2020 was the last year I bought an actual planner. It was the Aurele by @cocorrina.co and it was gorgeous.🤩 I used it for three months, and theeeeen the world shut down. All my clients cancelled projects. My day job closed it’s doors. Suddenly there was nothing to do but go inside. There was nothing to organize except my dreams, for the only thing in abundance besides fear at that time, was time.

And the question looming in front of many of us: what do you want to do with this one precious life? Now you have the time. ✨

In the magazine volumes that I published that year, I urged everyone (myself included) to really take advantage of this inner time; because as hideous as the pandemic was in so many ways, for a good number of us, at least in the beginning, we were also given the much needed gift of a pause.

All of that urging to reflect came from my first big entrepreneurial project and publication: The Starlight Journal, an illustrated bullet Journal for Organization + Inspiration. Ironically, the Starlight Journal went out of print in 2020 too, due to changes within Ingram Spark.

But it was always intended to be a place for those who identify as both doers AND dreamers. A place for the creatives to organize their lives so they can actually accomplish their big wild dreams. A place for people who want to get shit done without losing sight of the stars.✨

Because, frankly, it’s devastating how much of modern culture expects us to lose sight of the stars in order to get more done. That model is not sustainable. Get shit done, yes, of course. But never do it at the expense of wonder.

Losing wonder is far too high a price to pay. 💫

These days I’m getting a lot less done in the “everyday I’m hustling” entrepreneurial sense. Mom-ing is it’s own full time + job. (Literally ask anyone.) But at least so far, it doesn’t require much actual scheduling or organizing of my plans on paper. But I’m still dreaming. The creative faucet in my brain, it seems, cannot be turned off. And somehow, despite it all, I’ve finally learned to actually embrace this multi year invitation to slow the eff down and reflect.

So I’m more grateful than ever to finally bring you the republished and much more accessible version of the Starlight Journal.

Same lofty goals. Same ideals of dreaming and seeking and reflecting and learning and going and doing. Less pressure. And less price.

For years since I first launched this back in 2018 I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out why people were clicking on the ads but not buying. Aside from the price point being too big a risk for let’s face it, a beautiful but relatively unknown concept- Illustrated bullet journal?? What??- I’ve recently stumbled upon what may be a big other part of the reason: it’s too daunting.

The clues were there all along. When this first released, SO many people that got one gave me reviews like “It’s SO beautiful! I can’t even use it because I don’t want to tarnish it.” Which had me face palming despite the compliment because the point was beauty AND functionality. But as they say, you can lead a horse to water…

Then a year or so ago, @katenorthrup released her second book, Do Less. I love Kate’s other work and podcast and was eager to get her take on what I had been endeavoring to lead people to all along (that is, the reintegration of the divine feminine and the BALANCE of the sacred feminine with the masculine’s much esteemed tropes of “get shit done” and “hustle” and “do do do! And then do more!”). So I got her book and started reading…

….and then somewhere in the middle of the book, after a long day of pandemic BS and working hard trying to overcome it and still get shit done and make ends meet, I held the book in my hands and admitted to myself “I’m only reading this to accomplish something else on my list. I don’t want to do this now. My body is screaming for rest and this is fascinating but it is not rest. Ironically, in order to DO LESS…I can’t do this.” So I put it down and went to bed.

And it is only now, over a year later, that the fullness of that lesson hit me:

Sometimes we DO self care for the sake of DOING, not for the caring or the self. And it works against us, because it’s not actually about the care.

Sometimes a 250 page gorgeous hardcover journal full of deep prompts and someone else’s creative accomplishments is too daunting to put a pen to, especially “for self care.”

So I’ve made it smaller. More manageable. Less daunting. Paperback and more mass produced print quality. And cheaper as a result (though my portion of profits, which is always shockingly low in print on demand books, stays the same).

I’ll end with one final note; a permission slip directly from the author/creator:

Don’t you dare let mine or anyone else’s work stop you from creating your own.

Wreck this journal.

Listen to your body and your soul.

Leave it on the shelf if that’s what your body tells you to do, but never out of preciousness for this Amazon printed reproduction. If you love the artwork too much to tarnish, buy an archival fine art print and hang it on your wall. (I’ve got them! And I can always make one if I don’t. Just ask.) Or hell, tear the page in question out and hang THAT on your wall.

Use this journal to write and draw and dream and doodle and then tear it all out and tear it up. IF that’s what your inspiration - your inner creative genius/daemon- calls you to do.

Wreck it deliberately or wreck it with your many failed attempts at whatever it is you’re creating because trust me on this. Whatever you’re creating will require many pages and many hours of failed attempts. AND THATS OKAY.

If you aren’t willing to fail, if you aren’t willing to wreck things both intentionally and accidentally, in the pursuit of your creativity, your truth, and your inner divine feminine, then it’s not actually DIVINE FEMININE that you’re chasing.

Persephone was the perfect maiden goddess of spring and flowers, remember. AND she was the high mighty destructive queen of literal Hell.

(There are millennia of spiritual rites dedicated to the embodiment of this and sadly millennia working to suppress it, so go easy on yourself if it’s a challenge for you. Cultural gas lighting runs deeeeeep.)

But in the moments that you doubt your creative ability, or your feminine ability, remember this: The maiden has to DIE in order to birth the mother. (And the baby. And trust me that is some messy ass creation/destruction right there.)

With every breath of creation you destroy 10,000 potential creations - because you cannot do it all at once, no one can. If you fear the messiness, you will never start. And you will definitely never get there. If you fear the hurting of other’s feelings, intentional or not, you will never learn to speak your truth. If you fear your own messiness, your own destructive cutting abilities within, I will wager you’ll never truly allow your creative inner feminine voice to shine through, either.

Embrace BOTH sides of the coin of divine feminine, the creation and the destruction. And above all, follow YOUR inner truth. Do not worry about the mess it might create along the way. THEN you’ll be getting somewhere. 💫

And hey, if this hopefully-no-longer-daunting, partly guided, partly illustrated journal will help you uncover that inner divine goddess of duality, that spark of inner creation that whispers truths to your soul, hoping to be listened to in spite of the fear of expressing Her…you can get one on Amazon now! 🙃

In lightness, and darkness, and the whole messy spectrum in between,

Elise