I took Sheryl Sandberg's free 20-minute course on resilience to help me cope with the loss of my brother. Here are the best life-changing lessons on inner strength everyone could use right now.

Me (on the left), my three sisters, my brother, Matthew Ward, and my parents.Marguerite Ward

• My brother died of an accidental opioid overdose in May 2019 and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's husband died in 2015 of a heart attack.
• A few weeks ago, Sandberg and I spoke about grief during a time when virtually everyone is experiencing it.
• That conversation inspired me to enroll in Sandberg's free 20-minute course she created with her "Option B" co-author, psychologist Adam Grant about how to heal from a major setback in life.
• The course taught me a few key lessons: that resilience is a muscle we build, and one great way to heal from trauma is to write down three things you're grateful for each night.

It's been a year of struggle for me and my family.

We recently marked the one-year anniversary of the day my younger brother died of an accidental opioid overdose. It's been a year of picking up the pieces of my shattered world. But it's also been a year of rebuilding and regrowth.

Anyone who's gone through trauma or grief will likely tell you the same thing: strength and resilience isn't the absence of hardship, but learning to grow despite it. It's a process that takes practice.

That's why, this past weekend, I signed up for a short course on strength and resilience taught by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her "Option B" co-author Adam Grant. It's a free, 20-minute video series that breaks down the most important points from their book, which is all about recovering from major setbacks in life, like the loss of a loved one. The course goes through several topics: What resilience is, how to build it, how to feel less emotionally isolated, and even how to raise emotionally resilient kids. You can sign up here on LinkedIn Learning.

A few weeks ago, Sandberg and I talked about our shared grief. Her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, died of a heart attack in 2015. We talked about the mental shifts that need to happen in order to survive such a devastating loss.

We are not the only ones working through sadness right now. The family and friends of more than 100,000 Americans who've died from the coronavirus pandemic are also grieving — and there are millions more who are mourning the loss of their job, their identity, their sense of normalcy.

Learning how to build resilience over time is one major part of dealing with grief. It's a lifelong process. Sandberg and Grant's course does a great job of unpacking the most important points in the course. Here's what I learned about myself, my grief, and strength from the class.