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.
The 3 Main Signs You’re a Hopeless Romantic (and Why That’s Not a Bad Thing)
A hopeless romantic cant help but dream of their perfect partner, but there's a negative association with the term that we should change.
My name is Ricky and I’m a recovering hopeless romantic. I’ve been battered and bruised by unmet expectations, the slow crumbling of unrealistic fantasies, and the gradual jadedness of looking for an idealized version of love. In my younger years, I had big ideas and even bigger visions for what true love meant. A love free from pain, a love that offered salvation, a way to rise above the mundane, the struggle and strife of daily life, with someone by your side.
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I’ve experienced the poetically tragic and the ineffably beautiful. And, I’m here to reassure you. Because amidst the hopeless romance, there is hope. Hope for a more mature, balanced approach to love. One which catapults you to deeper levels of fulfillment, doesn’t avoid the tough stuff, and allows you to, paradoxically, get closer to the type of love you may have always longed for.
What Does It Mean to Be a Hopeless Romantic?
It’s likely you already know what it means to be a hopeless romantic. What image intuitively surfaces? The hopeless romantic is an archetype in its own right, playing out over and over in stories, music, film, and poetry. The phrase dates back to around the early 1920s, appearing in a short story collection, to describe the mixture of “ passionate (romantic) yet ineffectual (hopeless) love.”
Dictionary.com’s definition of a hopeless romantic is:
A hopeless romantic has high ideas for love and will do all they can to pursue them. Of course, characters we read on pages or see on screen often reflect emotional or psychological processes within; there is truth in fiction. Many of us have the inner hopeless romantic, a yearning to find “the one,” a desire to pursue love at all costs, to place it above all else.
Signs You’re a Hopeless Romantic
It’s likely, if you’re reading this article, you have experienced enough red flags in romance to know your patterns need closer inspection. Above all else, the biggest sign of hopeless romantics is that romantic love, or more accurately romantic drama, consistently takes up a lot of space. Either in being distracted by a new love, engaging in toxic relationships, recovering from conflict, or becoming codependent. Other signs include:
1. You Use Romance Is An Escape
Hopeless romance is immature, to a certain extent. The desire for fairytale romance is naive. Relationships take work. Beyond the honeymoon period of falling in love, a relationship will challenge you to grow and mature. You’ll need to navigate your own shadow, trauma, and defense mechanisms. You’ll need to work on communicating whilst triggered, or overcoming emotional fallouts.
All of this is anything but an escape. In facing someone else, relationships encourage you to face yourself. Hopeless romantics, however, tend to view romance as an escape. The desire for this type of love is a way to bypass difficult feelings, obligations, or responsibilities.
2. You Experience Many Passionate But Short-Term Relationships
Because hopeless romance is founded in an idealized version of love, many people find that, when the going gets tough and the fantasy starts to dissolve, they leave the relationship to pursue someone else. If love doesn’t match expectations, it’s always the relationship’s fault or the other person’s fault. Without self-awareness, this perpetuates the cycle of chasing, falling, and becoming disillusioned. As a result, many hopeless romantics get stuck in a simultaneous state of yearning and cynicism.
3. You Prioritize Romance Above All Else
There’s a difference between prioritizing meaningful relationships and family, from a place of service or love, and the hopeless romantic’s approach to prioritizing. A hopeless romantic will place the pursuit of romance above all else, often leading to codependent relationships that are so intense, and lacking in personal boundaries, other areas of life become neglected. They stop seeing friends or pursuing solo hobbies or interests.
Despite being unhealthy, hopeless romantics get trapped, because their idea of love means giving it everything, being passionate, and making sacrifices. There’s a seed of truth in all of this — love does require giving, passion, and sacrifice. But when it comes from an imbalanced sense of martyrdom, or a need, it becomes unhealthy.
Is Being a Hopeless Romantic Unhealthy?
Modern portrayals of love emphasize this mixture of passion and ineffectiveness. Forbidden or impossible love makes for a dramatic story. What would The Notebook be without arguments or barriers to love between Noah (Ryan Gosling) and Allie (Rachel MacAdams)? Or Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) in the Titanic? Or, stretching further back to the greatest hopeless romance of all, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet?
Of course, normal isn’t healthy by default. Hopeless romance often comes from a place of innocence. How can you argue against believing in love? Or wanting to find someone to share life with? The question then is, how does hopeless romance surface, and in what ways is it unhealthy, limiting, or holding you back?
I explored all of this in detail through my “recovery” from hopeless romance. Like most hopeless romantics, it got to the point where I knew something had to change because I was experiencing regular setbacks and heartbreak. I sensed I was stuck in various cycles of high expectations and disappointment, and intuitively felt I was placing too much value on my partner.
Impaired Spirituality, or More Satisfaction?
In Facing Love Addiction, codependency expert Pia Mellody explains one of the biggest pitfalls of hopeless romance — making your partner your higher power. By replacing your sense of spirituality or transcendence in a relationship, it’s possible to impair its healthy expression. This leads people to “try harder and harder to manipulate the other person to live up to the mental image they have created — that is, someone who will care for and love them the way they long to be cared for and loved.”
However, it’s not all bad. One study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships discovered that people in long-term relationships who had romantic beliefs reported greater satisfaction. According to the study, “romantic beliefs do not appear to foster false or unobtainable expectations for romantic relationships, and the concerns regarding the endorsement of these beliefs may be misplaced.”
The Hope Isn’t Lost in Love
I promised you there would be reassurance, and here it is — being a hopeless romantic isn’t a bad thing. I know from experience that there’s a temptation to judge yourself when spotting these patterns. How could you ignore the warning signs, and get stuck again and again? Part of the process of growth is to take what works, let go of what doesn’t, and build towards a healthier model of love.
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If you’re single, consider how you can reclaim the power you’ve given to the pursuit of finding “the one”. Know that true fulfillment comes from within. That being said, a deep, intimate relationship requires a mixture of self-fulfillment and giving. Don’t discard or suppress the inner romantic. Give a voice to that part of you, but don’t make it the leader of your inner kingdom.
The eternal optimism of hopeless romantics is something to admire. You don’t have to become cynical or give up, although that is often part of the recovery process. After exploring this within myself, and vowing never to be in a relationship again, I eventually entered a relationship that asked me to cultivate true love.
It’s not always pretty. But we are growing together, because it’s confronting and grounding, and doesn't allow us to escape. Best of all, there’s still space for passion, and romance, along with a wider spectrum of experience. The more these barriers and unrealistic expectations dissolve, the more vibrant the essence of romance blossoms. Not as a naive fantasy, but something we allow ourselves to indulge in, an expression that has found its rightful place.
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