways. The pay gap when “Lean In” came out was 23% for the average woman. Today it's 20. Three cents. Not enough. Better than going the other way, but we can't celebrate that. We need to keep working until it's zero.

There is the belief that progress happens person by person. One person runs for the U.S. Congress. One person runs for Mayor. One person steps up her hand for the project at work. That's what's going to get us there. I believe that long arc of history is on our side.

Do you think you've become a feminist figure? People often, again, around the Women's March, wanted more leadership from you. Does it put you in a spot where you have to be a leader all the time on this?

I was sorry I didn't march and I said that, but I am a feminist. I am proud to be a feminist. I wrote it in “Lean In.” I would scream it from the rooftops. I'm a feminist because I believe that equality on gender is critically important. I think everyone should be a feminist with the correct definition of that word.

What do think you should do more of? What are you lacking in doing? Then we'll get to “Option B.” You must assess yourself. You're someone who does assess yourself. What do you think you haven't done enough of?

I wish I had marched or posted about the march. That was a personal thing. I think I would do it differently if I could do it again. I try to do everything I can. I'm very invested in growing “Lean In.” We have launched optionb.org as well, but we're just as invested and more so, putting more time, more resources, more energy, into “Lean In.”

As I've been traveling around for Facebook and for “Option B,” I always meet with “Lean In” Circles. It's one of the best things I do, is to hear from these women who are facing real things but also working hard to get the leadership positions they deserve and exerting real influence. That's pretty exciting.

And in legislation and other ways. You gave a lot of money to Planned Parenthood, for example, which they need now.

I've been speaking out about legislation. I did a post recently about really what the details of family medical leave should be. Our legislative priorities are wrong. We're the only developed country in the world that doesn't have paid maternity leave. We're behind —

Everybody.

We're behind everyone who's developed. Talk about ... We need paternity leave. Paid family medical leave ... I thought about this before Dave died, and then after Dave died, even more. No one should face the choice this morning, and so many people do, of "Do I take care of a sick child or do I lose my job and the roof over my head?"

No one should not be able to take care of their own illness, their family's illness, take time off for bereavement leave. Our corporate policies aren't good enough and our public policy is sorely lacking. We need to fix it.

We're going to talk about the changing workplace later in the thing, but let's talk about getting this book together. You gave another speech, which was incredibly well received, at Berkeley. You choked up. It was highly emotional, which was one of the first times you really ... You had been on Facebook, which you had never been. A lot of people see you as a pretty buttoned up, corporate lady in a lot of ways, but you really let go, both on Facebook and in this speech.

How did you get to this book? Talk a little bit about the process for people who don't know. You've got a lot of press on this book. People know you very well. Talk about the process of getting to this.

Losing Dave was devastating. You were a friend of Dave's. You told me, you said you were devastated, too. For me and my children, it changed everything and changed it overnight in horrible ways. As the minutes became days, became weeks, all of which felt like months, and years, and decades, it wasn't just the grief. It was a real sense of isolation.

You and I actually spoke a bunch then. You lost your father young. You had experienced real grief, so it was very easy to talk to you about this. You had experienced ... What I experienced was that people who hadn't experienced something like this-

Well, a sudden and devastating loss, especially.

Yeah. They didn't know what to say. I used to drop my kids off at school. Everyone would say hi and I would say hi and walk into work. Everyone would chit chat. A lot of that stopped. I felt not only the loss of Dave, and this huge grief, but increasingly alone.

The Jewish period of mourning for a spouse is 30 days. It's called shloshim. It was coming to that period. I'd been journaling every night, every other night, pouring out of me. I was grateful that I —

Who suggested journaling to you? You write a lot about that. You started doing it.

No one did it. I think it's because I wrote “Lean In” that I, somewhere along the way, became someone who writing is part of who I am now. Thank ... I'm so grateful.

This is a hand journal, right?

I type.

You type, okay.

No, my hand hurts. I have little tendonitis stuff.

So you were typing and journaling. You started doing it because ...

I don't know. My first line in my journal is "I'm going to bury my husband. I don't know why I'm writing this." I don't know why, but I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. It just poured out of me. I started turning that into what I would say to everyone to stop the silence.

I wrote it as a “Fakebook” post, that I was never going to post. I went to bed the night before, feeling good that I had gotten it out, but there's no way I'm posting this. It's too honest.

I woke up the next morning. There are so many bad moments in this. That was one of the bad ones, really terrible. I felt so awful. I thought, "You know what? I'm going to post this because things aren't going to get worse. They might get better."

It was very open and a kind of sharing I had never done before. It actually helped so much. It did not take away the grief, but it took away a bunch of the isolation. A friend from work said she had been driving by my house almost every day and had never come in.

Because she was scared to.

She was shared to. She started coming in and I needed her.

Strangers posted, "I've lost this. I've lost this person. I've lost a twin. I lost a baby. I lost a husband." Other people ... One woman said she lost her husband and another woman she worked with-

Didn't know.

I didn't know either one of them. Rather than feel so isolated, I felt connected to all of these people who were experiencing loss and breaking the isolation really helped.

Do you find that unusual in an oversharing economy, pushed a lot by Facebook, by the way, which you run? We don't share. You're talking about not really sharing.

We share in some ways, but we don't share in others. It's not just death that ushers in this huge elephant that's following behind us, trampling over our relationships. You want to silence a room? Tell someone you have cancer. Your father just went to prison. Your mother just lost her job. You just lost your job. You were raped.

