Standing Still, a Bat on My Shoulder
Because I asked for this transformation
Last night, I dreamt of bats.
For most people, I suppose, that sounds like a nightmare. But for me, the bats were a welcome sight.
By that, I don’t mean that I was completely comfortable around the bats. They weren’t like dogs or cats. In the dream, I still hesitated to go into the room with the bats, asking others to go ahead of me. But once I was in the darkened, attic room with the bats flying all around, I settled in to watch their magnificence. Even when three of them landed on my shoulder, I stood still, letting them be their full bat selves, and whisper to me in their bat voices.
I say the bats were a welcome sight because their appearance told me I’m receiving exactly what I have been asking the Universe for: transformation. When you consciously ask the Universe to put you into the crucible for transformation, you can’t be surprised when bats show up in your dreams.
Bats are often misunderstood, associated with disease, madness, and vampires. But they are powerful symbols that bring us important messages of change, transformation (the vampires!), and rebirth. They tell us we are opening to a new power, a new skin.
The bat knows how to navigate the darkness, how to move in the unknown. It also helps us move out of that darkness. The bats’ message is about dying to who we were so that we can be reborn into something new.
The bat tells us it's time to face our fears–of darkness, of being alone, of being free, of doing something new. Too often, fearful of change, we cling to the “devil we know.” The bat says, “Either you make the changes, or things will get harder and harder to hold on to.”
I am in the midst of transformation. I am not who I was, and not yet who I will be. The bat tells me that this is true.
The first time I met a bat, my family and I were living in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was a small suburb, well out of the city. But we were there because that’s where I co-built a yoga center. However, after only a year, I left the yoga studio under difficult circumstances—a story for another day.
But every day, I still had to drive by the yoga center on my way to drop my kids off at school. Every day, I mourned the dream that I’d lost. Every day, I had to tell myself it was not meant to be, that I would transform into something different.
Even knowing that, however, it didn’t occur to us to move. We had only bought the house of our dreams a few years before. Our girls were in middle school and had made friends. We had a life there, even if I no longer had a business there.
Until one night, I heard faint scratching inside the walls of our bedroom. Tiny little scratches and squeaks. A bat had found its way down our chimney into the interior of our house.
For nights, we couldn’t sleep as the scratching got closer and louder. The bat was crawling to the exit: the gas fireplace in our bedroom.
Late one night, we finally saw its beady little eyes and claws poke through the grates. My husband, prepared as he could be in boxer shorts and a fishing net, waited as I prepared to hide under the covers.
The scene that followed was hilarious in hindsight—me screaming, my husband chasing the bat around. He finally caught it, took it outside, and set it free.
It came back. And it came back again, and again. Until finally, I searched for the spiritual meaning and purpose of bats (and also hired a company to put a bat-friendly net at the top of the chimney). After I read up on the bat, my husband and I sat down and talked about selling our house and moving into the city. Looking back, none of us can imagine our family still living in that small suburb, still driving past that yoga studio every day, still living so far away from the theaters and nightlife and culture that we love so much.
Back then, the bats came with a message, and they’re here again now. Then, as now, I will heed their presence.
I have a lot of questions about the place I’m heading. But I’ve been through these transformational times before, and I know I don’t get easy answers to these questions.
Instead, I’m just standing still, letting the bats sit on my shoulder and whisper in my ear.
It’s exactly what I’ve asked for.
Thanks for reading! You might also like:
Keri Mangis
Award-Winning Author & Wholeness Advocate
Founder: KeriMangis.com
Interview on Illumination
Author: Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness — A Memoir of New Beginnings, winner of the 2020 IPA for Body, Mind and Spirit
Thanks for connecting!