This spur-of-the-moment post is an invitation to all of you to rewrite your BIO (or any story about yourself, if you no longer need or use a BIO). It could be a narrative, fairy-tale or a poem. It could be funny or romantic. It could be epic or heroic. It could be ANYTHING, just not the story you usually tell yourself and others! Feel free to share it in the comment section…
Yesterday I typed out the following words (on Facebook) impulsively:
I think I have reached an age where I don't need a Boring Bio any more. I have decided to rewrite it completely as a more quirky or poetic piece!
"Normal" BIOS are as dull as dishwater, just a list of so called "achievements", but Hags are allergic to both lists and achievements!!
Hags value hearing how hard you loved, not how hard you pushed yourself. They are interested in the risks you took and the unpopular opinions you voiced. In what you learned from your mistakes. In how you talk to children and animals. In your wildest dreams...
Hags sniff around under stones, collect bones and find inspiration in graveyards.
This will probably make me completely unemployable but I am self-employed, so who cares.
About four years ago the Husband and I agreed that we would both retire in March 2025. It seemed like a good idea at the time... Recently we said: NO WAY!!
But STUFF Boring BIOS!
The Pregnant Hag, AKA Imelda
The Pregnant Hag, pen-and-ink drawing by Imelda Almqvist
I truly feel this! Listen to any interview on YouTube and the boring part is always when a guest’s BIO is read out. The audience fidgets and waits for “the meat”. One Facebook Friend thought that the declaration above now IS my new BIO. Brilliant idea! I will consider that for sure, but here is what I had actually just written:
Imelda is happiest in the Far North (especially places where polar bears live!) She was born in the Netherlands but Sweden and Greenland are the places her soul calls home. She loves playing her cello in the forest and her swan bone flute by the Baltic Sea. One of her more unusual spiritual practices is taking her skulls for a walk.
She has taught on nearly all continents (but is still waiting for invitations from Australia and Antarctica!) She has performed ceremonies with groups under the Dark Sky in Chaco Canyon (New Mexico), under the Northern Lights in Greenland and on grave mounds in Sweden. Her groups have spent time with rock art in Spain and been sent on pilgrimages in London and Switzerland. Imelda has also taught slum children in Lima (Peru) and worked in a field hospital in Bangladesh.
Imelda is obsessed with languages and dips in and out of 23 languages when she does research and writes her books. She likes reading dictionaries before she falls asleep.
Imelda is a Daughter of Baba Yaga, a Pregnant Hag, who roams the Forest at night and lives in a Gingerbread House by day. She writes a dream diary every morning, makes a daily painting (or drawing) and always writes a poem before she falls asleep. She recently took up wild swimming (and enjoyed swimming with wild swans!) but fell off a cliff because she is a little accident-prone. Imelda’s life is never boring!
She Who Gives Shelter To Wild Things, drawing by the author
And below this post you will find my “BORING BIO”, up to now anyway!
The thing is that within me a much younger self awakened and felt excitement at being alive, when I wrote the version above. At 57 life is still about being in service and using my knowledge/skills to make a contribution to the community, yes, but not about “achieving”. What on earth should I be achieving at age 57? Feel free to tell me!
This post is really an invitation for YOU to REWRITE YOUR OWN BIO (or life story). It could be a narrative, fairy-tale or a poem. It could be funny or romantic. It could be epic or heroic. It could be ANYTHING, just not the story you usually tell yourself and others. Please share the best lines (or entire piece) in the comments. I cannot wait to read them!
And I hope that you will feel the same instant rejuvenation I did!
I try (but sometimes fail) to get out one essay a week (sometimes more), due to travel, international teaching commitments and family care responsibilities. If you would like to see regular posts about about sacred art, Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch (and of course short videos of all the wildlife here!), please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!
Imelda, London, UK
BORING BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST
Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) was published in June 2022.
The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.
Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.
Imelda is currently working on a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) and on more books in the Green Bear Series. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings, which can be watched any time.
Website:
http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/
YouTube Channel: youtube.com/user/imeldaalmqvist
Online School: https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imelda.almqvist/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/almqvistimelda/
Absolutely! Too often I've tried to write a "good bio" - and it's always a "me trying to be somebody else"! For me, it's this wretched societal urge to be acceptable and accepted, and we're all encouraged to do it; how many times in your life have you heard, 'Oh, you can't do/say that!' It happens to all of us. And it's too easy to get into the habit, when we want to do something a bit daring, to tell ourselves, 'Oh I can't do/say that!'
I'm a good way out of that habit now, after working on it for most of my life, but it still turns up now and again. Your post, Imelda, came up just as I'd re-writ my bio here 😅. It had hit me that my Substack was no longer the me I lived, and worked, therefor high time to do something about it, so I did. None of us are everyone's cup of tea, the likelihood of anyone being always liked and by everyone is remote, but what we all want to know is what the other person is really like. Telling stories that show what you feel inside does that. Sometimes it's hard to do, painful maybe, embarrassing especially if it's something we're good at, or one of those times you just go, 'Oh, ye gods, what a twit I've been!'
But telling those makes us feel human to our fellows; not like one of those poor lassies doing makeup adverts who look completely plastic!
So Yay, Imelda! Tell the stories about yourself that make your heart sing as you remember them. And tell the ones that make you cry too. Both inspire others, and encourage them to tell their stories too.
I love this!! A timely reminder that I desperately need to re-do my bio but have always been put off by the boring. Also a reminder my website is very out of date. I'm not sure it will be done today however. Here goes inspired by what I've been writing for my current year long online offering. Lyn dances barefoot in ancient woodlands with the Moon Moss Maidens who hold the wisdom of the ancient women. Lyn is obsessed by polar bears who visit her in dreams where they dismember her before Imelda shuts her in a freezer!! She hopes that one day a polar bear will come and help her escape from the freezer and they will spend the rest of their days together swimming amongst the icebergs. Couldn't resist that list bit after my Greenland dream!