Sheryl Sandberg on resilience during coronavirus: ‘Right now, everyone’s living in Option B’
“Resilience is not a thing we get a little bit of when we’re born. Resilience is a muscle and we build it,” Sandberg said. “We build it in ourselves, and we build it in each other. It’s about how quickly we recover and rebound from the worst events of life. And right now, everyone’s living in Option B.”
“We’re like so many other families where we’re mourning the loss of someone who was so important in his whole life, so important to the whole family, and not able to come together and have a funeral,” Sandberg said.
She urged people who know someone facing death or loss to reach out — and keep reaching out.
“One of the things that happens when people face loss is they then face a lot of silence from other people. People call the first week … but then after that they don’t know what to say,” Sandberg said. “Remembering to call and reach out not just day one but day five and year five, is a really important part of this.”
Sandberg said it’s also important for communities to build “collective resilience,” encouraging people to support one another despite coronavirus keeping people physically apart.
She referenced an example of collective resilience from a Facebook user: a woman who has asthma and a newborn baby, but whose husband is an emergency room doctor treating coronavirus patients. The woman used Facebook to find a stranger to lend the family an RV for the husband to sleep in, and then the woman started a Facebook group to connect RV owners with healthcare workers.
“That is people helping other people, but also that story shows how communities come together and give a lot of people a lot of hope that they’ll get through this crisis, which in turn builds that resilience muscle for everyone involved,” she said.
“Every single one of us has a deep responsibility to do what they can,” she said.