These things happen to people every day. It's not that everyone wants to share everything at all times, but we really leave people alone when we need them the most.

When I needed people the most was after Dave died and people were afraid. I understood that because I used to do that. If someone was going through something hard, I would say something the first time, "I'm so sorry," but then I thought if I brought it up again I was reminding them.

It was interesting because last night I was at an event for The Tipping Point and someone we both know is having some issues with their kids. I said, "How's it going?" They're like, "No one ever asks me." They had told it to me and I was like, "Why not?" It was fascinating. They were like, "Thank you for asking." I'm like, "Wow. Does nobody ... " They're like, "Nobody wants to talk about it," which was interesting.

This is what we heard from people who have everything from cancer to other illnesses to any kind of ... And me, too. The other thing people do, and I did this before, was, "Is there anything I can do?", which I asked a lot of people. I meant very kindly. The problem is it kind of shifts the burden to the person —

To tell you what they need.

It's really hard. “Well, can you make Father's Day go away? Can you make sure my kids and I aren't alone on any Thanksgiving ever because our little family of three feels so small still?” You know Dan Levy.

Yes.

Amazing. His family, he and his wife, Esther, tragically lost one of their sons. They were in the hospital for months. One of their friends texted and said, "I'm in the lobby of the hospital for a hug for the next hour if you come down or not."

A friend of mine read “Option B.” She has a friend, not a close friend, but a friend whose daughter was in the hospital. She said before she read the book, she would have done nothing. She's not her best friend. It's inappropriate to ...

But she read the book, so she went to the toy store. She bought a toy. She went to the lobby of the hospital and texted, "I'm here in case you want to see me, but if not, I'll leave this toy downstairs for you." The woman texted, "Please come up." She gave the four year old the toy. She said the woman was standing behind the four year old crying hysterically, "Thank you for being here." No one else was.

I'm going to get into the ... You have a lot of research around this kind of stuff. Get to the book. You gave the speech. You wrote the post.

I wrote the post and then I gave the Berkeley commencement speech. I think by the time I gave the Berkeley commencement speech I was already working on the book. I wrote the post and I really hadn't thought at all about writing a book, was very intensive journaling. In the new year, right when the new year turned, Adam and I talked about writing —

This is Adam Grant.

Adam Grant.

Can you explain who he is, for people who don't know?

Yeah. Adam Grant is a very good friend of mine. I met him through Dave. He's a professor at Wharton in Psychology. When Dave died, I didn't know what to do, particularly for my kids. I turned to Adam and said, "Tell me what to do. How do I get my kids through this? How do I get myself through this?" He started answering with things that really helped me, which is partially with research.

Right, which you love. Which you —

I love. In a situation where I have no idea how to handle grieving children. My children lost their father when they were seven and 10. That didn't happen to me. It did happen to you, but I had no experience. So him saying, "Okay, here's a study. There's been one longitudinal study that was done on children whose parents divorced or died. Here's what it said," for me, was incredibly helpful. It didn't take away the grief or the fear —

Right, but it gives you guideposts to do —

Just something to do. Something that might help a tiny bit. We started looking for resilience, trying to study resilience, understanding resilience. Thinking about other people that had faced all kinds of challenges. He was doing it to help me and I was doing it to help my children and learn. We had written together. We wrote a New York Times series on women in the workplace together, so when the year turned, we decided we would write this as a book.

Were you worried about ... Here you were, you posted on Facebook when you thought you weren't going to, about this, and you got a lot of response. Picking this as a book, most people thought you'd write another book about feminism, of course, and not this.

Obviously, your life changed drastically when Dave died. Were there any worries for you, writing about the concept or did you feel like you wanted to do another that helps people, or guides people? This is not just women, this is the human race, because everybody faces some level of adversity and has to either find resilience or not at all.

I think I was, and still am, looking for meaning in Dave's death. Something to hang on to, because without that, there's nothing except death and darkness and tragedy.

One of my favorite stories in the book is a man named Joe Casper. It was a story Adam told me early, before we were working on the book. He was a doctor, so he dealt with other people's life and death regularly, but then his son died.

He went back to get a Master's in Psychology and he was Adam's student. Now, along with being a doctor, he counsels other bereaved parents in his spare time. He came up with this concept he called “co-destiny,” that as he helps other parents, he's extending his son Ryan's life.

You knew Dave so well. Dave ... I know I'm biased. I married him, but he was one of the most giving people I've ever met.

He was.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

You were at the funeral. Zander ... On stage, our friend Zander said, "Raise your hand if Dave Goldberg changed your life,” and a sea of hands went up.

Dave gave so generously to those people around him, so if “Option B” helps anyone through anything hard, I love Joe's idea that maybe it extends his legacy and even his life and memory a little bit. For me, that means everything.

Absolutely. We're going to talk a little more about the book itself, what's in the book, but can you explain the “Option B” title? It's from your friend Phil, who I adore, who's fantastic. Could you just-

Am I allowed to curse?

Please do. Say “fuck” as much as you want.

Okay, well it's not that word. We were at our friend Phil Deutch, dear friend's 50th birthday, when Dave died suddenly. A few weeks later, there was a father —

They were with you.

They were with me. Marnie and Phil were with me. His wife Marnie. There was a father-son activity that Dave was supposed to do with our son. Dave wasn't there and so, Phil and I brainstormed who could go with our son. We gave my son some options.

I said, "Okay, but I want Dave. Dave's supposed to do this with our son." Phil put his arm around me and said, "Option A is not available, so let's just kick the shit out of Option B." He didn't say, "You're going to kick the shit out of Option B." He said "let's.” “We.” "We are going to do this together."

