Fredericton Entrepreneur Asks Customers To ‘Follow The White Rabbit’
FREDERICTON — A local entrepreneur has created a personal journal that presents users with more than just a blank page. Instead, it provides ideas to contemplate and questions to ponder. Launched in late November, Danielle Leger is now exporting her journals across Canada and the United States.
Leger was inspired to found her personal journal business, Alone in Good Company, after years of journaling and encouraging her friends to do the same
“I bought her an empty journal and then I brought along all of my journals from previous years,” says Leger of helping out a friend who was in a difficult stage in their life.
“I told her ‘we’re going to do exactly what I’ve been doing for myself. We’re going to create an index with words and emotions and you’re going ask yourself questions,’” she recalls.
“[My friend] was very shocked that I had been doing this whole time and she thought that every year I had been buying these journals. She really gave me the idea to do something with it,” Leger says. “Two years later, here we are.”
Leger’s unique value proposition is the ideas introduced and the questions that follow. The journal gives approximately 40 words that are meant to be contemplated and worked through via the two questions that accompany each one.
“One of my favourite parts about journaling and what I tried to emphasize with this specific journaling practice, is it’s really about noticing what comes up,” she explains. “For example, if you were to ask yourself: ‘what makes you anxious?’ I’m sure a lot of people would have very quick responses.”
“I think those answers are important, and I think it’s important to get those down. But what I think is fascinating about journaling is when you really take time with one question and it becomes more of a meditation, it becomes really a deep conversation with yourself.”
Leger says that the quick answers need to get out of the way and be placed on the page, in order to let the other more nuanced and complicated answers come through.
“I have been very often surprised by some of the answers that show up to certain questions,” she says. “They’re kind of hidden away. That’s why I think that it is so important to sit with yourself, and hear yourself, because a lot of those little answers are very quiet.”
That conversation with herself was held not only in the pages of one journal but through journal entries over the course of several years.
“It’s an emotional dictionary,” she says of her previous journals, and the support they offer her when she feels overwhelmed. “I literally created this as a tool to refer to when I was in those intense emotions. I was able to go back on my notes and see what helps me when I’m feeling that way.”
Made in Canada, with eco-friendly, ethically-sourced and primarily local material , the 178-page journals are the culmination of more than five years of work, starting when Leger began journaling in 2017. Even in times when she isn’t looking in her journal for answers, seeing how her answers have changed over time can be beneficial.
“I really wanted it to be a solid journal for people to have all year long,” and to be able to keep for even longer, she explains.
“All the questions are intended not only for you to answer them in the moment and kind of go through it that way. But also… going back and rereading your answers.”
Leger also donates five percent of the profits from her journals to the Canadian Mental Health Association.
In 2020 Leger was on the way to becoming another kind of entrepreneur. A student of fashion design, she was working to launch an eco-friendly handbag company. When the pandemic struck, those plans were derailed.
“A lot of manufacturers in Italy that I wanted to work with were shut down,” she says.
But it did provide her with time to think about other ways that she could make a contribution and create something of value. In addition to writing the questions, she designed the book and website herself, including the cute bunny on the web page.
“That’s Winston, my rabbit,” she says, noting that he died earlier this year. “I chose him to be the symbol for the company because I love the saying ‘follow the white rabbit.”
“In this case, it would be when you ask yourself a question to …really go deep with yourself and really allow yourself to sit with a question as long as you can. Because the longer you sit with it, that’s when those questions at the very bottom of the rabbit hole are going to surface.”
“Whenever I journaled with him by my side, it was always a beautiful time.”
Alex Graham is a Huddle reporter in Saint John. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].