I recently finished reading "Option B" by Sheryl Sandberg, with help from her friend Adam Grant. Sheryl lost her husband David Goldberg suddenly while on vacation in Mexico. Sheryl describes herself as being in a void, her friend Adam teaching her about resilience, which is what this book focuses around.

"Option B combines Sheryl's personal insights with Adam's eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity." "...Option B goes beyond Sheryl's loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere...and rediscover joy."

Resilience is something Adam describes as a muscle that we all can build, that we are not born with any fixed amount, it's comes from within us when the time is needed. "Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. Option B illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces."

I think despite her loss and talking about her husband's death and how things played out around that, it is easy to relate to even if you haven't experienced loss. I discovered this book through my cancer support group that I attend. We read it together as a group and it fit well. I was able to find a connection in my feelings to cancer with her feelings of loss. It was a different understanding of the same feeling.

She wondered how people could on with their lives as if nothing happened. I was in the same boat. When I was diagnosed my world flipped upside down. I had to quit my job, I lost my hair, I went through three port surgeries, I was confined to my home, yet somehow the world went on as if nothing happened. My friends continued to move forward with their lives while I fell behind, stuck in a hospital for a year of my life.

There was another point she made where, after her husband passed away, many people would say, "I can't imagine." She said, "When I was on the other side, my reply became, 'I can't imagine either, but I have no choice.' I had no choice but to wake up every day. No choice but to get through the shock, the grief, the survivor guilt. No choice but to try to move forward." It was the same for me, once again just a different understanding of it. I know you can't imagine fighting cancer, having your body cut open multiple times, getting that sick, I can't either. However, I did it. I don't know how I did it, but I had to. I had to try to move forward.

There are so many more points or conversations she has with people that I was able to connect with and understand, from a different point of view. It's weird how we went through two different experiences, yet have such a common group on our feelings and the world around us.

I also have to hand it to her when it comes to the chapter titles. My favorite is chapter two, "Kicking the Elephant Out of the Room." Her elephant was the loss of her husband, mine was my cancer. She mentioned in the chapter that she thought about carrying around a stuffed elephant but was afraid no one would get the hint. I thought it was hilarious, I wish I would've thought about that. It's true, whenever something big happens like that, the topic becomes an elephant, and you're sort of riding said elephant because it only makes is appearance when you're in the room.

Sherly is the COO of Facebook, so whenever she talks about that or about how wonderful Mark Zuckerberg was during that difficult time for her, it sort of blows my mind a little big.

I think the only thing I had trouble with was the middle of the book because despite being interesting and everything, turned into a lot of story-telling. It jumped from her talking to this one person about their experience with this one thing to the next person and their thing, etc. It was hard to keep track of all the people and sometimes you didn't need a lot of that information, or for me, I wished it would've been broken down or done differently to get the point across without making it dense.

Overall though, I definitely would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it because it strays from my usual readings. I mainly reading my young adult novels, my fictional stories. I've never been one to get into biographies or non-fiction stories such as this, but I have to say, for this being my first, it made a good impression.

The book is easy to find and relatively inexpensive. I found mine on Amazon, my mom found hers on her Kindle, and my friends found their's at Target. If you're looking for a new book to read, I highly suggest giving this one a shot.

"I reccomment this inspiring book to everyone around the world. None of us can escape sadness, loss, or life's disappointments, so the best option is to find our Option B." -Malala Yousafzai