To be honest, I never intended for Wyld to become just a skincare company. When I first started several years ago, I was doing much more than skincare – from dyeing textiles and weaving baskets with local plants to hand-dipped beeswax candles and other home goods.
I had an overwhelming amount of things to learn in the basketweaving and textile dyeing categories, but I was motivated because it was a lot of work to harvest, dry and prepare local grasses for weaving, or transfer color from plants to untreated linen and wool. But of course there was also so much joy and wonder in it. The whole world became more alive to me. Even the tiniest beings glittered and sparkled, instructed and guided.
I’d also started exploring woodwork – simple stuff – making coasters and candleholders out of fallen birch branches.
But admittedly I had a notebook full of ideas. I’d drafted designs for everything from long-handled kitchen utensils to some furniture pieces that I still dream about to this day.
And of course I had body/skin products as well, some that we still offer, others that have been phased out and replaced with newer products, which came out of a million reformulations and a lot, lot, lot of research – user research, product research, ingredient research, etc.
Some of my research findings didn’t make sense. They didn’t fit into preconceived notions, didn’t resonate with all of the marketing claims out there, didn’t give the results I expected. It took some time for me to find a way forward. Should I go along with what everyone else is saying and doing, or go off on a different path based that feels more true and right? Do I stay the course with my current products because of the enormous investment I’d put into them, or do I really start again with products that I could stand behind 100%?
Eventually I decided to try and remove all of the high-PUFA oils from Wyld products (read about PUFAs here), which was a big undertaking. It called for a lot of reformulating, which meant scratching most of the products I’d worked so hard on, throwing away those labels and certifications.
I was struggling to create a natural soap base that ticked off all the boxes. Then one day I was playing around at home, trying to refill all of the empty jars and bottles around our house. We were out of soap. My husband was out of grooming oil and complaining about itchy skin under his beard. Even the diaper cream jar was empty. So I went to the kitchen and started melting and measuring with the limited materials I keep at home. Into the soap base went totally new ingredients, including some extra shea butter, which I was sure would ruin the soap base, and an oil I had stashed in the back of the drawer because I didn’t have enough coconut oil. It was just for us though, so oh well.
To my utter shock, the soap base was better than ever! I couldn’t believe it. I then used this soap base to make some hand & body soaps – best damn soaps I’d ever made. So I kinda accidentally found a low-PUFA soap formula that is still the base of all Wyld hand & body soaps.
To this day I cannot keep these soaps in stock.
This is why I prefer working in a studio rather than a sterilized lab, and why I choose to keep handcrafting our products rather than contracting out the production. But we have a whole post on this already titled Why We Handcraft.
A similar thing happened with Wyld face oils, which are a result of just spending time in nature, learning from and experimenting with local things like wild rose, elder, sea buckthorn, spruce and more. It was a relief to find simple, solutions that really worked, a release from the overly-complicated skincare regimes on the market today, as we’re constantly being sold on perfect skin, not healthy skin – sold on looking good, not feeling good.
Labels were printed – safety assessments were performed – products were registered – three things that are incredibly expensive.
There was no going back from this, financially. The 2.0 body and skin products became our permanent line.
For a while, my business advisors had been saying that Wyld needed a focus. There was too much going on, they said. I participated in some design markets around Sweden and Denmark and found that people had the same confused reaction. Perhaps I did need to focus on something, make it the very best I could, let go of everything else. It did make sense.
Around this time I had a crazy dream. I dreamt that my hands were full of broken glass, and I was pulling the shards out one by one. Some pieces were really big and the pain was almost more than I could bear. But I knew that I had to get the glass out. There were even a few nails or screws driven deep into my skin. As I pulled them out, I vomited from the pain. I’m not sure how the screws got in there because the glass was from my mobile phone screen, which had shattered when I dropped it. Another interesting thing – the screen wasn’t shattered until I picked it up, and the more I tried to use it (trying to send a message), the more broken it became until the entire screen became shards in my hands. I almost never remember my dreams, so when I do, I feel there is something the universe is trying to get through to me.
I thought about the dream a lot afterward. I came to the conclusion that perhaps the broken glass in my hands represented the pieces of Wyld that I needed to release, stop holding onto, stop trying to make them fit, just pull them out. Now I’m not so sure. It’s been years since that dream and now when I think about it, I think it had more to do with communication.
I have absolutely no regrets about how Wyld has evolved. I love our products and use them every single day. I love how the branding evolved – it feels so true. I love making the products, sending them out. But oh how I wish I’d had wiser people to guide me in those early years. I wish I’d had people who could have offered the right kind of support along the way. There were plenty of wounds that needed washing – not only my own, but wounds I’d caused too. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes.
The dream also helped me understand how personal it had all become. I mean, my hands! My beloved hands, my most trusted tools. My hands that guide me, that create and move life into being. They always have – even from a young age, making music and writing stories, things that allowed me to communicate from a real, deep place – and now today, coming to rely on my hands again in this Wyld work. Committing to make products by hand is an indescribable joy for me really, so of course it isn’t “just business”.
But with a focus on skincare products, I packed up my dye pots and stashed all the designs I’d been working on into drawers. I even navigated the world differently. I no longer saw the opportunities for color in plants. When I came across beautiful trees that had either fallen or been cut down for some reason, I just looked away.
My most joyous times were those in nature, harvesting wild materials, or in my garden, bringing those raw materials into the studio, experimenting. But I wasn’t allowed to share the new discoveries really. Even if I found a way to significantly improve a product, I was confined to the Wyld labels that had been printed, and to precise formulas that had been approved by governing bodies. Which was frustrating for me. It just didn’t feel very… wyld.
So that is why I’ve started this blog, the “studio” portion of Wyld, a space for exploring, for creating and collaborating. As I said in Why We Handcraft, I’ve always related more to being a craftsperson than to any sort of skincare professional. I hope this space will be collaborative, so please know that you’re always welcome to participate! Give me your feedback, pitch some ideas, tell me to shut up, whateva.
Again, I still believe 100% in our products – and use them every single day! – but Wyld has always been more than a specific product line. It’s a way of relating to and living within the natural world. I’m thrilled to move beyond the confines of Wyld labels here. To wildcraft and handcraft in new ways, with new materials and new knowledge. There is immense joy in sharing what we know, admitting we what don’t, and continuing to evolve.
So stay tuned for more Wyld-ness. From home projects, skincare formulas and natural living to book tips, meditations on womanhood and plenty of people who inspire us along the way.
Lately I’ve been returning to one of my very favorite poems by W.S. Merwin :
A Step at a Time
Now one eye daylight
and one not
there was a lifetime
before they flew
their true colors
but I must have known
the moment I was born
the pans of the balance
swinging along with me
always two poles
with the seasons rocking
between them
and the familiar the unexplored
the city the country
abroad almost at home
and home never quite there
just the way it was before
left foot right foot
on the same way
my own way
of finding and losing
and in my own time
coming to one
love one place
day and night
as they came to me
but the knowing and the rain
the dream and the morning
the wind the pain
the love the burning
it seems you must let them come
so you can let them go
you must let them go
so you let them come
– W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning, (Copper Canyon Press, 2014).
