Lessons learned. Sheryl Sandberg opened up about her husband Dave Goldberg’s death during an inspirational commencement speech at the University of California, Berkeley, on Saturday, May 14.
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Dave Goldberg’s death has changed the Facebook’s COO in “profound ways”, she added.
After her husband died of a heart arrhythmia while the couple was on vacation in Mexico, Sheryl blamed herself for not noticing the symptoms of his illness.
She teaches some awesome lessons in life to live by – especially when experiencing tough hardships, such as grief and loss.
She continued: “It is the hard days – the times that challenge you to your very core – that will determine who you are”, she said.
In the following weeks and months, Sandberg drew on the support of friends, psychologists, scientific studies and her rabbi, she said. “It’s hard”, she said, according to Business Insider.
I admire Sandberg, for her many achievements, including launching an important discussion about how some women hold themselves back.
At times speaking through both tears and smiles as she mixed in dashes of humor with her serious message, Sandberg ended her speech, which you can view in full on YouTube, with a powerful, final message. “I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss”, Sandberg said.
One of those jokes came at the expense of Facebook’s Silicon Valley rival, Google.
“Many of you have already experienced the kind of tragedy and hardship that leaves an indelible mark”, said Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg to Berkeley’s 2016 graduating class. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn, ‘ and I accept it.
Sandberg lays out for Berkley’s graduates the bitter reality that pain and suffering await them: “The question is not if some of these things will happen to you”.
Her husband’s death, she said, was one of many challenges she has endured in life, many of which left her feeling like a “massive failure”.
“I’m not gonna tell you today what I learned in life”. She will encourage the Berkeley graduates to find the same gratitude and human connection in their own lives, while building resilient organizations. That address focused on ambition, confidence and gender inequality, themes she hit on in her 2013 book “Lean In”.
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“Some people felt that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they have an unsupportive partner or no partner at all”, Sandberg wrote.
