Both deaths are woven into the fabric of my life, but they’re not what define me,” she said. “Joy is very important to me. And I can’t count on joy t… - Sheryl Sandberg

"Still, as everyone I know who has been through tragedy acknowledges with sadness, there are friends who don't come through as you might hope. A common experience is having friends who decide it's their job o inform grieving pals what they should be doing - and worse, what they should be feeling. A woman I met chose to go to work the day after her husband died because she could not bear to be at home. To this day, she still feels the disapproval of colleagues who said to her, "I'd think yo'd be too upset to be here today." You would think, but you just don't know."

I thought resilience was the capacity to endure pain, so I asked Adam how I could figure out how much I had. He explained that our amount of resilience isn’t fixed, so I should be asking instead how I could become resilient. Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity — and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.

That even in the face of the most shocking tragedy of my life, I could exert some control over its impact.