‘I Was Completely Shocked,’ Hubby Says (Exclusive)

Sarah Mandel lived transparently “in the good and the bad” and “let herself be felt,” says her brother

On June 1, New York psychologist and author Sarah Mandel posted a video on social media that stunned even members of her own family.

In the post, Mandel, who was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in 2017, announced her own death, just weeks shy of her 43rd birthday.

“If you’re reading these words right now, I’m dead,” reads the caption of the video, which featured a mix of personal videos and photos. “I wrote this message the week I was told I had weeks, if not months, to live.”

“Only a year ago, never in a million years would I have thought that I would want my death announced on social media,” she continued writing in the captions.

But “life is unpredictable and full of surprises,” she writes, and she found that the support she received from “old friends, new friends, and strangers” helped her face even the “worst days.” most difficult of this ordeal of cancer”.

“We all need hand holding sometimes,” she wrote.

At the end of the video, Mandel shared her love for her “beloved” husband and their daughters: “I would write it here, and if I could, I would write it everywhere.” Sophie and Siena, I love you and I am so proud of you. Perhaps I am somewhere beyond our concepts of infinity. That’s how much I love you.

Her husband, Derek Rodenhausen, told PEOPLE in an interview that he saw the video after going to Instagram to check if anyone had posted about Mandel’s death.

“I was completely shocked,” he says. “She didn’t tell anyone.”

Although her older brother, Benjamin Mandel, also didn’t know it was coming, he says the mother of two always saw the world “a little differently.”

“There was a family story where we were on a road trip and she saw this kind of dark winter landscape with a crow on a tree, because it was all kind of gray and dark, and she said, ‘That’s magnificent,’” he recalls. .

Then she went home and drew a colorful, happy picture.

Sarah studied art at Bard College, where she met Rodenhausen, now 42, after studying abroad in Italy.

The two married in 2010 and later welcomed daughters. Sarah’s career change to psychotherapy led her to earn her post-baccalaureate degree at Columbia University and a doctorate in psychology at Rutgers University.

Related: A woman who announced her own death organized a campaign to pay off other people’s medical debt — and she raised more than $600,000

In 2017, while pregnant with Siena, Mandel, then 36, was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer after feeling a lump in her breast.

“The thought was, ‘It’s probably just a clogged milk duct, so we’ll keep an eye on it,'” her brother says. But it didn’t get any better.

Right before her daughter was due, doctors ended up doing an ultrasound and a biopsy, and it turned out she had cancer.

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After chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Sarah took the drug Herceptin, which helped keep her cancer “at bay”, according to her brother.

“She no longer had any signs of illness, which was miraculous,” adds her husband. “Then we had a few good years where she was pretty healthy again.”

Related: TikTok Star Maddy Baloy’s Fiancé Held Her Hand As She Took Her Final Breath After a Year With Terminal Cancer (Exclusive)

But in 2021, Sarah started having headaches.

She went to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where MRI imaging showed the cancer was spreading to her brain.

“Then it was just a matter of trying to manage that, which involved several types of medical therapy, radiation therapy again, and that kind of kept things quiet for a while, but it eventually progressed.” , explains Benjamin.

On the same subject: Father with stage 4 cancer says goodbye to loved ones: ‘It’s going to be okay’

Sarah, who closed her practice in 2021 due to illness, later posted Small earthquakes: a memoir in April 2023.

“When she started writing it, she started incorporating memories and parts of her own life into it, and it became a memoir…but it also has a self-help element to help people people to know how to deal with their own trauma,” she said. said the husband.

Even though Sarah wasn’t a “social media person,” Rodenhausen says she began using her accounts to document her life and treatment because “she always felt like she had things to give “.

At the end of her life, according to her farewell video, “she was fortunately very calm and at ease in her final days of rest. As throughout her life, she spent her last night surrounded by love “She was cuddled up to her daughters, Siena and Sophie, just hours before her death.”

More than a million people have seen her post on TikTok since it was posted on June 1. And more than 3,000 users commented, with many sending him their condolences.

Her brother says she lived her life transparently, “both good and bad” and “let herself be felt,” which is a lasting message “so that we can all truly embrace life.”

For Rodenhausen, seeing the “beautiful” outpouring of support this inspires for their daughters in particular seemed like a final, touching gift from his wife.

He adds: “I loved her incredibly for those 22 years and we had a wonderful family.”

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