Snakes Under the Bed

What Our Childhood Fears May Be Telling Us About Ourselves

I am not sure how old I was when I began to feel them.

Not just one snake. Not just two.

Discounted by my mom as the very vivid imagination of a troubled child, or a sneaky way of avoiding bedtime, I became frantic when the ticking of the clock and the cloak of darkness fell upon our home and all of the creepy crawly nighttime terrors began to yawn from their daytime naps. One of the worst were the family of snakes that lay in wait for me under my bed.

Standing at the doorway, I would take a running leap for the bed in a futile attempt to avoid becoming a hearty meal for the slithery den of blood-seeking vipers. My mother would follow, with a bedtime Bible story and a prayer to Jesus to protect me from the nighttime terrors which plagued me for much of my childhood.

I was very careful not to allow my arm to drape over the side of the bed while I slept. Many times, I cowered under the covers, trembling until the morning light began to trickle through the curtains.

Now, at sixty-one years old, I have come full circle. When I got older, I joined the collective blindness of adulthood, believing all the terrifying visions and nightmares of childhood were creations of imagination, or possibly the work of the devil or some version of darkness. But when I entered my forties and began to study alternative healing methods, and spend time in non-physical reality, the snakes reappeared, both in my own journeys into spirit world and when I would see clients who demonstrated healing abilities. I was no longer afraid of them, at least the spirit snakes. The ones that appear out in physical reality still create some concern, but I have come to understand that in spirit world snakes often show up for individuals who have innate healing abilities.

Not all children believe there lies a den of snakes under their bed.