I think everyone lives some form of “Option B,” whether it's losing a parent, as you did or my kids did, whether it's job you didn't get, the love that got away, the marriage that didn't work out. Even if it's the small things, and sometimes the big things, nothing's perfect. We're all living —

Except you still want Option A. That's the thing. I think people ... How to get beyond that is very difficult for people.

Well, I'm not even sure you get beyond that. I still want Option A. I would love to trade every single thing I've learned to get Dave back. I would like a day, or an hour, with him. I can't have that, but I can try to make the most of Option B. I think for me, trying to make the most of Option B is this book and the community we launched.

Let's talk about the book, specifically, some of the things in the book that stuck out. Your first part was devastating, I have to say. You and I talked about it. You showed it to me when you had first written it. It must have been terrible to write. I have to say, I was really surprised, because you are someone who holds things ... Most people think of you as someone who's very in control. We all joke about it with you all the time. “You're in charge, Sheryl.” Even your mom jokes about it. What was that to do that, to give that up? That's giving up quite a bit of yourself when you're talking about specifics of Dave's death and then how you felt about it.

People ask me that and it's so interesting, because for me, the hard thing is not writing about it and sharing it, it's living it. Living it was so horrific that anything else pales in comparison. If you can squeeze some meaning by sharing it, it's the only way, I think, to make some sense or something out of the suffering.

The living it was truly horrible. I had never faced anything this traumatic. I had known very few people that faced anything this traumatic. Dave's death was sudden and completely unexpected. The grief was horrific and —

Can we talk for a minute how important ... People don't realize how important he was to you and your career and everything else. Not just what you wrote about in the book, but in terms of balancing you in a lot of ways.

Dave was amazing. You knew him. Dave was completely brilliant and had very strong opinions about a lot of things.

He did. That's what I liked —

He would also listen to anyone else about theirs, which is very unusual. Dave was hysterical. A lot of people don't know that about him. He played a lot of April Fools' jokes, not always on April Fools'. Almost always on me, but some on his coworkers at SurveyMonkey. Dave, and this, I think, is what you're getting at, Dave was a rock. I am not.

People are surprised by that. I always say, "No, no. He was critical to her success."

Oh, yeah. He was just always so calm. Nothing ruffled him. I'm more up and down. I have amazing days and really hard days and can be much more emotive than he was. He was just the rock. He was always the one who told me it would be okay.

He showed me the internet ... We were friends for six years before we dated, very good friends. He showed me the internet for the first time. It was part of his advice that-

What did he say, "Here's the internet"?

Yeah. He said, "You have to see this thing." I was like, "This is awesome. Who knew? Look at that." I remember, in his office —

"You should get a job in this area."

I didn't get a job in that area for years later, but it was part of it.

Where was that, in D.C.?

I was in D.C. I was in L.A. at the time, then I moved to D.C. He helped me pick Google. He helped me say, "No, no, that's good. That company's going to grow. That's a great product.”

Right. Good choice.

And helped me really understand it.

He didn't bring you to Yahoo. That's a good thing. He was at Yahoo, right?

That's right. Well, he wasn't at Yahoo yet. When I went to Google, he was in his own company and then he sold it to Yahoo. He was a huge part of my coming to Facebook. He was one of the first Facebook users. He believed in the product.

He did.

He went out to dinner with me and Mark and Priscilla. I wouldn't have taken a job like this unless Dave knew Mark and had a chance to meet him. He was a huge part of my personal life, obviously. It's like the understatement of the year. Father of my children and my co-parent. His career advice was real.

I'm sorry to go down Dave Lane, but I wanted people to understand.

I love going down Dave Lane. I could talk about Dave all year.

He was an important part of Silicon Valley.

You'll never get me off this podcast. I'm going to sit here —

And talk Dave.

Especially the good parts. Oh, yeah. You're never going to get me off.

He was an important part of Silicon Valley, too, I think. He was one of the few people I trusted, actually. I'll be honest with you. You know what I mean? In terms of giving the straight story of what was happening. The honest story, which is ... I know it's unusual to say that people lie, but they lie to themselves a lot of the time. He didn't, which was very useful.

Yes, and more than that, Dave had time for everyone. I meet people to this day that I've never heard of, who won't say, "I knew your husband," that's expected, but, "He changed my life and here's why. He gave me the critical piece of advice ... "

Mark Zuckerberg said something about Dave I think is true. He said, "There are a lot of people who really like to give advice and there are a lot of people who give really good advice. There's not usually a huge intersection of those two things." He said, "The reason Dave was so unusual was he was very happy to spend his time with other people giving advice, like really generous, but also gave really good advice." Everyone turned to him. Mark and I turned to him.

All the time.

All the time.

And he was funny. He really was funny. He could have been a journalist. That's what I used to tell him. I used to drag him along on a lot of my stories. He's the only person I did drag along. When the Apple iPhone was stolen, he's the person I took to the bar to do the investigation. We did a little video there. He was like posing and sitting on this seat, going like ... It was very funny. Nobody would do that, or I wouldn't want anybody to do that, which I think was interesting.

I was really struck by how descriptive you were in introducing this. I think it was critical to making the book work, because I think if you stood away from it, it would be really hard. What was your goal there? In terms of getting people to understand the devastation, would be my guess, or ...

I don't know if I was as thoughtful and strategic about it as you're making it sound.

“I think I'll just type,” yeah.

