Sheryl Sandberg: Mother's Day Different as a Single Mom

Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg became a widow unexpectedly a year ago this week, and she uses Mother's Day to reflect on the loss—and the challenges of being a single parent—in a new post, reports US Weekly. "For me, this is still a new and unfamiliar world," she writes. "Before, I did not quite get it. I did not really get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home." One bittersweet part is "how often the world would remind my children and me of what we don’t have," even through something as innocent as a father-daughter dance at school.

Sandberg acknowledges that she's luckier than most—she has money and a big support group. But her husband's death has given her a new empathy for single moms not as fortunate, and a new focus to complement her Lean In push for women in general. "We need to rethink our public and corporate workforce policies and broaden our understanding of what a family is and looks like," she writes. "We need to build a world where families are embraced and supported and loved no matter how they fit together. We need to understand that it takes a community to raise children and that so many of our single mothers need and deserve a much more supportive community than we give them." Click for the full post. (More Mother's Day stories.)