Sheryl Sandberg addressed her husband's death in a moving commencement speech

(Image credit: Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images for AOL)

last updated 15 May 2016

At UC Berkeley's commencement Saturday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke publicly for the first time about her husband Dave Goldberg's sudden death in 2015, Time reports.

She said she entered a "deep fog of grief — what I think of as the void — an emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even to breathe." Sandberg then addressed the graduates more directly:

I hope that you live your life — each precious day of it — with joy and meaning. I hope that you walk without pain — and that you are grateful for each step. And when the challenges come, I hope you remember that anchored deep within you is the ability to learn and grow. You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will figure out who you really are — and you just might become the very best version of yourself. [Time]

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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.

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