Elizabeth Alexander and Sheryl Sandberg Discuss Love & Loss at NYT

New York Times's Philip Galanes moderates a conversation between poet Elizabeth Alexander and author/Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg about the loss of their husbands and the life that comes after. In his introduction, Galanes writes: "Over a breakfast of English muffins and cappuccinos (with a side of bacon for Ms. Sandberg) at Farmers Fishers Bakers in Georgetown, the women discussed the impulse to write about their struggles, the experience of parenting through grief, and the value in sharing our deepest stories." From there:

Philip Galanes You two are like amazing reality-show contestants: Handed identical baskets of horrible ingredients, yet you come back …

Sheryl Sandberg With totally different books.

Elizabeth Alexander I was surprised that so shortly after my husband passed, maybe two weeks later, I started writing things down. It felt unseemly, almost cannibalistic.

PG You felt compelled to write?

EA It was the only way I could know what was happening to me. I knew I was alive; I knew I had to take care of my children. But writing was like placing my hand on the earth. It wasn’t comfortable. It was more like living with the steady companion of my life: making things out of experience.

SS That’s exactly how I felt. I always wanted to keep a journal, but never did. I have a box of them from when I was a child. I’d start on January 1st and quit by the 5th or 6th. Then one day I wrote: “I’m going to bury my husband today,” and I didn’t stop. If I didn’t write every day, I felt like I was going to burst. I would walk out of the office, tears pouring down my face, and they would not stop until I wrote everything down: about the flight to Mexico [where Mr. Goldberg died], the way we didn’t go on the hike that last morning, the way they wouldn’t let me into the back of the ambulance with him.

PG Writing was a kind of self-soothing?

EA More like: If you can stay at the bone of what’s true, then that’s your lifeboat.

Continue at NYT.