If you are here you are likely already familiar with Caroline Calloway. Recently The Cut published an article by writer Natalie Beach who recounted their toxic friendship and business partnership in excruciating detail. I commend Natalie for her bravery to step out of the shadows into a very bright spotlight to bring into fuller view what being a friend of a narcissistic influencer can be like. This isn’t a response to Natalie, it’s a plea to those who are now orbiting Caroline to do more than just enable the cycle she is currently perpetuating.

Caroline with Natalie

While my intrigue around Caroline’s story began with The Cut article, it is not what has sustained it. Within days of the article’s publication, Caroline became a member of an exclusive club of which I joined in 2011; the dead dads club. Specifically, children of fathers who complete suicide. I, too, was 27 when I lost my father in this way. Because of this, I feel a deep sense of empathy and dismay at the current spiral that Caroline seems to be suffering and the veil of apathy people seem to have toward her very complicated mental health struggles.

The common themes between Caroline and I don’t stop at dead fathers. We are both aspiring writers and artists, though I would say she is a fair bit more successful than I have ever been. I often have a difficult time executing big ideas and rarely complete projects. I have done some morally questionable things in the name of my own mental health (and the well-being of my children) that admittedly harmed others who depended on me to deliver something I ultimately felt I couldn’t. We are both privileged as white women who do not currently live in poverty. But being born into wealth is not a privilege we share, and that wealth has afforded her a platform I can never hope to enjoy. This opens her up to criticisms most of us would never utter to the average person experiencing similar life struggles, some of which she directly invites upon herself under the guise of asking for genuine feedback. Most of these criticisms are valid and generally go unaddressed while she engages in petty arguments about whether she has had fillers (she has) or actually has a management deal with UTA (who knows).

The divergence of our stories is great, though her background is largely mysterious and unclear. She speaks of being “dealt a bad hand” as the daughter of a hoarder who suffered from schizophrenia, though her idea of “underprivileged” is skewed by her own, very curated, life experience. While I spent my teen years in a group home and landed in my first apartment with a full-time fast-food job at 17, she spent hers at an exclusive boarding school which led to what she portrayed as an idealized existence at Cambridge University. By the time my father took his own life, I was a wedding photographer barely making the equivalent of minimum wage with two small children, a failing marriage to a drug addict, and undiagnosed PTSD due to extensive childhood trauma. She has a West Village apartment, goes to pilates and therapy five days a week, and sells ripoffs of Matisse's Blue Nudes to her 800k followers for hundreds of dollars each.

Left: Blue Nude by Matisse | Right: “Dreamer BB” by Caroline Calloway

If I sound jealous of her monetary privilege (which she often denies), it’s because I am. Who wouldn’t be? When I was 18 I fantasized about a fancy education at a prestigious university. Instead, I flunked out of a predatory for-profit culinary school shortly after a suicide attempt with nothing to show for it but 30k in debt (which I still carry sixteen years later) and a sense of accumulated worthlessness I have yet to shake. It was only five years ago that I was living in poverty after separating from the father of my children, so close to my mental breaking point that I had doubt I would survive the year. Luckily, in my time of crisis, I found a person who cared for me in a way that saved my life. They have provided me with predictable and unwavering support which has allowed me to finally begin to process the pain and trauma I had been gaslit by decades of institutionalized therapy to believe was self-imposed. While not all of my financial difficulties have been resolved, I have the great luxury of the love of my new husband and teenage children. If I had the option of switching places with Caroline, I would never do so. Even though she benefits from wealth and freedom I will likely never see in my lifetime, I have a rare gift in the form of unconditional love and support which seems to be seriously lacking in hers. This makes my heart ache for her and I feel the people in her life are failing her at every turn by enabling her extreme narcissism, drug addiction, and self-destructive entrepreneurial endeavors.

I am not in the least denying the problematic nature of Ms. Calloway. Whether she is intentionally scamming people, I cannot say, but it is clear she often fails to deliver on promises and business agreements. While she is obviously beautiful and talented, she frequently plagiarizes works of art and written sources in furtherance of her own image while squandering opportunities that her large platform provides her. She lies and twists verifiable encounters and engages with what many people describe in our current political climate as “Trumpian”, narcissistic-type behaviors that actively harm people she claims to care about. Let me be clear, no amount of trauma is an excuse for treating others in abusive and manipulative ways, but recovery from trauma is complicated and without guidance, especially in a time of crisis, these behaviors can be amplified and become dramatically more destructive. While she seems to be living a functioning existence with her cycle of therapy and self-care punctuated by enthralling encounters with mysterious lovers and fantastical adventures to balls in Scotland, it all seems empty and without meaning. She engages with the world only for validation and not for true growth. It’s transactional. She expects feedback and as long as it’s positive, things seem to bump along in an engaging and entertaining way for her followers. If the attention is not positive or self-aggrandizing, she becomes defensive and accusatory. Love bombing of barely-there friends turns into posts that could only be described as the Instagram version of Festivus. She deflects responsibility and embraces the chaotic, bohemian flaky artist image and somehow people buy this as charming and endearing. Instead of recognizing that this is a girl that desperately needs support and a new therapist that is actually invested in her mental health, people admire and are drawn to her chaos like it’s a romantic story written for their entertainment. But she is a person and she is obviously floundering.

I suppose at this point you are wondering how I expect her followers or anyone else to help her in any substantial way when those that have been in her life previously have tried to have a positive impact and failed. If she can’t get better with five-day-a-week therapy sessions, then what can I expect any average follower, friend, or family member to do for her? Please understand, I do not believe it is anyone’s job to save or help Caroline. She can really only do that for herself. What I do hope is that the people who engage with her stop enabling her bad behavior, whether that be buying her ‘inspired’ art (which she frequently doesn’t deliver) or by excusing her hurtful behaviors and lies as reasonable byproducts of trauma because they are not. What she needs is emotional support. To know that the moment she stops being this romanticized version of herself, that she won’t be completely abandoned. Because I have a feeling she has never had consistency in love and support without expectation, and that above all else is what it takes to heal from trauma. She deserves true healing and that will never come from someone hitting the heart below a contrived photo on social media or praising artwork she stole from someone else. She has to find value in her true self and abilities and I feel we, as her audience, can help by releasing her from any expectation of entertaining us. This likely means disengaging and no longer allowing her to use her platform in harmful and self-destructive ways, or at least limiting engagement to only reinforce positive behaviors. Sadly I don’t have faith that her audience intends to forgo their own morbid curiosity for her mental health. Here’s hoping some at least try.