No, I mean, I wrote the personal parts of the books as a journal. I never wrote them for a book. I wrote them long before the book. The personal parts of the book were lifted from my journal. There are parts there that are unedited and I'm honest about that. There are parts that are heavily edited, which I'm sharing what I want to share and what I'm willing to share.

I was definitely pushed by Adam, by the editors, by friends like you, to share more, because if you don't share ... It's hard to help anyone rebuild if they don't understand the devastation.

Your parts are the most compelling, including being unhappy with people and not liking reaction, getting angry at people. Those are the more compelling parts, I think, in a lot of ways.

For me, the personal parts came from my journal. The most compelling parts for me are actually the stories from other people. There's this huge range of people that have faced adversity and often you don't know.

There was a recruiter named Steven Thompson, who worked as part of my team at Google. I did not know: His mother abandoned him and his siblings when he was 9 in a hotel room. It took child services days to find them. Think about that kind of devastation.

I was at a dinner party the other day, someone unlikely told me a similar story. I was like, "What?" Like something with a parent that was just awful. It was shocking, actually.

People face unbelievable things, from going to prison, to crime, to violence, to being raped and abused, and job loss, and the everyday struggles and not every story has a happy ending. I'm super clear about that. But there are people who rebound and recover. For me, the most compelling parts of the book are those stories.

Talk about the tools that you talk about, because each of your stories is trying to make a point about a certain thing. Can you go through a few of those? The critical ones that you think are important. One was talking about it. One was getting —

Yeah. The most important thing I learned from Adam, and Adam and I researched, was we don't have a fixed amount of resilience. We build it. We build it in ourselves, and each other, and our kids, and our colleagues. There are specific things you can do.

Adam told me early about the three P's, which are the traps where you don't recover. How do you build resilience? You avoid the three P's: Personalization, pervasiveness and permanence.

Okay, go through them.

Personalization, blaming yourself. When Dave died, I blamed myself.

Why?

I'm the only person in my family who's not a doctor. At first, we thought he had fallen off an exercise machine. An autopsy proved that untrue. He died of a coronary —

An aortic aneurism, essentially.

Yeah, a coronary arrhythmia. Then I thought, "Well, why didn't I know he had coronary artery disease?", and it took me a while to get over that. Once I got over that, I was like, "My mom's here for a month. All my friends are dropping their stuff. I need so much help." I just kept saying, "Sorry." We personalize not just mistakes that aren't our fault, but the ones that are, and no matter what —

What possibly could have been your fault in any of that?

It wasn't, but I still felt guilty and bad all the time. There are mistakes people make that are their fault and we can't personalize those either. That doesn't mean we let people off the hook and there's no punishment. None of that. But we have to show ourselves compassion. We have to treat ourselves with the kindness we would a friend.

There's this great TED Talk we put up on optionb.org. It's a woman talking about a friend of hers.

Which is another organization that you have, related to this.

Mm-hmm, we launched a community along with the book for people to come together.

Similar thing to “Lean In.”

Yeah. We don't have in person circles. We have online groups, but there around discrimination, and violence, and coping with grief and they're amazing already.

We put up a TED Talk. This woman talked about a friend who got divorced, met someone, went on her first date, was all excited, was all dressed up and 10 minutes later, the guy walks out.

Whoa.

A friend says to her, "You know you're not attractive and you're boring." Except a friend would never say that to her. She said it to herself. We would never say that to friend, but we-

I might. But go ahead. I'm teasing.

We would never say that to a friend, but we would say that to ourselves. We are not kind to ourselves. Men and women, but women particularly. Self compassion. Mistakes we make, mistakes we don't make. Treat ourselves with kindness.

It's like that Amy Schumer skit where, "I'm so ugly." "No, no, I'm so ugly." Do you remember? Did you ever see it?

Yeah.

It's a very funny skit. Then someone says, "No, I think I look good," and everyone's heads blow off. They actually physically blow off. It's very funny. It is an interesting thing, because I often complement myself and people are like, "Kara, you have a big head." I'm like, "But I am great. Why should I not say it?" Really it is ... And women are often the ones saying you shouldn't say it, which is-

But kindness, personalization. It is not your fault, or if it is your fault, you have to be compassionate to yourself.

Pervasiveness: Just because one part of our life could be in shambles, the way it is when someone dies, there are other things that are still good. That was a huge lesson, too.

One day, Adam looked at me, long before we were working on the book, just for me, and said, "You should think about what could be worse." I was like, "What could be worse? Dave just died. Are you totally nuts?" He said, "Dave could have had that cardiac arrhythmia driving your children."

Right. All right.

Immediately, you're like, "Okay, I'm good. Kids are alive. I'm good." I could have lost all three of them. It's so counterintuitive. I thought I should look for positive thoughts, but looking for what could be better is actually really helpful because you find gratitude. You let yourself feel good about other parts of your life.

“If this was going to happen, this was the best way.” You know what I mean? That kind of-

“Dave has died, but my children are healthy.” “Dave has died, but I have a job I love.” “I have cancer, but” ... Finding the “but,” and —

That's really difficult, though, because things do become pervasive. When something like this happens, it's all encompassing.

But trying to give yourself permission to it to be.

The third is permanence. That was by far the hardest for me, because in the moments where it just felt so awful, and it was every moment for a long time, it felt like it would never get better.

People kept telling me, who had been through it, you told me, it gets better. The beginning, the way it feels in the beginning is not the way it feels forever. The grief doesn't go away entirely-

That's right. It never feels good. It never ... It gets —

It never goes away entirely, but it doesn't ... The crushing grief of "I'm not going to get through the day" ... Two years later is not the same as two days later. You told me that. I didn't believe you. I didn't believe anyone.

