It is with a light heart that I must inform you that on Friday the 20th of May we will be closing down the Wyld shop.
It may come as a surprise just as we were launching several new products. I know. Trust me, there were many exciting things in motion! And more than ever, I believe in the Wyld products and our processes wholeheartedly.
However, this decision has been in the making for many months, possibly even longer if I’m truly honest. I’ve taken all sorts of steps and measures to prevent it from happening, not really knowing how to let go.
For the past few years, I’ve felt as if Wyld has been taking and taking, breaking and breaking. But as I write this letter to you, I am beginning to see how much it has given me. In admitting failure – and I’ve had to – I’ve also come to understand the opposite side of failure, which is success. The two exist hand in hand, always. Now that the tears have stopped flowing, I can see how much I’ve succeeded. Perhaps not in creating a successful business that could give me financial freedom and flexibility, but I have succeeded in re-wilding myself from the inside out, which is the greatest gift I could ever offer this world. I’ve gained all sorts of new skills and knowledge that I would have never learned otherwise. Doors have opened that never would have otherwise. I’ve experienced the worst of myself, and the best of myself. I’ve had to heal some deep wounds and despite it all find the courage to choose love and joy in the face of criticism and rejection. And I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun. But perhaps best of all, Wyld has allowed me to cross paths with so many truly amazing people, plants and parts of nature – many of whom have become lifelong friends and allies. How can I regret anything that has brought me closer to the heart of life and this beautifully animate world?
Will the Wyld shop be closed forever?
I’m not sure. It will be closed indefinitely though.
I may try doing some pop-up sales via newsletter and/or social media, offering some small-batch products created with the wild, raw materials of each season. Due to the legal requirements for skincare products in Sweden, I cannot put these kinds of products on the market, but perhaps I can offer them to you in different ways, straight from my studio.
What about the whole Wyld brand and creative studio?
Well, Wyld must go on because it is in me. It is me. But what the next chapter entails, I’m not sure yet.
This decision to close the shop has sparked some fascinating conversations with other creative professionals. Conversations that have me thinking what it means to honor and practice our gifts. We all like to think of the creative life as a path. If we can just find our way to that path, right? But I’m not sure about that anymore. I wonder if the creative life is more like a wilderness. There aren’t always signs everywhere. There aren’t always other people around to give directions. And if there are people around, they’re giving you directions to their course in life, not yours.
I do think that today’s “platforms” are a huge reason why we feel there’s a magic formula to unlock the algorithm, a game we have to figure out how to play and win.
This said, I feel confident that as long as we’re following our hearts, we cannot lose our way. We might take a strange turn, or meander along a more scenic route for awhile, but if we are staying true to ourselves and our hearts, then life (or the universe, or whatever you call it) will guide us back to our life’s course.
At some point, with a little luck and probably a lot of hard work, the green shoots of our being poke through the dark, loamy soil and we grow towards the light, our moment of splendor. Who knows when or how it will all happen? Or how long it will last? Such is the beauty of life. Things come and things go.
Especially here in Sweden, small businesses flip constantly, oftentimes at the height of their success. The best bakery in all of Stockholm just closed its doors. Two chefs who ran my absolute favorite restaurant in this city suddenly disappeared. A remarkably talented ceramicist sold all of her equipment and went back to school to become a midwife. People have been begging her to create more pottery pieces, but her answer has been a firm no. And I get it now. Because behind all of these small, handcraft, wildly heartfelt, boutique-style businesses are one or maybe two real people who are giving it all, day after day. And sometimes these people need to follow a new vision, explore a different route, dream a new dream.
Nature is highly iterative and experimental, after all, so why shouldn’t we be?
Wyld was and still remains such an incredible passion. It is connected to my children, to my ancestors, to the seasons, to this place that I now call home. I’m so thankful that the universe chose me as its steward, although I honestly never intended for it to become a skincare company. To me, it was always more of a concept that could take many forms… if such a thing can even exist in our society so obsessed with definitions, niches, formulas, systems?
I pivoted into skincare for business reasons, and honestly I have no regrets about that – I trust life. I also love what we were able to create. However, I look forward to exploring this enormous wilderness of creative possibility again, to come home to myself, to be fully present with my friends and family who have also sacrificed a lot for this wyld vision.
Not only have I accepted a full-time job, but I have been taking film editing courses. Lately my dreams have been a combination of moving images along with words. Which isn’t surprising actually. I am a storyteller. Always have been. It is in stories that I am consistently lost and found. Not only in my own, but in the stories and songs of everything around me. The Wyld products were a way of telling some of those stories, and I look forward to seeing how they manifest next.
“There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
Which is why I can share today’s news with a light heart, rather than a heavy one. I’m finally able to let go of the Wyld shop as it exists today. My own way of finding and losing.
I am letting go of the heaviness and sinking into the horizon, which I know will eventually birth a new sun. I am clearing out and making space. And I am listening. I am dreaming again. I am doing something that, as a woman and mother, I know how to do all too well. I am beginning again.
Follow along @wyldstudio – which may have to shift as needed, but I will most definitely #staywyld there! I must. And hope you will too.
Thank you for being apart of this journey. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
I love you!
Bethany A.
Wyld Founder and Creative Director
