Talking With Spiders

From the time I was very young, until just several years ago, I feared spiders. {ewww, creepy} I always thought it had something to do with the fact that older kids, okay, older boys would catch Daddy-Longlegs (also known as Harvestmen) and chase me, threatening to put the spiders on me. {I know, Harvestmen aren't technically 'spiders', but tell that to a 5-year-old girl}

I wasn't the type of person who would go running & screaming when I saw a spider. I would just back-up from it & scream (a sound that resembled a high-pitched Mermaid shriek). I think I scared more people from my scream than what possible fear the spider may have caused.

As I grew, I battled with this fear on a daily basis, especially during the warm season. When I got my first place, and lived alone, I had no choice but to 'put on big girl panties and deal with spiders'. Which, by the way, wasn't that easy for someone with minor arachnophobia.

Funny thing, even with my fear of spiders, I would sit and watch entire "B" horror movies about the giant spiders that terrorized towns; and there were plenty of those movies when I was growing-up.

My fear, at times, was so great that when my hubs was at work, if I came across a spider in the house, I begged forced commanded would ask our daughter to catch the spider and take him/her outside. Yeah, this made me feel so very brave and parent-like. Apparently our daughter has very good 'spider removal skills' though. She now catches & releases spiders in her own home, at the request of her husband; another person suffering from arachnophobia.

But then came a day about 7-years-ago. Right around the time my hubby & I became "empty-nesters". At first I thought my fear of spiders was diminishing due to my having no choice but to catch & release the fuzzy 8-legged creatures, since I was now alone most of the day while my hubs was at work. But then I began to catch them (in cups of course, with rubber household cleaning gloves on) even when my hubs was home. This amazed him as well.

My next thought was that my Yoga practice had increased my awareness & empathy of other life to now include arachnids. Which this very well could have been. I said could.

Of course the thought was there too that perhaps my fear was escaping me because now I watched our son-in-law wince in fear at the sight of a spider. NOT that there's anything wrong with his being afraid, it was just new to me. Especially since I was chased by boys with spiders in their hands when I was a child. It kind of "braved me up" so to speak. Or so I thought.

Then one night I had a very intense dream about a spider. I had spider dreams before. But none like this. My spider dreams never frightened me, for some reason, but they always did have some kind of 'surreal ambience' to them. But this dream, well, it really wasn't a dream, it was a vision. In my dream a Wolf spider was talking with me, telepathically. He was insisting that I move our pup's bedding and "check the area". Our pup's bedding lies between a wall in our bedroom, and our bed. They have a nice little nook where they sleep, really cozy.

Back to the dream. This dream was just that type of intense dream where you can't shake it. Can't get it out of your mind. By mid-afternoon I was upstairs pulling apart the pup's bedding. There was absolutely nothing wrong with their bedding....but the floor, on the other-hand, had major issues!

We had a California kind-sized waterbed at the time, in our second-floor bedroom. Upon moving the pup's bedding, I could see the bow in the floor where the waterbed was creating a sag. Had we ignored this much longer, we would have had a very huge mess to clean-up, let alone the possibility of someone getting injured.

So out with the waterbed and in with a traditional mattress. I thanked the Spider & the Universe and thought this was the end of my spider communicating days. Nope!

My nights were filled with dream, after dream, after dream, after crazy-assed dream with talking spiders. Not talking in the sense of you talking with your best friend, but talking in the sense of looking at me and me knowing what they were saying. I was warned about much, told secrets, and had peaceful conversations with plenty of spiders for the next few years. Even now I have dreams visions with communicating spiders in them. I've come to enjoy my visits.

The fear I once held was now vanishing. Slowly. But nonetheless vanishing. I have come to appreciate spiders on a whole new level. I don't back-up & scream anymore when I see a spider. Even when I'm up late at night working in my studio and a nest of spiders hatches ALL OVER MY CEILING! That was a bit daunting for someone recovering from arachnophobia.

And my visits have also taken me to a new level during my waking state too. It seems as though that now (or I just discovered I can do this) I can talk with spiders when I find one in my home. This 'gift' (hmmm) was shown to me when my hubby was having a difficult time getting a spider to move into a cup for 'outside transport'. I casually, without thinking anything was going to come of it, began to talk to the spider, asking him (yes, it was a him) to go into the cup so he could be taken outside, away from our cats, to live a "long & prosperous spider life". And he did just that...he stopped running up the wall, appeared to listen attentively, and crawled into the cup as if he understood each word I said. My husband kind of laughed, and looked at me as if he were looking at a 'friendly demon'. {spider whisperer, oh yeah}

I have now concluded that all those years of being in fear of spiders probably had nothing to do with being chased by boys carrying them, or having their freaky looking bodies crawl next to me (sorry spiders), or all those "horror" movies I watched, etc. What had me so 'grossed out' by spiders was the fact that I could "hear" them. I could communicate with them and I had no idea what was going on. {scenario: 6-year-old me playing outside with my Barbie dolls, furry black jumping spider comes up to say hello, I see a HUGE black spider approaching me and fear for my life, the spider is saying "it's okay, I won't hurt you", which, to a child who didn't figure it out yet, I was actually hearing, "run little girl or I'm going to eat you"}

I'm all better now. I don't purposely look for spiders. Although I can walk into a room, or walk onto a deck, or get in a car, etc. and "sense/feel" a spider's presence immediately. Ask my hubs, he thinks that part of "my weird" is pretty cool. But yeah, I'm all better now. My 'mermaid shrieks' are now left for stupid things, like turning a corner in a grocery store and jumping because someone else is turning the corner too.

"The itsy bitsy spider....