Swedish artist and writer, Elin Petronella has been a leader for independent creatives for nearly a decade. With her unqiue embroidery artworks she has exhibited across Europe, worked with luxury brands, been seen in international press and racked up an audience of 500k+ across social platforms (Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, Substack)

Yes! Intimate mentoring is a true privilege. If you are a creative mother looking to find ways to build or re-structure an ecosystem that can integrate and nurture your current life, don’t hesitate to have a look at my 1:1 mentoring.

The difference between elinpetronella.com and the Follow Your Gut newsletter on Substack is that my website is my main home, whereas the Substack page serves the role of a social media in relation to my overall ecosystem.

This means that Follow Your Gut will deliver free reading in the moment, but the long-term archive will be hosted here on my site.

To say that it’s easy would be a lie. But I make it work by building a business and creative work that aligns with my wiring, nervous system and current season. In other words: My businesses are built around autonomy, independent ownership and truth so that I am able to have absolute flexibility to adapt to shifting needs.

I don’t buy into the societal narrative that your life ends when you have children. Instead, I believe in mothering from a place of wholeness, which means I get to show my daughters that they too can work with their dreams even if they should choose to build a family.

I don’t like the concept of work-life balance, because it creates inevitable negative pressure especially for mother-artists.

You will most likely never feel like you are in balance, because there will always be more work or more mothering to be done. So to instead come to peace with “anything is better than nothing” has reduced the pressure, which in turn has allowed me to stay consistent even in the small spaces. Some days I may write a sentence only, other days I get to write thousands of words. It’s a matter of trusting the process and that there is time.

Society wants us to believe that we’re in a hurry, but what if we’re not? What if we allow our work to unfold naturally by seeing it as an invitation rather than an obligation. This reframe changes everything, trust me.

After having extensively tested Substack for two years, I have resorted to use Substack as a lead magnet for my writing rather than the main home. The reason being that you can never impact or control changes on third party platforms no matter how well-intended they start out. To run elinpetronella.com as my main writing home as opposed to hosting it on an external platform like Substack, feels deeply aligned with my values and long-term vision for this work independent of external changes.

The best is to head over to charlesandelin.com where you can learn everything about the power of modern hand embroidery.

I operate elinpetronella.com as my writer and mentoring home, whereas charlesandelin.com is focused solely on embroidery. My mission is to make the experience as clear and easy as possible for my audience to engage with the work that is the most aligned to them (can be either or, or both)

You can support my work in a number of ways:

Either by purchasing something in The Bookshop, or by becoming a monthly subscriber to the Hidden Shelf where I will share more intimate and personal writing exclusive to only dedicated readers.