‘keep your heart wilder than wild’ …came from a broken heart.
In 2019, the author butterflies rising was deep in the healing process from a painful breakup. The relationship had been incredibly intense and passionate, and the breakup had been just as intense, and one night she found herself really struggling with all of the feelings of loss and confusion that she had been trying to sort. She ended up having a conversation with her best friend about not knowing how to reconcile all of that passion and not knowing what to do with all of those intense feelings.
Her best friend ended up giving her a really beautiful pep talk about how all the passionate energy was part of who she was and that even though the relationship ended, that energy was still inside of her and was still something she was meant to burn with and pour out into her life.
So that night, butterflies rising wrote the poem ‘a fire in that kiss’ with the line ‘so keep loving deep, and keep your heart wilder than wild’ to remind herself that the fire she felt when she was in love was still a part of her and that she could breathe all that pain out as art.
As a little more time passed and as she continued to heal from the breakup, the poem and quotes from it began to expand in meaning for her about healing from deep pain in all areas of our life. How especially when we feel deeply and passionately about things, the heartbreak of things going wrong or ending or being lost can affect us so intensely, and it can make us want to numb ourselves or close ourselves off. But the passion we feel for those things is still part of us even after pain comes from them, and we don’t have to close ourselves off; we can transmute that pain into more things that we are passionate about. And so she ended up writing the poem ‘beautiful stardust’ to capture a bigger message with the poems and quotes… that no matter the ways we are hurt or broken in life, we should keep loving deep, and keep our hearts wilder than wild… and breathe it all out as a something new and beautiful into this life.