Meet Our Team
Imola Tóth
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Imola is the original storyteller behind Raised by the Wolf and also a freelance writer and recipe developer at Elephant Journal and at Peaceful Dumpling. She creates vegan/vegetarian and gluten free recipes with a focus on intention and the healing power of plants.
Outside of the kitchen and away from the keyboard, she is a certified (but non-teaching) hatha and ashtanga yoga and meditation instructor, Wild Woman Empowerment and holistic health coach.You can usually find her at the farmer’s markets, Moon and star gazing but most likely at the forest where she feels the most alive at and where she also works in forestry, mainly as a tree planter.
Imola started Raised by the Wolf in 2018 as her personal website for her coaching and Feminine ReWilding business but after the pandemic, she turned the website into an online magazine for wild women and a community for those who are seeking to reconnect with their Wild and True Selves.
Connecting with my inner Wild Woman has been my transformational path.
Dear Wild Soul,
I wanted to share the story of my ReWilding journey diving deeper within, chasing my dreams, and eventually returning to my authentic myself and creating the life I always meant to live, in hopes to inspire you to do the same.
Leaving my old self and my domesticated life behind was not easy for me to do. Listening to my inner Wild Woman (or my soul) was (still is) not always easy either. Finding Her in the first place, was the hardest quest to do. I faced a lot of obstacles and backlash not only from my inner critic, but from external sources as well. I think that we all face certain challenges and times in our lives when we must take the journey (whether this be symbolically or literally) to shed the layers of who we thought we were in order to uncover the person we are meant to be.
The power of story telling is so important in cultivating meaning in our culture and in our communities. Unfortunately, the wonder of story telling around a campfire or dinner table has been replaced by TV/phone time. Though I do think some media has its place in telling captivating stories, it is the stories passed on from our elders to our young ones, that tell us about our lives and our place within the great web of the world.
If you’re interested in learning more about my story, keep reading below! If you’re interested in sharing your unique story here, feel free to email me @ imolatoth.healthcoach@gmail.com
The Myth of a Wild Woman
The life of the Wild Woman began not the moment when she was born, but 20 years later.
The Wild Girl grew up in a small, rural village at the Hungarian border. Spent her young years lurking in the forests, gazing at the Moon and the stars, foraging, exploring nature and the wilderness. Though she knew she was wild herself and felt the call of Mother Nature, she longed for Love and human connection.
She lived amongst the Tamed Ones, and although she felt like she doesn’t belong with them, she loved them and she wanted to be loved by them. But the Tamed Ones forgot that they also came from the Wilderness and forgot where they belong. They were blinded by consumption and conformity and slowly but successfully convinced the little Wild Girl that in order to receive that love she longed for she needs to become one of them.
Over time she forgot where she came from and who she was. During this time of forgetting, the call of the Wilderness became louder, but so did the longing in her heart to be loved and accepted by her loved ones. The two opposing forces were so strong, she was scared that it will tear her apart. Because she couldn’t make the pain in her heart go away, she closed her ears to the calling songs of the Wilderness.
She created a mask for herself and hide her true face behind it and buried her true Self. She played the part perfectly and became a successful member of the Tamed Ones. But deep inside her heart, something was still missing. Something was not quite right. But there was something deep inside of her that whispered “come home”.
In 2021 she packed up her belongings and traveled to a new place, South Korea, thousands of miles away from her village. She met new friends along the way, women from every corner of the world who were strong, fierce, wild and inspiring. Together, they helped each other on their journeys and explorations into the depths of themselves. She felt as though she had finally found her tribe and most importantly herself. She started to remove her mask more often and show her true face.
Eventually, it was time to leave this place and her friends to continue on her journey. Though she was sad to leave, she felt excited by the idea of returning to her tribe at home and felt ready to show them her unmasked face. But the little Wild Girl forgot, that it was only her who changed and who stopped wearing the mask, the rest of the tribe was still living the same life. When the Tamed Ones so her bare face they didn’t accept it and suddenly everything seemed worse than before. She had no idea how to transcend her reality.
She was confused and utterly sad. Yet again she tried to despise who she was – the turbulent depths that took her up and down and up and down made her sick. The pain and fear paralyzed her. Her body turned against her. She laid in bed for 2 years with severe depression, got diagnosed with genetic Celiac Disease which was untreated for 22 years, and caused Kazein (dairy protein) allergy and completely damaged her whole digestive system.
After getting hospitalized with acute kidney failure, when her doctors said her life depended on minutes, at age 23, her wild instinct came back to life: she knew she didn’t want to die so young. There’s so much more to life…
It can’t be that this was all life can offer to her – the Wild Girl cried out.
The night before her surgery (they wanted to remove her left kidney) she fell ill again and was tossing and turning in her hospital bed from fever. The call of the Wilderness finally reached her again, and this time, she had no choice but to listen.
The Spirit of the Grey Wolf visited her in her lucid dreams and took her to the places where she came from and where she always belonged. It was home. The home full with love she always searched for but in all the wrong places.
The Wild Girl knew there’s still a long way home, but now she knew which direction to walk. The surgery was postponed the next day as magically, her health drastically improved as the fever went down.
One day, she felt the call of her tribe traveling with the winds. They were signaling for her that it was time for her to leave the Tamed Ones and start her journey to meet her pack. The Wild Girl was ready to find her essence so she listened to the whispers that came with the wind and followed them all the way to India.
It seemed like the Wild Girl finally started to live the life that was truly meant for her. During this time, she grew more confident in who she was, she was not afraid of her differences and her true self, even if it was unlike her tribe back home.
She found a new tribe and started a new life, and even found the Love she was looking for and she choose to settle down. But the Wild Woman is not meant to settle or to be tamed.
The Wild Girl had yet to become a Woman. She had to taste her own poison to be able to find her own medicine, inside her.
She knew something was still not right, but couldn’t figure what was missing. One day, the Wild Girl was scared but still ventured to the place where Fire burned so bright that it illuminated her entire being, her darkness and Shadow. Finally she was able to see and she realized that she was living in a fake world with fake Love, surrounded by fake friends who kept her in this bubble so they can feed off of her essence. Without even knowing she was giving away all her powers. Eventually the little spark that was left from her light got fueled by her rage and turned into a beautiful flame, and she set everything on fire. She burned her whole world down and left the ruins behind to discover her true light. Wild Girl was changed after this night, and she finally agreed to return home, to herself. She walked away from the “traditional life” towards a life of extraordinary purpose.
The Pandemic provided the perfect chance for the Wild Girl to retreat herself in her cave, shave off her hair, sing her songs over the bones, dance naked around the bonfire, walk a pilgrimage of a thousands kilometers, face her Shadow, walk through the fire of transformation again to perform the greatest alchemy: to turn herself into Gold. And so the Wild Girl transmuted and gave life to the Wild Woman.
Free. Untamed.
Like the Wolf who visited her that night, she knew that we all are here to howl our own, unique songs at the Moon, wild and free as the beings we were always meant to be.
She learned to leap into the unknown, to trust her faith and express her Soul through wild, raw authenticity. She spends her days using her powers to lead others to listen to the call of the Wilderness, return to their own Self and sing their authentic song from their heart.
Slowly, she began to see how the work she did and the path she walked guides others on their own path and this created a community filled with more compassion and love. With the cycles of the moon and turn of the tides, Wild Woman again felt the call of the Wilderness but this time it was a different call. A new era approached her, she was ready to start anew and share her gifts with the Wild Souls who are ready to listen their heart and return home, into the Wild.