TOMORROW ISN'T PROMISED
- Aug 13
- 5 min read
It’s been a month.
A month since I woke up expecting to celebrate my 32nd birthday.
But celebrate feels like a strange word to use now.
Because July 13th is now also the day my dear friend, Vanessa, lost her battle with cancer.
What was supposed to be a day about getting older instead became a reminder that getting older is never promised.
I met Vanessa in February 2024 on a wellness retreat in Bali.
The entire group of women on that trip was incredible, but Vanessa and I were part of a group of three who naturally gravitated toward one another.
Maybe we each recognized a little of ourselves in the others.
Maybe, in ways we didn’t fully understand yet, we were exactly who the others needed during that trip.
Whatever it was, we left Bali knowing our connection would extend beyond it. Before we said goodbye, the three of us agreed that somehow, somewhere, we would see each other again.
That trip changed all of us, but I think it changed Vanessa the most.
She had been carrying so much before she arrived. By the time we left, she seemed lighter.
We all did.
More hopeful.
Like we had started rebuilding pieces of ourselves we thought might stay broken.
That is the beautiful thing about meeting people while traveling. You can enter each other’s lives as strangers and leave feeling connected by something few people back home will ever fully understand.
I’m so grateful I got to see Vanessa again last August.
We traveled to Iceland to visit our other friend from that Bali retreat.
Somewhere between waterfalls, road trips, and long conversations, she shared the earth-shattering news.
She had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Stage 4.
For me, a breast cancer diagnosis will always feel especially personal.
Breast cancer tried to take my mom when I was ten years old.
But Vanessa was hopeful.
She knew the diagnosis was serious. She knew the odds were not in her favor. But her medical team made it sound like this was something she could live with, not something that would take her from us anytime soon.
I left Iceland feeling hopeful for her, too.
I was optimistic that we would all meet up for another trip together within the next couple of years.
We had talked about Greece 😍
A few weeks later, some girlfriends and I bought tickets for a concert the following summer, in San Francisco.
The concert was scheduled for the weekend before my birthday.
Vanessa lived near San Diego, just a short flight away, so I reached out.
She was doing well but had started treatments.
I was caught a little off guard.
In Iceland, Vanessa had told us she planned to explore holistic and experimental treatments before moving forward with chemotherapy and radiation.
She hoped those options would allow her to maintain her quality of life for as long as possible before facing the intensity of more conventional treatment.
Things seemed to be moving much faster than I had realized.
Still, we talked about the possibility of extending my California trip so I could visit her.
If the timing worked, I would likely spend my birthday with her.
It was another reunion to look forward to.
Even with everything she was facing, our conversation returned to travel, as it always did.
Travel became our language.
It was how we met, how we stayed connected, and how we imagined seeing one another again.
Fast forward to a few weeks before the concert.
Parts of my California plan had started to unravel, and suddenly I wasn't sure I'd be able to extend my trip to see Vanessa.
If I could spend time with her, I would make it work.
If I couldn't...
The extra travel to Southern California no longer made sense.
So I reached out.
But I never heard back.
For days, something felt off.
As I flew home from California on July 12, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Surely the cancer didn’t progress that quickly…
How would I know if the unthinkable happened?
Would I have to Google her name?
I had tried once before but came up short.
The next morning, Monday, July 13, 2026, I woke up expecting to celebrate my 32nd birthday.
As I walked out of a midday nail appointment, my phone buzzed.
“Hello this is Vanessa’s friend A******e. Just wanted to let you know that she was called to heaven this morning.”
My heart sank.
Ever since my message had gone unanswered a few weeks prior, I hadn’t been able to shake this bad gut feeling.
Suddenly it all made sense.
I’m grateful I reached out. I’m grateful her friend answered the question I never wanted to ask.
Then I had to tell our other friend. She would have no other way of knowing, either.
Almost immediately afterward, I found myself reading birthday messages.
"I hope you're having the best birthday."
"I hope you're celebrating."
"I hope today is amazing."
I couldn't bring myself to tell them what had happened.
Not on my birthday.
It would be too hard for them.
...
For them.
Yeah.
That's how deeply the people pleaser in me runs.
Even while trying to process the death of someone I cared about, part of me was still calculating how to make the truth easier for everyone else.
So I held two realities at once.
I was alive to celebrate another year, but Vanessa was gone.
Grief does not wait for the celebration to end before it arrives. It can turn an ordinary date into a dividing line between the life you thought you were living and the one you have to live now.
Vanessa doesn't get another birthday.
She doesn't get another trip.
She doesn't get Greece.
I do.
And that's the uncomfortable truth about grief.
I don’t know exactly what it means to live for someone who is no longer here.
I don’t think it means spending your life trying to honor their memory through grand, performative gestures.
Maybe it means allowing their absence to change the way you use your presence.
Maybe, for me, living for Vanessa means no longer postponing my own life.
Taking the trip.
Embracing the risk.
Giving myself permission to stop holding back from the life I want.
Stopping the assumption that there will always be another summer.
Another birthday.
Another reunion.
Another chance to say yes.
There might be.
I hope there is.
But tomorrow has never been promised.
Maybe The Reclamation begins when we stop building our lives around "one day."
The life you've been waiting to live is already happening. Don't wait until it's only something you wish you had lived.
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