Grieving Daughter Finds Note In Fossil Purse While Thrifting
Unexpected Thrift Store Find
Photo of a little girl with her father and a black purse.
TikTok/Abrielle Clausing
On January 13, 2021, Abrielle Clausing's world fell apart. Her father unexpectedly passed away from Covid-19. As anyone who has experienced grief knows, the journey isn't a straight one. It ebbs and flows with some days being significantly harder than others.
It was during a "particularly hard grief week" when Abrielle, 24, decided to embark on some retail therapy. She used to love thrifting with her dad, and no one loved a good deal more than he did.
However, she didn't just want to shop for the sake of shopping, she had a very specific item she wanted in mind.
"My sister and I decided to go thrifting and I told her I wanted to find a vintage Fossil brand purse," she explains in a now-viral TikTok video.
And wouldn't you know, Abrielle did indeed end up finding "the cutest vintage Fossil brand purse" - seriously what are the chances?
And as if that wasn't serendipitous enough, it was about to get a whole lot more remarkable.
Inside the purse was a handwritten note:
"When you read this you will be far from me in miles but not in my heart. I'm here. I love you."
Whelp.
She immediately took it as a sign from her beloved dad.
"I knew it was from him," she told People. "I always check the inside of the bag before I buy it to make sure it’s in good condition. When I stuck my hand in it, I felt the piece of paper and when I took it out and found the note, I read it out loud to my sister."
"When I saw the note, it just confirmed that he was with us," she added. "He’s always with us."
Response To The Viral TikTok
TikTok · abrielleclausingAbrielle's heartwarming video has garnered nearly one million views and over 1,000 comments and it's making believers out of every single one of us.
"I'm so afraid that death is final and we just stop existing. But some things can't be explained. There has to be more out there!!"
"This was def him 🥹💙"
"I’m literally crying so hard. Someone would have had to carry me out of the thrift 😭"
"I'm honestly at a loss for words. Wow. Just wow."
Even Fossil weighed in, writing, "What a beautiful note to find. Your dad's love will always be with you. Sending you and your family a big, warm hug."
Her TikTok also opened the floodgates for others to share the signs they've received from lost loved ones.
"My brother passed away & years later I was at a checkout line in the store & at the cash register was a young school photo of him that someone left.... never made sense but I'll never forget it."
"About 30 seconds after bursting in tears thinking about my grandpa a car merged in front of me and the license plate was his name and his age when he died 😭😭"
"When my mom passed, days after I found an email that not me nor my sister had opened or read before. It was an email my mom sent us 4 years before with the message “open it when I’m gone, love, mom”. It had a beautiful letter as an attachment."
Love Lives On
The note Abrielle Clausing found in a Fossil bag while thrifting is now part of a cherished collage.
People.com/Abrielle Clausing
Abrielle has given the note a place of honor, right smack in the middle of a framed collage of her favorite sayings and things.
It's a beautiful reminder that the love she shared with her dad lives on, even though he is gone.
And whether you believe in fate or not, you have to admit the universe had an uncanny way of showing up just when she needed it to.
After all, what are the odds that a stranger penned a note with the exact words she needed to hear, placed it in the exact bag she was looking for, AND that bag ended up in the exact thrift store she was shopping in? Pretty astronomical.
And yet, here we are.
Life is full of unexpected, magical moments that often happen when we least expect it. And sometimes those moments bring us the comfort and connection we need most, reminding us that love...is never truly lost.
You'll Find Happiness When You Stop Trying to Find Yourself
You find yourself curious yet defiant towards this idea: that our quest to "find ourselves" is what's actually causing us to be unhappy. How can trying to figure out who we are be a cause for discontent? A lot of us have felt or been led to believe that we need to define ourselves, to figure out who we are and what we want, in order to discover what makes us happy.
But what if the truth is much simpler than that?
You'll Find Happiness When You Stop Trying to Find Yourself
We are living in an age where the definition of success is again changing. Being successful once meant getting rich, or bagging that coveted position in the corporate ladder. It still does for many. But the millennial generation is more likely to judge success by their ability to turn their passion into a source of income, by how many stamps they have collected on their passport, or by how many followers they have accrued on Twitter or Instagram.
So what is success, really? I will not answer that for you, because who decides which definition is the right one? Your idea of success could be entirely different from mine. So why should one be better than the other? Why compare at all?
What if I told you the same logic can be applied to happiness? The things that make you happy might not do the same for me. But shouldn't it stand to reason then than finding ourselves will help us better understand what makes us happy?
To live is to change
Before I answer that question, I want you to ask yourself, do you still like playing hide and seek, like you did as a kid? Or do you prefer playing on your PS5 or going clubbing now? You might have loved chocolate cake a couple of months ago, but maybe cheesecake makes your mouth water today. You never were an animal person, but perhaps suddenly, you find yourself secretly enjoying watching dog or cat videos on YouTube.
By now, you have probably picked up on the common thread -- your preferences have changed. We are constantly changing. Different periods, life experiences, people and places will constantly mold us into something new. We are always evolving.
So what use is it to seek to "find" ourselves, when the moment we feel we know who we are or what makes us tick -- BOOM -- we have changed some more? You will never find a fixed answer to who you are, because the answer is never fixed. And because you will never really find a stable answer, the question will keep gnawing at you, leaving you feeling incomplete and discontent. You will feel like a failure, for not being competent enough to even answer the most basic question: 'Who am I'?
Sit back and enjoy the music
How do you feel when a song is stuck in your head and you just can't recall the lyrics or the singer? Annoyed maybe? Even very annoyed? It's a powerful analogy, isn't it?
The moment you realize and accept that there is no fixed answer to who you are, you will learn to love yourself as is -- to simply enjoy the song, without needing to name the singer. The moment you learn to let go is is the moment you will feel at peace, because you will no longer be 'chasing' anything. You will simply be.
You are your thoughts. So let your thoughts embrace the chaos of flux and the constant myriad of changes. Accept yourself in every moment. Define your terms for your personal success and happiness. But don't stop there. Keep redefining those terms.
And finally, you will realize that you're no longer chasing something that always seems just slightly out of reach, but instead walking alongside change as a happy life companion.