“You Deserve To Be Heard”:
A Message For Our Daughters
As much as I would like to not ever have to mention the term Carolina Girls, ever again in life, I would be remiss if I did not include some of the wonderful cards and letters Casey received as a result of her ugly experience at that store.
You will recall she was called a shoplifter for going into the store where she had saved her money to buy a Vera Bradley wallet.
You can read the entire episode here, including Carolina Girls anemic and inept handling of a brewing PR/social media shit storm.
At any rate, for as ugly as they were to her in the episode and the aftermath, some really great things happened.
Casey learned how to use her voice effectively.
She learned how to spend her dollars where she is valued. As soon as she heard that comment, she put the wallet down and walked out. She (nor I for that matter) will ever set foot in that store again.
She watched, Carolina Girls after the fact, try to cover their tracks, including deleting comments unfavorable to their store (sigh).
But you know the biggest lesson of all?
Good.
Good people do exist. And there are FAR more of them then the ugliness she ran up against at Carolina Girls.
Vera Bradley corporate communications reached out after seeing my tweets.
So did Lily Pulitzer who also called, wanting to make sure Casey was okay.
The manager of a wonderful boutique in At Freshfields Village invited Casey to come in, treating her with kindness, dignity and respect, you know, what you would expect from a place you are giving money to.
And then there was this:
A Vera Bradley store manager contacted me, asking for a way to reach Casey. She had heard about the story and was mortified (as most were) and wanted to write to her
The card was beautiful.. but you now what made the grown ass woman tears flow?
Several post-it notes with messages on them. Messages that she needs to know and believe. That all of our daughters need to.
You are beautiful.
You deserve to be heard.
You are important.
You have value.
And you are loved.
I had friends who made trips to Vera Bradley stores to buy merchandise, just to show that #IStandWithCasey.
Connie, Margie and Karen all shopped at
Vera Bradley to show their support!
Karen, the lady on the right told me this:
“I bought the same thing Casey bought. I also bought the lanyard and pen set. I am going to wear my work ID badge in the little wallet. I will have Casey close to my heart all year long. I will smile when I see this wallet/ID holder and will be concious of the words I choose to write with these pens. All because of a young lady that saved her money and wanted to shop for a wallet.”
What’s my “end game”?, as one of the fake profiles asked through this whole Carolina Girls mess.
What’s my end game?
That our daughters know and believe those words. There are ignorant people in the world who will size them up, make assumptions based on nothing more than the things they see.
Those people are shallow and they are wrong.
But more than that, they miss out on some wonderful stuff that comes with getting to know someone different from themselves.
I can’t believe I’m going to say this but here goes:
Thank you to Carolina Girls because through your actions, as abhorrent as they were, you showed Casey (and many more) that while there is ugly in the world, it is far outnumbered by good.
