“Let Them”: Who Really Came Up With It?
Ever since I read Sage Justice’s articles on the plagiarism allegations against Mel Robbins, I’ve been thinking about this whole “Let Them” situation. (Find Sage’s inspiring Substack here: https://substack.com/@sagewords2027)
Let’s review the timeline summed up in this YouTube video by Andy Mort:
Mel Robbins conceals the truth of her let them “discovery”
- Cassie Phillips wrote an incredibly relatable poem in 2019 called “Let Them.”
- It went viral in September 2022. (What a way to describe something catching on, eh? Aligning it with a virus. Cozy!)
- Cassie’s follow-up poem titled “Let You” goes viral in October 2022.
- Mel Robbins’ team allegedly shared Cassie’s “Let Them” poem on her Instagram account sometime in 2023. (I wasn’t able to find actual evidence of this in my research, just people claiming to have seen it. If anyone has a screenshot, please send it my way and I’ll link it here.)
- Mel has a TikTok sharing “her discovery” of “Let Them” during the pre-prom festivities at her home for her son, Oakley, and his friends in May 2023.
- According to Mel’s account in her book (I’ve listened to the first two chapters on Audible), her daughter Kendall kept repeating the words “Mom! LET THEM” as Mel attempted to micromanage the group of teenagers, who just wanted to be crazy kids in full prom attire, eating dinner beforehand at a local taco stand in a rainstorm. It’s a delightful story.
- May of 2024 — The MR team files to trademark the phrase “Let Them” (which you can’t actually do…two little words in succession floating through the zeitgeist can’t be trademarked. Just ask DJT about “You’re Fired” or Paris Hilton about “That’s Hot”).
- Fall 2024 — MR begins publicity for her upcoming book, “The Let Them Theory”
- Mel claims it as her own discovery when she releases said book in late 2024.
- December 2024 — MR’s book is published by HayHouse and becomes an instant New York Times bestseller.
Within the past couple of months, Sage Justice has taken the mantle of crusading for Cassie Phillips to get credit for her original idea and for starting the “Let Them” movement; this noble cause has begun to pick up steam.
There was an article in the NY Post (so please consider the source) about it just yesterday where Mel responds to the accusations: New York Post article
And I read a post or comment (apologies to whoever wrote this, I didn’t mark it and now I can’t locate it) that calls out Mel as a fraud…that “self-help gurus” (Oprah, Gabriel Bernstein, Deepak Chopra, and Jay Shetty were all mentioned) are basically grifters, scamming gullible people out of their hard-earned money with trite self-help tomes tucked inside great publicity maneuvers.
Well, sure. That’s what it is if that’s how you see it. (“That’s just, like, your opinion, man.” — The Dude, The Big Lebowski)
If that’s how you view the world, then you’ll perceive the messages as nothing but “more self-help bullshit.”
Perspective is important, and we all have our own.
Then there are MR’s vehement defenders who borderline idolize her and view her as infallible in the comment sections, although I’ll admit two things:
In my research for this article, I’ve found way more people bashing her then defending her at this particular time, and
I wouldn’t classify my personal admiration for Mel as idolatry or “she can do no wrong” by any means, but I am well-known for referring to her as “my future bestie” in past articles and blog posts.
So yes, that happens too. We have people that we look up to, that we admire, that maybe we see a bit of ourselves in.
Mel Robbins has struck a very relatable chord with millions of people. She’s also really good at selling her image and has been for a long time now.
And sometimes people need someone else to lead them; to guide (or flat-out tell) them how to think. There are people who are far too afraid of the big, dark, scary world out there to venture beyond the borders they’ve grown up in or transitioned into along the way.
One viewpoint is: Rich people are getting richer by packaging these age-old tropes, marketing them to rubes, and capitalizing on it.
Another viewpoint is: The current incarnation of passing age-old philosophies down through generations is through slick, well-curated packaging and marketing.
The influencers of today were influenced by the influencers of yesterday:
John Earl Schoaff → Jim Rohn → Tony Robbins → Too many to mention
Florence Scovel Shinn → Louise Hay → A whole bunch of people, including Mel Robbins (since Hay House publishes her books now)
Wayne Dyer. Ekhart Tolle. Byron Katie. Brene Brown. Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Caroline Leaf. These people and countless others have devoted their lives to studying, researching, and disseminating information about how our brains work and how we can better manage our negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
And these people all have families and themselves to support, just like we do.
I mean, c’mon…you think your religion isn’t a well-packaged and marketed philosophy? Think again.
That’s the thing: Spreading philosophies that’ve been in existence since time began — that human kindness over chaos and destruction is a better way to live; that peace, calm, and clarity are found within; that we are responsible for our thoughts and feelings — isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion.
And for the most part, all of this information is available to us for free…but the way of human nature is typically to consider something we haven’t paid for as having little-to-no value.
We also won’t learn something until we’re ready to *actually* learn it. We can hear the same thing a thousand times, but unless we’re in a mentally receptive mindset for that information — we won’t process and/or implement it.
That’s because there’s a component of our brainstem called the Reticular Activating System that filters out things it deems as unimportant and focuses in on things you’re interested in. For example: You’re looking for a new car — let’s say you’d really like a shiny new Ford Mustang Mach-E (in glacier gray, please!) — and suddenly you’re seeing them everywhere.
So unless you’re super into something, you’re likely to dismiss it.
These philosophies narrow down to one thing: They don’t pass the buck. They put the onus of how we react to things that happen in our lives on us, and that can be really uncomfortable to think about, let alone accept.
