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.
Mindset Motivation: Why Embracing Your Challenges Will Intensify Your Mental Strength
Our mindset can be our greatest ally or a dangerous enemy. We spend so much time locked inside our heads that, if we don’t develop masterful mental skills, we risk falling into a downward spiral of destructive and deceptive thoughts.
The challenges we face can swiftly gather momentum, clouding the constellation of our mind and freezing us in fear. As anxiety and suspicion sweep our mind, we become so afraid to actually make decisions that every drop of power we hold to find a way forward gets diluted.
When tough times are at hand we think that life is out to break and burden us, but life only seeks to empower us. We hold the mandate for our existence.
Defeat will often appear as a giant to invade our thoughts, yet when we shut down the delusional nature of that giant, we can use its might to find a way through. Mental strength means that we use every strike against us as a reason to push ahead, every stumble as a position to rise from, and every closed door as a redirection to another entry point. We can elevate ourselves from hardship and adversity once we undertake the mental maturity to overcome it.
Mental strength is not born from privilege, superiority or easy living. It is constructed and projected by the minds of those that have seen the darkest days and survived the toughest nights, yet nevertheless focused on the merit of their inner power and virtue.
The muscle of our mind
Mental strength is not a gift awarded to us at birth; as children, we are dominated by feelings. They act as our powerhouse for expression and a means to get what we want; temper tantrum city arises because we are innately connected to emotions rather than thoughts.
Now, as adults, mental strength is something that we strive to enhance through the shadows of adversity and the profoundness of our pain. We gain strength with every obstacle we overcome that stretches our psyche to find solutions or to adapt to circumstances.
Our life lessons will resound on repeat until we can establish a level of cognizance and maturity with how we frame our mindset. Rather than look upon our times of hardship as debility, attack or limitation, we can use them as a credit in our mind bank of strength. Modifying our perception of the problem can lead us to intuitive disclosures and responses when we engage the full measure of our mind to reconcile, attune, and think outside of the box.
Enhancing creative vision from the inside to out
As long as we give license to extrinsic factors to rule our thoughts, behaviors and actions we will always be at their mercy. We weaken our own inner resources and we suffer in our thinking when we allow our mind to constantly immerse us in what is wrong or what we feel crushed by.
A messy mind creates an even bigger monster that stands over us devouring our mental resiliency. When we consciously acclimatize how we translate our thoughts, we begin to approach life and its clusters of challenges from the inside out, rather than outside in.
Clarity inspires emancipation from external influence. A path towards a solution is easier to find when we channel our thoughts and matching emotions toward it instead of blocking it from our periphery. The answers that we seek often come out of the blue, yet they reside within us from the wise river of our soul - just itching to be heard and observed.
The power of our mental intention
What we place at the forefront of our mindset is what we have the potential to create. If we continue to align our thoughts in accordance with our struggles, our fears, then we inevitably dissipate the mental strength we need to bravely rise above them.
Our mind is the conduit to our greater goals and dreams. Our desired outcome is found through the lucid window of our mental awareness and ability to absorb what hits us as an instrument for transformation and amplified intelligence.
We can broaden our mental dexterity through laser-like focus, embracing each challenge, and by believing in our own intrinsic strength.Our power lies in how we intuitively respond to our difficulties and how well we can unbind ourselves from our own self-induced mental barriers - the actual circumstance itself takes second place. Through a single thought that we perpetuate and internalize we can either accomplish our biggest fear or achieve our highest hope - the choice is always ours.
Flow through a stronger mindset
Rigidity in our thinking serves to constrict our supreme embodiment of flow and flexibility. Thoughts and feelings will come and go. We can choose the thoughts that we stick with and the ones we wish to lovingly scrape away. Mental strength is boosted by the capacity to diligently apply ourselves to what is thrown at us.
What we craft from our struggles constitutes a pyramid of strength that grows larger in volume and shape - the more we get through, the more confident and courageous we become.