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

Anderson Cooper (0:01)

Welcome to All There Is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. My guest today is Sheryl Sandberg. She's a tech executive, philanthropist and author. She was the chief operating officer of Meta, formerly Facebook, from 2008 to 2022 Her husband, Dave Goldberg, died in 2015 He had a heart arrhythmia and collapsed on a treadmill while they were vacationing in Mexico. He was just 47 and their two kids were 10 and seven years old.

A month after his death, Sheryl wrote a Facebook post in which she said she would never feel pure joy again. But her outlook changed and two years later, she wrote a book with her friend, psychologist Adam Grant called Option B, Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy.

Sheryl and I talk a lot about resilience in this podcast and she has found joy again and love. Her husband, Dave's brother, Rob, introduced her to Tom Bernthal, whom she married in 2022 Rob even officiated their wedding. Sheryl has a very particular reason for coming on the podcast and I'm really glad she did because it's not a topic that people talk enough about. She's written an open letter, addressed to adult children who've lost a parent, and she's encouraging them to give permission to their surviving parent to find love again if their parent wants to. You can read the full letter on cnn.com and we'll link to it in our podcast show notes, but I want to just read you some excerpts from it before we begin. She writes, I hope one day smiles replace tears and can carry your parents' memory forward with love, not just longing. But I also hope that alongside your grief, you can hold the idea that your surviving parent deserves a chance at happiness. That doesn't mean finding new partners the answer for every widow or widower, but for some of us, it is one of the most hopeful paths forward. Because if you believed you would grow old with someone you love, the emptiness of that chair next to you can be not just hollow, but terrifying. Just as your parents should do all he or she can to help you recover, you have a real opportunity and dare I say obligation to do the same for your widowed mother or father. Even though it might be almost achingly difficult, let your mother or father know that you support them if they want to look for love again. New love doesn't erase the old, she writes. It just proves that there's more room in our hearts than we know.

I talked to Sheryl a couple of weeks ago in New York.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Sheryl Sandberg (2:25)

Thank you for having me. You've created, I think, by far the most meaningful place for anyone to talk about and think about grief.

I think it's a gift you've given. You didn't have to do this. You have a lot of other stuff going on. I'm grateful this podcast exists.

Anderson Cooper (2:39)

Well, thank you so much.

Sheryl Sandberg (2:40)

Grief is so lonely.

Anderson Cooper (2:42)

Yeah, it is.

Sheryl Sandberg (2:42)

It's lonely.

Anderson Cooper (2:43)

Had you much experience with loss before your husband Dave died?

Sheryl Sandberg (2:48)

None. I never thought about it. My parents are still alive. I had lost grandparents. That was expected. They were older, natural deaths.

I had no experience with this.

Anderson Cooper (2:59)

What happened to Dave?

Sheryl Sandberg (3:00)

We were at my friend Phil's 50th birthday party. The house we had rented in Mexico. That afternoon, which I didn't realize was an important afternoon, right? We were playing Settlers of Catan on iPads and I was falling asleep. Then when I woke up, I figured he was at the gym or having a drink with Salmon or hanging out. So I get ready for dinner. He's still not back, which seems kind of weird. Then I go where everyone's having cocktails and I'm looking around like, where's Dave? No one had seen him. Then all of a sudden, I just remember my sister-in-law screaming, where's the gym? We ran and he was on the floor.

He was lying on the floor, there was an elliptical machine, there was blood around his head.

I screamed, his brother Rob was there. He screamed, people came, the ambulance came, and the whole time, I kept saying, he's blue.

Sorry, this is so graphic, but he's blue, his face is blue. Doesn't that mean he's not breathing? Everyone was like, calm down. And then we got into the ambulance. The ambulance took forever, forever. I've never, nothing was that long. I felt like none of the cars would get out of the way. And then we got to the hospital and they put me in the room. Morning, my best friend was there and the doctor walked in a number of minutes later and had that look and I knew.