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.
How Business Conferences Are Bringing People Together With Irreplaceable Live Experiences
In our increasingly digital age, there are many social networks that claim to do the job of connecting creative and entrepreneurial people, replacing real human interaction. But if the industry conferences being developed and run by the major movers in media are any indication, sharing a live experience is still one of the best ways to stimulate fresh ideas and develop new connections.
The New York Times isn’t just writing for readers anymore — it’s inviting them to join reporters and sources to tackle big, burning questions about everything from what’s next in luxury to artificial intelligence. The Globe and Mail was recently looking for a bartender and a venue supervisor to staff its new conference space in Toronto.
What started three decades ago as a series of secret meetings on the future of music has become the gigantic conference/festival hybrid SXSW in Austin, Texas. TED — which launched in the ’80s as a conference about technology, entertainment and design — has ballooned into a library of 2,000-plus talks in 100-plus languages.
And at the eighth edition of C2 Montréal this year, May 22-24, over 7,000 creatively curious industry leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and other forward-thinkers will once again get together to develop the tools to take on challenges in their industries and unlock new business opportunities.
So, despite fears that we’re all becoming too web- and work-obsessed in an era of swipes, clicks and snaps, getting together in real life has definitely notgone out of style.
In fact, conferences are still king.
From big brands to small businesses, live happenings are having a(nother) moment. Not only do conferences allow us to get away from our screens and connect on a human level, but -- from branding, networking, revenue and happiness standpoints -- they are, quite simply, good for business.
Nothing beats a handshake
You might wonder why, in 2019, when we can all just Zoom, Skype or Hangout with each other anytime, it’s still worth it for some of the world’s busiest people to hop on planes and trains to actually meet.
For most of us, it’s pretty simple: at a gathering packed with diverse and engaged minds, you might hit it off with your next mentor, partner, best friend, or business soulmate. Never underestimate the places a good conversation can take you and your company.
It also turns out that we’re not as good at convincing people to do things over email as we think we are. A study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, found face-to-face requests to be34 times more impactful than email ones.
Science also says it pays off to literally reach out. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Chicago found — in four separate studies — that physically shaking hands bodes well for negotiations and is a welcome sign of cooperation to come.
Don’t underestimate the power of being there in person.
Experiences help us connect
Our wallets have spoken: people are collectively more keen to spend money on experiences than on things, and the business community isn’t immune to this. Cornell University’s Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a professor of psychology who studies happiness, explained to Fast Company that one of the reasons we’re all attracted to experiences over things is because we can share them with each other — they help us connect.
As Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington told The New York Times, even though digital may rule the day, “the need to actually be live and connect with human beings and listen to people in the flesh” is one of the paradoxes of our age.
Since most industries rely on building and maintaining relationships, in-real-life situations can effectively set you up to meaningfully meet other people.
Who doesn’t love a chance encounter?
It’s faster than an MBA
Another reason events are popular despite our increasingly time-strapped world is because they pack a lot of learning in. At conference events like C2 Montréal, talks, panels, workshops and, masterclasses are designed to teach participants something tangible that they can bring back to the office, and to generate those elusive “ah-ha!” moments.
Walking through someone else’s creative process, prototyping or problem solving are fine ways to get synapses firing and to make important intellectual connections. It offers you a chance to skill-up without going back to school. And the takeaways are pretty great. Once a conference is over, you can take what you learned from your experience and pay it forward for the benefit of your entire team — and it’s hard to put too high a price on that.