Q. Lexi tell us a bit more about your story.
A – I’ve always had a creative heart and loved trying different mediums of art. Photography and storytelling is one creative outlet that has always stuck. It carried over into a love for social media which then became my job. For close to a decade I’ve been helping brands and businesses tell their stories through marketing, specifically e-commerce marketing for women owned businesses. Watching other women build businesses & helping them grow has always been inspiring to me. Even when I was in grade school I was coming up with different businesses so I knew one day I wanted to build something big on my own. It had to be just right though. It never felt authentic to me to white label products or resale. I knew for me I needed to sell something I created that would HELP people. If a product doesn’t serve customers, I don’t really see the point. In 2016 I “accidentally” started a custom journal business. I painted the cover of a journal for my cousin’s LDS mission trip & that night had 5 orders. I ran that business until the end of 2019. It was hard to scale and at the time of my life, I was too overwhelmed to know how to grow it. Fast forward to the end of 2020… that’s when everything evolved.
Q. How did this spark the idea of journaling? What was your inspiration?
A – At the end of 2020 I got divorced. The divorce itself was quick & seamless but from day 1 of the process I was distraught. It was such a painful, lonely and depressing experience. A week or two after I told my family the news, my cousin, who works at a hospital, dropped off a grief journal on my doorstep. The journal was written for loved ones surviving a death. My divorce in so many ways was a death of what I once knew. I poured all my anger & sadness into those pages. I rewrote prompts to better meet the needs of my circumstance. As I started therapy, I started writing prompts based on the practices I learned there. Then one day in the middle of a yoga class I had the idea to create a journal that ANYONE facing ANY type of heartache could use. Grief is an emotion that we all feel when things in our life change, or we go through expected or unexpected transitions. I knew when that idea sparked that this grief journal was going to help so many people.
Q. Tell us about the journal and some of your favorite prompts!
A – Obviously all the prompts are so purposeful but I really love the therapy worksheets in the journal. I learned so much in therapy and was constantly mind blown that these skills for processing life changes & events aren’t taught in school. There are pages that help you explore your emotions, prompts to explore your triggers and what you can do about them, and mental health check in pages. All the journal prompts work best if you answer them honestly and unfiltered. Getting your true thoughts and emotions out on paper is so powerful. Only then can you start to heal what you’re really feeling.
Q. What else should we know about the LEFA brand?
A – This journal makes the best gift! I always recommend to customers that they have a few on hand to keep in their gift closet. There are so many random days when you find out your friends and family are entering a crisis. Things like job loss, divorce or breakups, physical injury or illness, death, community violence, abuse, faith transitions… the list goes on. Oftentimes when these things happen we want to lend a helping hand but have no idea where to start. This journal is a functional gift that will help them so much more than a plate of cookies dropped on their doorstep.
Q. Tell us where you can find this journal!
A – You can shop our whole line of products on our website www.lefacollective.com