Notice that I didn’t say we’re responsible for everything that happens to us; I said we’re responsible for how we react to it.
It puts that accountability on us because that’s what it’s supposed to do. We are supposed to figure out that everything that happens to us, be it within our control or not, happens because we’re meant to learn and grow from it.
Those are the things that shape you into the person you are now and the person you can become.
So you can take anything that comes at you with cynicism, with victim mentality, with the vehemence of “I’m going to break that bitch down and destroy her!”
Or…
…you could decide to learn from it. You could understand that you don’t have to believe every thought that you have, that you don’t have to suppress and carry around every negative feeling you experience. You could start telling yourself, “I’m going to get through this pain, and I’m going to grow from this.”
Having said that, reactions aren’t gonna be the same for everyone…and they don’t f*cking have to be.
That’s the beauty of free will.
Cassie Phillips is a beautiful, talented woman who doesn’t currently have the financial means to go after the PR machine and multi-million dollar organization that Mel Robbins is the face and mouthpiece for. What she does have is her well-developed “let them” mindset as well as a group of thousands of advocates and supporters…and I’m now one of them.
But does that mean I’m joining the procession of MR haters? Not at all.
I prefer to approach this the way that Sage and Cassie are — let’s leave space for Mel to step up and do the right thing.
Granted, it’s not looking good at this moment, but who knows? Maybe she’ll have a change of heart and at least acknowledge that she didn’t *actually* discover an idea that’s been around for like, a thousand years.
What she has done is researched and fleshed out a concept (with the assistance of many other people, including her daughters), put it in a book, and she and her team devised a clever marketing campaign for that book. And that concept was based on a simple and commensurate philosophy: People do what they do, and you can’t control them…but you can control how you react to them.
And millions have found this groundbreaking, because they couldn’t see it until it was presented in this way by this woman in this time of our collective existence.
Even Cassie says that she didn’t discover it…she was inspired by Tyler Perry’s Madea character. And I’m sure Mr. Perry was inspired by someone else. And so on back down the line. As human beings we all have full, unabridged access to the Akashic Records.
My issue is how it appears that Mel is pulling the success ladder up behind her. Here’s a prime opportunity for her to champion another brilliant woman who has great ideas and important things to say, but instead it seems like she’s just glossing over it with plausible deniability. (Well, she is an attorney.)
I’m being careful with my words here for a reason. Here’s why: We don’t know what we don’t know.
The other thing some people are throwing shade about is how Mel co-wrote the book with her oldest daughter, Sawyer, and at first didn’t give her credit on the cover but has since added her name to it.
But we don’t know if Sawyer was like, “Ewww, no I don’t want to be on the cover with my MOM, gross!” Or maybe HayHouse Publishing had the stance that Mel is the star of the show and there’s only room for one at the top…or or or…
We don’t know what we don’t know.
Maybe Mel actually never read Cassie’s poem. Maybe she heard the phrase, it sparked her to post that TikTok, and then she promptly forgot about it because she has three hundred people working for her, she has a family and home to take care of, she has a marriage to maintain, and she’s meeting new people all the time.
And then Kendall said it a few times that fateful day, Mel had that “Oh my God” epiphany moment, and the rest is her history…leaving Cassie’s history completely out of it, because maybe it wasn’t in her scope to begin with.
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not condoning her position on this. Personally I would’ve acknowledged Cassie and given her credit for the inspiration, even if I’d read the poem after the fact.
But that’s who I am. Mel is not me. We don’t all have the same perspective.
Listen, I firmly believe that Cassie Phillips has every right to be angry. I’d be pissed if someone tried to pass off one of my songs as their own, and I’d be absolutely furious if it became a huge hit for them. (I’d also be screaming “I KNEW that song had a great hook!!” from every street corner, but that’s an entirely separate tangent.)
Cassie has been handling this with kindness, class, and quiet resolve. She’s not badmouthing Mel; she’s speaking her truth.
From the New York Post article: “Phillips acknowledged that the spat is ‘a David and Goliath situation,’ but she just wishes Robbins would have handled the situation differently.
‘It just comes out as a very inauthentic way of coming up with something. Had she given me credit, that would have also given me a hand up,’ she said. ‘People would have found my art along the way.’”
Mel Robbins, on the other hand, had been virtually silent on this issue until that article in the Post, where she vehemently denied any correlation to Cassie’s work:
“When asked about the timeline allegations, Robbins reiterated, ‘People can obsess over any detail, but the facts are simple: I have not seen her poem, I have not read her poem, and it was not and will never be the source of inspiration for my book. This is nonsense. I have spent 10 years shining a light on other people’s work, so the allegation that I would steal someone else’s work is ridiculous. As I write in ‘The Let Them Theory,’ you cannot control what people say, do, feel, or choose to make up about you. People can say anything about you — at school, at work, on the internet — and you can’t control it. Let Them.’”
But I don’t think that Mel is a bad person; she’s an opportunist. She has her reasons for carrying this out the way she has, and we will probably never know the actual truth.
Perspective remains important, and we still don’t know what we don’t know.
We can keep parsing the timeline; we can keep railing against our capitalistic society that appears to continually reward notoriety over propriety.
Or we can do what Cassie herself is doing, what Sage is doing: We can allow room for differences of awareness while we keep moving forward, doing our part in achieving justice for Cassie.
No part is too small. Follow Cassie and Sage on social media, share Cassie’s story and Sage’s articles. That’s what community outreach does. People still have power.
And eventually, if the outcome ends up in the favor of the proverbial Goliath, (the equally proverbial) David can choose to…let them.