The late author Sarah Mandel turned to social media during her darkest days. Before she died, she had one last request: For her friend to post her final video.
Sarah called and said she had a huge favor to ask of me, and that I could say no if I wanted to. I agreed to it without even knowing what it was. Following our call, she sent me an email with the subject line "Final Post," a message that she wanted me to share on her social media profiles when she died. I made Sarah a promise. Then I asked myself: Was I going to keep it?
In June 2022, I began freelancing as a social media manager for writers, and a year later, a friend referred me to Sarah Mandel, author of the memoir Little Earthquakes. Writers hire me for varying reasons. Most share a common disdain for social media, loathing the amount of time it takes to gain a following and create content for multiple apps. In Sarah's case, though, she had no time to waste.
Little Earthquakes tells the story of Sarah's battle with breast cancer, which she was diagnosed with at 36 years old, on the day she gave birth to her second daughter. It details how, after three months of treatment, her PET scan showed no evidence of disease. However, in the epilogue, she revealed a brain cancer diagnosis that came about as the book was in progress to be published.
When I spoke with Sarah on the phone for the first time, a month after Little Earthquakes was published, she warned me that the brain cancer sometimes caused her to forget things easily, and that she might do or say some strange things depending on what medications she was prescribed throughout her treatment. She worried that she might write or present things oddly, but I promised her that I wouldn't have her looking crazy on the internet.
My plan was to help her promote her book on social media so that she could reserve her energy for her ongoing battle with cancer. She agreed to record herself reading passages from her book, which I would post on TikTok and Instagram alongside resources for people struggling with their mental or physical health. Before being diagnosed with cancer, Sarah was a clinical psychologist. Despite her anxieties about how she looked and sounded on camera, she recognized that social media would make her more accessible to others during her time, largely spent at home, battling cancer.
Then, two weeks after she hired me, she was diagnosed with leptomeningeal disease and was told she had approximately eight months left to live. Leptomeningeal disease is a rare complication where the cancer in one part of the body spreads to the cerebrospinal fluid and the tissue that covers the brain and spinal fluid.
When she told me about the diagnosis, she insisted that we continue working together to not only promote her book but also to share her journey in the hopes of supporting others with a similar diagnosis. While some posts received minimal views and engagement, occasionally one would reach over 1,000 people and she would call me crying, thanking me for helping her reconnect with the world. "I just want to help people and now it's happening again!" she wrote to me.
It is true that Sarah was helping people, but people were also helping Sarah. For as bad a reputation as it has (and for good reason), social media provided her a sense of purpose and agency during a time when she needed it the most. Friends, family, and kind strangers sent her messages of support and encouragement, creating a virtual community that she could count on to be there whenever she needed it. Even as her voice and appearance changed dramatically, people continued to uplift her content and share their stories of illness and recovery with her.
As her disease progressed, I noticed her online more frequently, responding to comments and engaging with other people's content, especially during her hourslong chemotherapy sessions and unplanned extended stays at the hospital. When we chatted on the phone, she cried while giving me her latest health update, and the only thing that seemed to cheer her up was brainstorming ways to transform her pain into powerful posts on TikTok and Instagram.
Things had progressed to a new point later in November 2023 when she planned a spontaneous family trip to Vienna, Austria, to receive an alternative cancer treatment after her doctors expressed concern over her prognosis. "I will, no matter what, continue to fight for every single second of this beautiful life," she wrote to me over email.
Shortly after returning from Vienna, she entered a steroid-induced manic episode that kept her awake for several days in a row. She began creating and posting content at all hours of the night without running it past me first. The content she was posting did not make any sense to me, reminding me of the promise I'd made to her in the beginning to not have her looking crazy on the internet. It was at this point that I suggested we take a break from posting content on social media so that she could focus on her health.
After a few weeks, Sarah called and asked if I'd be willing to help her start posting again. Her voice cracked as she apologized for scaring me and assured me she was no longer taking steroids. She admitted that she'd never expected social media to become as important to her as it was. I knew this was no longer about book promotion but rather about her profound yearning for human connection. Leptomeningeal disease limited her access to the world, and social media was the last remaining doorway she had into it. There was no way I was going to deny her access to the community she depended on. I agreed, and we made a couple more posts together.
Then, in February 2024, Sarah called and admitted that she did not think she could make content anymore. As heartbroken as I was to lose Sarah as a client, I had known this was coming. Even though we were not working together any longer, I continued to touch base with her every few weeks just to see how she was doing. At the end of March 2024, I got the last phone call I would ever receive from Sarah, asking me for her final favor: Post her final video.
She said she had added me to an email list that her husband would utilize to announce her death to friends and family. She was unsure of her timeline, but wanted to make sure I had the message while she could still write it. I thanked her for trusting me to handle her final post for her, and said that I would not let her down. I used clips and photos she'd sent me over the several months of us working together, layering her message on top of them. I started the video with a clip of her blowing out what would be her final set of birthday candles and telling her husband, "I love you." I ended the video with a clip of her reading the epilogue from Little Earthquakes. As I created the video, I realized I'd unknowingly documented the ups and downs of Sarah's final year of life. It was a profoundly unsettling experience to make this video while she was still alive, knowing that when it would actually be posted, she no longer would be. Watching it back, a wave of grief passed over me as I thought about her two young daughters, who would have to grow up without her. I wondered how they would feel watching it, and prayed it would provide them with a small ounce of comfort.
I saved the video to her drafts and hoped more than anything that I'd never have to post it.
Months passed, until, in June 2024, I got the email that Sarah had passed away. My heart sank with the weight of responsibility I now had for fulfilling Sarah's final wish. The day after I received the email, I posted her final video to Instagram and TikTok. The TikTok post quickly gained traction, reaching thousands of people within only a couple of hours. By the end of the week, the post had garnered a million views, 75,000 likes, and more than 2,500 comments wishing her family well, promising to read her book, and sharing people's own experiences with loved ones who had similar diagnoses. All the effort we had put into her other videos paid off, too, as new people discovered her online. Her friends and family reached out to me, thanking me for memorializing her in this way. Her husband even offered to play it at her memorial service.
While I was proud that the post was a success, the only person I wanted to celebrate with was Sarah. I wished I could call her and give her the good news and we could obsess over her Amazon book ranking together as it rose by the hour. Instead, I logged out of her accounts and pulled Little Earthquakes off of my shelf, rereading my favorite passages. I kept her book next to me for several weeks, moving it around my home so that it was always in reach when the ache of losing her crept in.
Many people have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to social media -- especially when it comes to apps like Instagram and TikTok. Users of all ages report the negative impacts it has on their mental health as they are constantly comparing their imperfect lives to other people's perfect posts. It's important to remember that most people use social media as a highlight reel to keep track of their achievements and special moments. Rarely do people post the struggles that they are facing behind the scenes out of fear of being judged or ignored.
However, Sarah is proof that it is possible that the people who you fear will judge you are the same ones who will become your support system if you allow them the opportunity to do so. Yes, there will always be people online who disappoint you with their behavior, but often, users are logging on and searching for authenticity and vulnerability that they can relate and respond to.
As of now, 2.7 million people have seen Sarah's final post, and I am happy to share the responsibility of remembering her with them. Without this technology, many of those people would not have met Sarah and experienced, almost as briefly as I did, the light that she was.