We had an interesting encounter when ... The only thing is though, people were saying "it will be okay" to you a lot at the beginning and you hated that. I ran into you, I think it was at the shiva, and I think you said, "It will be okay." I go, "No, it really won't." I think I said the opposite, which was interesting.

It was so wonderful to hear that, but it was going to better than it was at the beginning.

Yes, yes, yes.

The days where I felt like I couldn't get out of bed. I needed someone to come over and be with me to walk into my bedroom. I can walk into my bedroom now. I couldn't walk into my bedroom alone for months. I didn't believe it would get better.

Part of writing this book was trying to tell people what I didn't believe at the beginning, which is, it's never going away entirely, but it will get better.

What's interesting is that you know that on little things in life. When you have some small injury or break up with someone, you're devastated at the beginning, then years later, you're like, "What was that?" So you do know that, intuitively, correct?

But with something this big-

Exactly, with big grief.

I never felt like this, so it didn't feel like it would get better.

The tools that people use to do each of these things ... Can you give people an idea of what the tools for each of the things are? One is be nice to yourself on the-

Self compassion. Write yourself a letter. Treat yourself as you would a friend. Journaling to express our feelings and recognize that they're not as permanent. Joy. Joy, paying attention. Adam told me I should write down three moments of joy.

Which people do at dinner, sometimes, with their kids.

Yeah. Three moments of joy every night. They were pretty small. "Had coffee, tasted good. My son gave me a hug without being asked." Maybe hinted at, but not directly asked, right?

Little tiny things. What happens is, I realized I went to bed every night worried about what went wrong. Now, to this day, I keep this. I go to bed every night finding those moments of joy. I pay attention, because if it happens, like you say something nice, someone does something, I'm like, "That's going to make the notebook," so I'm paying attention more.

It's something that's called three roses and a thorn. Remember? You say it with the kids. You say it whatever.

We do “best, worst, grateful,” but paying attention to the things that are good, even if they're small ... I think we often think happiness is the big stuff. Getting a job.

Falling in love.

Yeah. Having a baby. It's the way we spend our days. It's the small, tiny things that can really matter.

And then the second one? The second ... not permanence. Personalization, what's the second one?

Permanence. The permanence is believing that it will get better. Replacing words like "always" with "today". "I will always feel this bad." Get rid of "always". Get rid of "never". Those coroner words. Replace them with "sometimes", "often", "for now". The temporal "for now" ...

Even the question ... I said, in my post, people should say, "How are you today?" That does two things. It tells someone, "I know you're suffering," but it also has this implicit "it's today". Today is not tomorrow, is not 10 years from now.

Have your relationships with people changed? Have you not ... Have you cut relationships? That often happens during heavy periods of grief. You tend to ferret out people, actually, or welcome different people into your life.

I think how I spend my time has definitely changed. I spend my time working, kids, I don't travel as much as I used to, I can't do the social dinners I used to ... I wasn't a big social dinner person before. You know that.

No, but you did these big lady fests, which was women dinners.

I did women's dinners and they're gone. I don't have nights to have 40 women.

They're gone. I think because Dave was there, right? Dave was the only guy you let into the lady fest.

He was there to put my kids to bed. Now, if I have women's dinners like I used to, there's no one to put my children to bed. So they're gone.

The peripheral social stuff doesn't happen anymore. I'm spending my time, my kids, working and then with my closest friends. I'm much closer with the people I was close to before. I have a very close family. I'm lucky to have super close friends. I wouldn't have thought we could be closer, but we are. We definitely are. That is one form of what we call post traumatic growth, deeper relationships and more appreciation.

Have you shed people? Have you thought, "I'm going to make ... " A lot of people, when things happen ... I had a stroke, as you remember, many years ago. I definitely made choices. Started to make a lot of choices. More than I did. It wasn't being mean. It just was like, "I got a limited time. I'm going to focus on the things I want to focus on."

You know, there's data in the book on this. Happiness in your 30's is how many friends you have and happiness in your 50's, and I'm a lot closer to 50 than 30, is the quality of friendships. People, as they get older, tend to spend more time with fewer people. That definitely happened to me after Dave died and my women's dinners not happening anymore are a perfect example of that.

What do you expect from your friends? What do you ask? One of the things I'm suspecting with you is you didn't ask a lot.

I had a really hard time asking, which is why the people who just did and just showed up ... I felt ... Not I “felt” so needy, I was.

Which is not a comfortable place for you, I'm guessing.

Completely awful. I had to push myself to be this open about it in the book, but I would have liked the example of someone needing so much. I said this. I couldn't walk into my bedroom. Literally, walking into my room at the end of the night was this horrific thing. I didn't want to do it. My sister came over and my friend came over.

Your mom was there.

And my mom and then Katie and Scott Mitic, my dear friends. I felt so needy and awful, like, "Oh my god, I have to be put to bed like a small child." They came over one night with a pie chart: "We're not getting our share of the nights." They tried to convince me, they were like, "We need to be here. We're grieving for Dave, too.”

Right, they were very good friends.

"And for you. And we need to be here for us." So it wasn't just the people that showed up. It's the people that convinced, for us, and ... Now, when people are going through things I acknowledge them more. I show up more. I don't just offer to help, I help, or at least try. I'm certainly trying. I'm sure I'm not doing it perfectly, but I'm doing it better than I was before.

