Option B

Our Review

Whilst volunteering as a bereavement counsellor I read a lot of books on grief and people’s experiences on grief. This is probably one of the best books I have read on this subject, particularly for those readers who are currently going through the bereavement process.

Option B provides just enough research data for those looking at it from a clinical point of view without it overwhelming the wealth of personal experience providing in the book. The authors Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant have done a good job.

Sheryl Sandberg’s husband died suddenly whilst they were in Mexico celebrating a friend’s birthday. She felt like she was never going to stop feeling like her world had just ended. Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, helped her to overcome the worst of it with a few simple strategies. These strategies are shared in the book, along with a wide variety of experiences of different people experiencing hardships.

Option B is a book about building resilience and how it can be used to overcome different situations. Illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war.

Sheryl and her husband had met through mutual friends and were friends for more than six years before they got together.

Dave used to say that when he met me it was love at first sight, but he had to wait a long time for me to become ‘smart enough to ditch those losers’ and date him.

They had been married for eleven years when he died.

And so began the rest of my life. It was – and still is – a life I never would have chosen, a life I was completely unprepared for. The unimaginable. Sitting down with my son and daughter and telling them that their father had died. Hearing their screams joined by my own. The funeral speeches where people spoke of Dave in the past tense.

Everyone’s experience of grief and loss is different but this book provides some general suggestions for working through feelings which can be experienced after a bereavement or any other loss.

As Sandberg and Grant suggest, Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.

Our Final Rating...

Tue, 16th May 2017