Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg delivers powerful words on husband's death - CNET

In an emotional speech Saturday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg opened up publicly for the first time about the sudden death of her husband.

"For many months...I was swallowed in the deep fog of grief...an emptiness that fills your heart and your lungs, constricts your ability to think, or even to breathe," Sandberg, 46, said during her commencement address at the University of Califoia, Berkeley, several miles north of Silicon Valley and the Facebook campus.

"I leaed about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss, but I also leaed that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, find the surface, and breathe again."

Sandberg's husband, Yahoo veteran and SurveyMonkey CEO David Goldberg, died at 47 of a cardiac arrhythmia a little more than a year ago, while the couple was vacationing in Mexico. And Sandberg, often fighting back tears, made her climb out of grief the centerpiece of her speech.

She counseled the new graduates to be resilient and to be wary of three common reactions people have when misfortune strikes. Don't automatically blame yourself, she said: "Not everything that happens to us happens because of us." Don't let a crisis in one part of your life blind you to the good things that still exist around you. And don't make the mistake of thinking that your sorrow will last forever.