I don't sugar coat. I do not say to someone, now, who has cancer, "I know you're going to be okay," which is what I would have said before, if I said anything, trying to help. Now I say, "I know you don't know if you're going to be okay and neither do I, but you're not going to go through this alone. I am with you." Then I check in. Just like your friends. I check in, "How are you?", because they know they have cancer. I'm not reminding them.

You have lots of stories in here and a lot of statistics. What are you ... It seemed like a lot of them pointed to the ignoring of pain. I think a lot of people do feel like social media and other places, even like Instagram, which Facebook owns, it's sort of a happy, shiny people world. Although social media now has become ... Twitter's a hellscape. There's some real ugly things on Facebook, as you know, that you guys have been dealing with.

But a lot of social media does put that pressure on you to feel like you share but you don't really share. Or it's the presentation. I tell people all the time, when they see pictures of families, they're, "Oh, all my friends are happier than I am." I'm like, "They aren't. They actually ... They aren't. That's just the photograph."

I think we share in all kinds of times and all kinds of ways. We formed these “Option B” groups and there's one on coping with loss. Monday was the anniversary of Dave's death, the second year. I posted to that group. I did a post ... Sorry. I went to his grave and took a picture.

In the Jewish tradition, you put stones ... There were these stones and I posted. I posted to the coping with grief group. There are about 4,000 people in there. 4,000 people I don't know. A few I know.

It was so interesting for me, because I could not have done that post publicly. I wouldn't have even done that post to my friends, because a lot of my friends haven't experienced loss. That post was to those people and it was grief. It was basically, "Today completely sucks and I miss him. The grief ebbs and flows and it is flowing. There are these horrible moments. Seeing him name on a tombstone is still something truly horrific."

It is.

You know, other friends had been like, "Well, you're done with that grief thing." No one in that group would think I'm done with that grief thing, because they all have it. Some of the people in there shared that someone just died in their life. Some of the people said, "It's been five years. It's been long." There is an acceptance.

I think social media's not perfect, certainly, but it is helping me and helping a lot of people. I think if you look, there's not just happy pictures of smiling families on there. There's a lot of honesty.

Right, absolutely. No, it's true. I was just thinking the other day, "I miss my grandmother." For some reason, it ... Real close. She's been dead a long, long time. It was really interesting, I just got sad, like enormously sad, over it. I don't know why. Something happened. There must have been-

You should join the —

Yeah. The grief group.

The “Option B” coping with loss group, because they will understand that.

I didn't talk about it, it's true. It's interesting.

When we get back, we're going to talk about the workplace, and how we make a better workplace for people. It seems a really hard time right now for a lot of people, in work, because of all kinds of issues. We're going to talk about that.

We're here with Sheryl Sandberg, who's the COO of Facebook. She has also written a new book called “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy” with Adam Grant, who wrote “The Originals.” Sheryl is obviously the author of “Lean In,” which was a bestseller about women in the workplace.

We're going to talk about the workplace, because you talk a lot about how to make a better workplace for women in “Lean In,” and you talked about those issues. Obviously, we're far from where we need to be on that issue, but it's also for everybody. Building a better workplace.

People are worried about their jobs. This election was about jobs, and not having them, and how your dignity is lost when you don't have it. You also don't have dignity when you don't have a job that's meaningful.

Let's talk about making the workplace a better place, using some of the things you learned in this book.

I learned a lot through the process of losing Dave. My friend, Jeff Huber, another great —

Google guy.

Great person in Silicon Valley, running a company called Grail. He said ... He lost his wife Laura, who a lot of us knew and loved. He said, "It's like you've been through a portal. You're going to be different." I'm different in so many ways.

One of the most important is I've really thought a lot about what kind of responsibility we have to each other. I became a single parent. I'm not a single mother, as most are, given the resources I have. Thirty-seven percent of women who are single mothers, of all backgrounds, are living in poverty. The poverty line is still struggling to make ends meet. Particularly in an area like Silicon Valley, you have to be many times that.

Forty percent, if you're black or Latina, are at the poverty line. We do not provide enough help to people who need it. We don't have a safety net in this country. We do not have the right policies in our companies. We don't have the right policies publicly. We don't have maternity leave. We don't have paid family medical leave. We have generous bereavement policies at Facebook.

What are they?

Well, now they're 20 days for an immediate family member, and 10 days for an extended family member. So, like a spouse or a child or a grandparent.

Before Dave died, they were 10 and five, which is still very generous. Most people don't get paid time off, and if they do, it's three days. There was a father who posted that his company gave a month of paternity leave to welcome that child, but three days to bury that child.

It's very short-sighted, I think, of companies. I think when we give our best to our employees, they give their best back to us.

The other thing I really learned was what you have to do to help people get through things at work. I talked long ago, in “Lean In,” about bringing your whole self to work. I do think we can't leave our emotions at home. That doesn't mean you want to walk around talking about yourself with tissues all day, but —

Yeah, though some do.

Yeah, but more people hide things, I think, than do that.

Hide things. Yes. 100 percent.

More people are hiding. "I'm going through something really hard," or "I didn't want to tell anyone I just had a cancer diagnosis." We're hiding things. "My child is really sick." These horrible things are happening, and they are part of who we are.

It takes more effort, in some ways, to hide them than it does to share them. Making a workplace where we welcome people, who they are, and we are able to talk, and not put the elephant in the room, and be there, I think, is hugely important.

Who do you blame for that? I think workplaces don't encourage that, for sure. Many people are ... You're lucky, in that you've got a job, and the founder loves you, and you've contributed enormously to it, and have a safe job, but a lot of people don't feel safe in their jobs anymore.

