September 21, 2017
How Bats are Helping Me to Heal
I feel compelled to share this with all of you in the hopes it reaches the persons who need to hear it. I awoke at 3:00 a.m. to see what I (incorrectly) thought were two black butterflies flying over my head in my bedroom. They weren’t butterflies; they were bats.
While it’s common for bats to have babies during the summer months and get lost and confused on occasion and enter a home, there was such a deep message in this experience for me. I lost control of my feelings, had a meltdown and a breakdown. Sobbing uncontrollably, shaking, and overcome with fear, my youngest daughter invited me to take on the following practice:
Mom, name the bats as representative of what you no longer wish in your life (She’s all of 19 – that’s my girl!). Name them self-doubt, fear, and then release them and let them go. When they are gone, what you’re holding on to will leave too.
I was in a place and a space of making meaning – that there was an imaginary bully out in the unknown that was mad at me, or that I somehow had a mindset of victimhood and created this. She was in a mindset of leave the meaning and receive the message. Yet, somehow, I couldn’t let go of remembering (not questioning) why I was sobbing uncontrollably – as though I was grieving.
Speaking with my soul sister, she also welcomed me to explore what fears I may be holding onto and that this was God’s way of helping me to face them. The following day, I began to explore the house, I pulled back a curtain to an exterior wall as a last-minute thought and lo and behold, I was face-to-face with my biggest fear. There I was uncovering my fear (pulling back the curtain) and facing my biggest nightmare (my fears). We uncovered the problem (the pain point) and began to make the necessary repairs (healing).
The next morning, I awoke with this inexplicable feeling of peace and knowing. I came to realize that while I had been depressed, overwhelmed, and deeply saddened at the loss of my love last year at the same time as experiencing the loss of my beloved mother and becoming an “empty-nester,” I didn’t fully grieve.
I kept hearing myself say, “I can’t think about it right now, I can’t deal with it.” I didn’t’ fully allow grief for Mom because the higher person would be happy knowing she is at peace, and I didn’t grieve for the loss of love because “I wasn’t going to give my power away.” That mindset of being the better person and not giving away my power, disallowed me to grieve for what I had lost. I was doing myself a disservice.
The bat experience was traumatic enough to force the grieving process fully. It was God’s way (to me) of getting it all out and experiencing it. The true meaning of living life is to experience it fully (all of it).
Shifting from making meaning (what have I done to deserve this) and shifting toward the message helped me on a deeper level. Something new is occurring.
I can’t say it’s “Happening to me” because that’s victim language and I can’t say, “I’m choosing it” because that would be inauthentic. I can, however, say I am “experiencing” something new. Parts and pieces of that old relationship were an ego relationship (an older story) and I find myself letting go of my egoic side more and more – and it’s the most peace I’ve had in years.
In stepping out of ego, I am stepping into spirit, and also finding peace like I’ve never had. Having come face-to-face with bats has helped me to allow grieving more fully, to step further out of ego and into spirit and step right into peace.
That (for me) is the difference between leaving the meaning and receiving the message.
So Be It