On June 1, a brief, emotional video popped up on TikTok with information about Sarah Mandel, a 42-year-old psychologist, spouse and mom of two younger daughters.
“In case you’re studying these phrases proper now,” the message on the display mentioned, “then I’ve died.”
She had requested for assist creating the video whereas in a weakened state after studying that she had little time left.
“Solely a yr in the past, I by no means in 1,000,000 years would have thought I’d need my dying introduced on social media,” she mentioned within the video. However within the earlier yr, she had discovered encouragement from the feedback on TikTok after posting movies concerning the course and remedy of the superior, metastatic breast most cancers she had been identified with in 2017.
And so there she was, delivering the information to the world and a cosmic message to her daughters, Sophie, 10, and Siena, 6.
“I like you and I’m so happy with you,” she informed them. “I could also be someplace past our ideas of infinity. That’s how a lot I like you.”
Ms. Mandel’s last video, a sequence of images and clips, confirmed her very a lot alive: blowing out a candle on a forty second birthday cupcake; stretching in her hospital room; dancing together with her household; trying thrilled after opening a field crammed with copies of her newly printed guide; and singing together with a band in a plaza after leaving a chemotherapy session.
The video was posted on the day she died at her residence in Manhattan. Her husband, Derek Rodenhausen, mentioned the trigger was breast most cancers.
The video has been seen 1.7 million instances.
Sarah Hope Mandel was born on June 28, 1981, in Manhattan. Her mom, Sally (Allen) Mandel, is a novelist, and her father, Barry, is a lawyer.
Ms. Mandel graduated from Bard School in 2003 with a bachelor’s diploma in effective and studio arts and contemplated portray and singing as doable careers. After school, she sang in bars and golf equipment, together with the Bitter Finish in Greenwich Village, however turned to psychology, a subject that intrigued her sufficient to take some programs at Bard and do volunteer work. She earned a postgraduate psychology certificates from Columbia College in 2009.
Whereas pursuing her doctorate in psychology at Rutgers College, Ms. Mandel labored as a therapist at a number of locations in New York, together with Fordham College’s psychological well being providers program, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Heart and Lincoln Medical Heart.
Quickly after receiving her diploma from Rutgers in 2015, she started work as a licensed scientific psychologist on the Institute for Conduct Remedy in Manhattan.
However within the fall of 2017, whereas Ms. Mandel was within the third trimester of her being pregnant with Siena, she went to the physician to have a lump in her proper breast examined. Her on-line analysis advised that it may be a clogged milk duct; her obstetrician concurred, however despatched her for a sonogram, which discovered that the lump was suspicious.
A biopsy confirmed that it was Stage 4 breast most cancers that had unfold to her liver and bones. After three months of remedy, although, she obtained exceptional information: A PET scan discovered no signal of most cancers in her physique, an almost miraculous final result. The consequence was so overwhelming that it left her in a traumatized, dissociated state.
“I felt responsible as a result of I felt nothing,” she mentioned on the podcast “Mothers Don’t Have Time to Learn Books” in 2023. “Right here there have been so many different girls with this illness who would simply do something to get this type of response. I felt nothing. What a betrayal to those girls.”
She was unable to cope with her devastation till she utilized a way — narrative remedy — that she had employed with purchasers who suffered from traumas. She guided them to dig deeply into their traumatic recollections, piece collectively even essentially the most upsetting particulars, then write them down and skim them aloud in remedy classes.
“I began to put in writing. The phrases simply tumbled out onto the web page,” she mentioned on the podcast. Quickly, she had what she known as her “trauma narrative,” which she learn to her husband earlier than increasing it into “Little Earthquakes: A Memoir,” which was printed in 2023 — two years after the most cancers erupted from a dormant state in her mind, which brought about her to surrender her psychology apply. In 2023, the most cancers unfold to her cerebral spinal fluid.
“Writing grew to become drugs to assist me deal with the uncertainty of the right here and now,” she wrote in “Little Earthquakes.” “And maybe the most important shock of all is that by way of the writing of my trauma narrative emerged my love letter to life.”
In its overview, Publishers Weekly wrote that Ms. Mandel “nimbly portrays the cocktail of feelings unearthed by the sentence ‘You’ve received most cancers,’ and paints her supportive household with staggering compassion. Her dogged struggle for her life will awe readers.”
Along with her husband and oldsters, Ms. Mandel is survived by her daughters and her brother, Benjamin.
Ms. Mandel had not informed anybody in her household about her plan to announce her dying on TikTok. Ms. Mandel had labored with Micaela Williams on social media advertising and marketing for her guide, and in March she requested Ms. Williams to work on the ultimate video. Ms. Williams laid Ms. Mandel’s messages over footage and video clips.
“She did approve of the ultimate submit earlier than she handed,” Ms. Williams mentioned in an e-mail.
When Ms. Mandel died, Mr. Rodenhausen notified everybody on an inventory of people who she had given him. After Ms. Williams obtained the e-mail, she posted the video.
“I didn’t see the video for most likely no less than 24 hours or so after it went up,” Mr. Rodenhausen mentioned in an e-mail. He added, “I’ve really by no means been a consumer of TikTok myself, so I arrange an account so I might see it.”