That's right. That's why part of what we're doing with “Option B” is, we're trying to talk to people who are setting the culture, to the other people who are running companies, like Mark, but don't have Mark's natural understanding of what it means to be a colleague.

We spend more time at work. If you work full-time, and you take out your sleeping hours, I'm pretty sure we spend as much time, or more time —

More.

Than we do at home. It depends how much you sleep, but we do.

So, supporting each other there, and really —

Why isn't it? Why doesn't that happen?

I think culturally there was a long thing of what's professional, and what's personal, and this false division. I think that division is long gone.

I also realized how much we have to do to not just give people the time off they need. That's the first thing they need, but also welcome them back.

Before I lost Dave, if someone was going through something hard, I would say, "How much time off do you want? Do you want those projects taken off you?" But that's it. I wouldn't say anything else, because I thought I was putting pressure on them.

People did that to me. They said, when I came back, "How could you focus, given all you're going through?" Or, "We don't really expect you to be able to contribute." The problem was that losing Dave really trashed my self-confidence, even after writing “Lean In.” I thought I couldn't contribute. How could I contribute when I was barely able to get through a meeting?

So, when people said, "Well, how could you help, given all you're going through?" it was telling me what I knew, which is I was —

Useless.

Not going to be able to do my job. I was useless. It really trashed my self-confidence further.

Which is shocking, thinking of you and lack of self-confidence.

But, look, I wrote openly in “Lean In” about the times I struggled with self-confidence. I wrote a whole book on it. I did research. I ran around the world building up other women's self-confidence. You say something enough, you learn it yourself. By the time Dave died, I was in a pretty good place; then it was gone like this. Just flat, in minutes.

What Mark did was, he said, "Do you want time off?" But then he said, "But I thought you made a good point in that meeting," or he said —

So, bucking you up.

When I fell asleep in a meeting, "Oh everyone does that." Everyone doesn't do that.

No, they don't.

I made a mistake, he's like, "Oh, you would have made that mistake before." That was really reassuring. He kept telling me I was adding value.

Now, when someone's going through something, I give them time off, but if they want to be back and they're like, "No, I need to be here. My husband died. I do not want to be at home. I want to be here. Please let me work."

Some people will feel that way. Telling them, "You made a good point. You did a good job," not just, "Take time off if you need it." Both are important, but, "You did a good job," is super important.

So how do we get to that? Our culture isn't ... We just passed a health-care bill that looks pretty ugly for a lot of people. It doesn't seem like our culture ... Just to get basic health care, we can't get to. The basic caring of our citizens.

There are basic things wrong with our culture. We do not encourage women to lead. We do not encourage men to be emotional. We think people can leave their personal lives at home. We don't provide the support. These are cultural problems. The only thing I know to do is to keep talking about them and make it louder and make it something we can't ignore.

Is that a coastal ... People would accuse you “coastal elites.” Other people don't get to live the lives we do, here on the edges of the country where everybody is ... It's been attacked, this idea, in a lot of ways.

I think everyone deserves support. We build resilience in our communities. There's a chapter in the book on collective resilience, resilience in communities. I'm giving the Virginia Tech graduation speech.

Oh, where they had the shooting, right?

It's the 10-year anniversary. That is a community that built resilience into the community. Community structures were strong before, which is how they got through it. No one should go through it alone. It doesn't matter where in the country you live. What do people deserve? We deserve a great education. We deserve to have our basic needs met.

I met, this past week, with the directors of all the California food banks. One in three children in California faces food insecurity. We're the wealthiest country in the world. That's completely unacceptable. People deserve to have their basic needs and wants taken care of, and also the support they need. That should be true everywhere in the country.

Do you think that's declining now? It does feel coarser. Our social world feels ... Not just social. Our political world, everything, feels coarser right now. How do we get back to that? We have this vision of ourselves as a country that works together and joins ... United we stand, that kind of stuff.

It certainly feels more divisive than it ever has, certainly in my lifetime. It was interesting, at the food bank meeting, we were talking about the huge problem of hunger. It is a huge problem in this country. People don't understand it.

People think hunger looks the way they think it looks in developing countries. Here, it often looks different, but it is just as real. One of the directors said, "We have a huge need to meet," but he said, "But let's take a minute to recognize that it is a lot better than it was before free lunches."

It feels like the times are very violent, but I think most statistics tell us that violent crime is actually down, not up.

We have to look at the problem squarely. We have to be willing to take on culture. We take on the culture that tells little girls they're bossy. They're not bossy, they're future leaders. We take on the culture that tells people not to cry at work. Not that you should cry all day, but people are going to cry at work.

You got a lot of slap-back for the “bossy” thing, I remember. I kept trying to explain to people, "She's not saying, ‘don't use words.’" They were like, "She can't tell me what to say." I was like, "I'm not sure that's what she's saying. She's just making a point." It was fascinating. They focused on you not telling them what to do. It was —

We had this catchy title, "Ban bossy," but you're right. We didn't mean to ban the word. We weren't trying to write a city ordinance, we were trying to explain to people that “bossy” is a word we use for girls. That is a cultural problem.

A lot of the issues we're dealing with “Option B” ... One of the people who interviewed me for the book, her first question was, she said, "Well, everyone dies and everyone knows someone who's died. Why can't we talk about it?"

I just looked at her like, "I don't know." But we need to talk about it because it is the most basic fact of life. It's to what you said — we don't talk about it. We're trying to change that.

