This Was Naya Rivera's Final Message On Social Media Before She Went Missing

UPDATE: On July 13, 2020, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office confirmed Naya Rivera's body has been recovered at Lake Piru. In a press conference, Sheriff Bill Ayub said, "We are confident the body we found is that of Naya Rivera."

The original story follows below.

At the time of this writing, rescue efforts remain ongoing for actress Naya Rivera, who went missing on July 8, 2020, after renting a pontoon boat for an outing with her four-year-old son, Josey Hollis Dorsey, at Lake Piru in California. 

Josey, who recalled swimming with his mother, was discovered sleeping on the boat, safe and sound, three hours after the two were seen embarking on the water in the late afternoon. However, Rivera has yet to be found by Ventura County authorities, who fear the worst. Details will continue to emerge as search teams coordinate all attempts to locate the singer-actress, and our hearts here at Nicki Swift go out to everyone looking for answers.

Best known for her role as a powerhouse singer and queer, Latinx icon Santana Lopez throughout all six seasons of the musical comedy Glee, Rivera co-parents young Josey with ex-husband Ryan Dorsey. She has publicly stated on many occasions that she considers her relationship with her son her greatest source of love and joy. And this bond between mother and child has come to the forefront in the form of Rivera's final posts shared on social media just days before she disappeared.

Only days before vanishing at Lake Piru on July 8, 2020, Naya Rivera took to social media to share glimpses into her life, as well as to express her love for her young son, Josey Dorsey. Consequently, many of the Glee alum's fans have now interpreted one particular post as a haunting refrain in the wake of her disappearance.

On July 2, the performer uploaded a selfie to her official Instagram account (pictured, above), pairing it with a caption containing what many have interpreted as an almost prophetic last message to her fans. "No matter the year, circumstance, or strifes everyday you're alive is a blessing. make the most of today and every day you are given," Rivera captioned the post, which features a photo of the actress sitting with her knees against her chest, smiling into the camera lens. "Tomorrow is not promised." 

However, it's Rivera's very last social media post before going missing that has left fans grasping for more portentous fare in the wake of an unforeseeable potential tragedy.

As the news of Naya Rivera's disappearance broke, many fans began to zero in on her very last social media post before going missing, which was shared on both her Twitter and Instagram accounts: a sweet photo of the actress with four-year-old son Josey (pictured, above). Captioned with, "Just the two of us," it was uploaded only one day before the fateful mother-son boat trip. 

More specifically, as media outlets like Heavy have reported, social media users have pointed out an eerie parallel to the post's caption and a lyric to a song by rapper Eminem. The phrase, "Just the two of us," is also featured as a recurring incantation in his 1999 track, "97 Bonnie & Clyde" — a song directed to a child about their mother, who is "killed and thrown into a lake." But despite this apparent "cryptic" connection, Heavy emphasized that Rivera's caption was most likely a reference to Grover Washington Jr.'s 1980 hit, "Just the Two of Us."

No matter the possible (if not tenuous) connections between Rivera's post and a decades-old single, her final social media message before her disappearance is far more emblematic of something the industry polymath cherished: the relationship between herself and her only child, Josey.

As Naya Rivera was quick to point out after the birth of her son, Josey Dorsey, in 2015, the relationship between this mother-of-one and her four-year-old child was "a love never found anywhere or with anyone else." During an interview with Cosmopolitan, she went on to say that their relationship taught her to be a "selfless" and "much more observant person." 

Though Rivera consistently worked after her breakout role in Glee, appearing in the show Devious Maids and starring in the Starz television reboot of the Step Up movie franchise, her bond with her son even eclipsed her love for acting. "I'm a mom now, and what I love more than acting is being Josey's mom," Rivera stated to Entertainment Tonight in 2016. "So, I want to be here for him. And I don't want to miss anything. I'm going to navigate the right way to do that." And it's clear that she has.

Calling Josey "my greatest success" in her 2016 tell-all memoir, Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up, Rivera added, "I will never do any better than him." While promoting the book with Mini Magazine (via People), Rivera went as far as to call the project a type of concrete legacy for her son, expressing that she "[hoped] he would take away that growing up has its challenges, but behind every cloud is a silver lining."

If you feel like you need a resource after reading sensitive subject matter, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, or call the National Alliance on Mental Illness Helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264).