In terms of ... What are some of the tools people in workplace ... If you really want to do that in a workplace ... Because again, it does seem like that's not what people are thinking about these days. It's really divisive. What don't we get along about? What do we disagree about?

Let's start at the policy level. If you're in a company, the right policies. The right policies for people to support them, whatever they're going through. Maternity, paternity, family medical leave, taking care of a sick child.

The right policies for companies ... When someone dies, what happens to the spouse? Someone posted into one of the groups, "My husband's company cut me off 24 hours." One of my family members, who's a doctor, had a child who was in treatment and her husband died in a freak accident. They lost their health care. That's not okay, both at a corporate policy level and a public policy level. We have a responsibility to take care of people. That includes their families.

You start at the policy level, then obviously the public policy level, because companies won't catch everyone. Not everyone works. Not everyone works at a company that will do the right thing.

At a personal level, do we ask people how they are? Do we care? Do we build them up? Do we acknowledge that someone's going through cancer? Do we acknowledge that someone lost a child? When we do that, does it make us better?

And does it make the company ... Lots of things.

My answer is yes, yes, yes and yes.

You often, when you were doing your “Lean In” stuff, said ... You kept saying, "Because it's the right thing." When that didn't work, you said, "It's about our company."

No, you're right.

It's so irritating.

I definitely started out with, "This is the right thing to do," and then I got to, "and it's a smart thing to do, right?" If you're a man —

Then you pulled out the statistics. I was like, "Stop pulling out the statistics."

No, but why should men be good to women in the workplace? Because if you can work better ... It's the right thing to do, but if you can work better with 50 percent% of the population, you're going to get better results.

If you're the one who doesn't have the implicit biases, or recognizes your biases, against minorities, against women, you're going to outperform. If you're the company that takes care of your employees, they're going to be more loyal and you will have better teams, more cohesion, more mission alignment.

It's the right thing to do, but it is also good for the company. I think we have to make that case, because that's why companies are going to do it.

Last questions. Mark just wrote this essay about community. It's a little bit about that. He finally got to the point where, yes, perhaps Facebook has a role in it. It's something I've been ... You know I've been sort of screaming at Silicon Valley about growing up and taking responsibility.

Now, they do have nice things for their employees. They have food and parking, and it's like, as I said, San Francisco is assisted living for millennials. It's true. Facebook is ridiculous, when you think about it.

Never thought about that.

I'm waiting to get the massage when I leave here.

He talked about that, but part of it is not getting it out to everyone. Do you imagine ... I'm going to ask the political question. Mark's been visiting livestock all across the country, and keeps petting calves everywhere he goes. People talk about you. You and I have talked about the political.

Do you all need to get into political life, people in Silicon Valley and others? There's a lot of stuff here that should be replicated or could be replicated. Can you do it from a corporate place?

Mark and I aren't running for office.

No, I know that.

But Mark and I are traveling and meeting people and talking to people. I'm glad for what he's done. I think the recognition that we have a broader responsibility —

Why are you doing that? Why are you both doing that? What is the goal for you?

He's done it, he's doing a lot of it, as part of his —

His thing. I've seen him do his things before.

Yeah. Well, he does —

His Chinese. Yeah.

He learns Chinese. Mark does something hard —

Hunting. I remember the moves that you showed me. Where did that go, by the way?

And running every day, and reading books. The challenges he takes on are inspiring and amazing. I don't know how he does it, but he does it and does them well.

He's always wanted to do this. His one child is young, one child on the way. It's easier to do it now, I told him and Priscilla, than it is later, when your kids are in school. He wants the chance to talk to the people who use Facebook and see how we're impacting lives. I think he takes that responsibility really, really seriously.

And you, how are you going to make these changes that you're talking about without being part of the public policy discussion?

I am part of the public policy discussion. I'm certainly using my voice as loudly as I can and making my public policy positions clearer and clearer. I am talking not just to broad groups in book events about “Option B,” but to groups of CEOs and why I think this is important. Why I think “Lean In” Circles in your company are important. Why I think your leadership on getting diversity into leadership matters. Why I think the way we treat our employees ...

The day after we launched our bereavement leave, I got an email from Lori Goler, our head of HR, who you know. It said, "What do," and it had four companies, "x, x, x and x have in common?" I opened the email and it said, "They all called me to figure out what our bereavement leave was today."

Ah, wow.

That's good.

Absolutely.

All right. Two very short final question. What is next for Sheryl Sandberg?

I'm going to try to take it day by day. I love my job. I've been here nine and a half years. I think —

Yeah. You have. That's —

I think Mark and I have a really special partnership. I think we have a lot to do to build community, to make sure people are safe, to make sure people are getting the information they should have on Facebook. I'm really excited about the next many years, hopefully, in this job, as long as Mark will have me.

Right. Oh, please. He can't get rid of you.

Our partnership is important to me, and I love the mission of this company. I think I'm trying to live the lessons of my own book, which I do sometimes. I fail sometimes. I try to appreciate every day.

Before Dave died, I never thought about it. Of course Dave would turn 50. No one makes jokes around me about growing old. I will never make another joke, "Oh, I'm growing old," because that's —

Not everyone gets to grow old.

Not everyone gets to. That's a gift. I want to find that appreciation, as much as I can, every day and appreciate it.

One very last question. What do you want everyone to remember about Dave?

I can't say one thing about Dave. Just how giving he was, how much good he did in this world, how special he was.

Fantastic. Thank you, Sheryl Sandberg.

Thank you, Kara Swisher.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.