#3 - That Time I Met a Black Widow Spider: A Story of Sexual Violence and Death in the Woods

The woods used to terrify me. Something happened to me in the woods when I was 15 years old, and I had been running from that night ever since. It was 15 years later that I found myself sitting in the woods staring at a black widow spider. At the time though, I didn’t know it was a black widow spider. I was naïve. I was distracted by its intricate web. I thought it was beautiful. I liked it. My blindness to the dangers right in front of me, mirrored the teenage girl I was 15 years earlier who was also blind to the peril right in front of her.

I am far from the only girl who has walked blindly into the dangers of the woods. And sadly there are many girls who do not survive those dangers. This reflection is about the time I crossed paths with a young girl who also suffered from violence in the woods. Only I was alive and she was dead. 

This story begins when I had just moved to a slow-moving beach community in the Florida panhandle. The beaches were pristine with soft sand and crystal-clear water, and the community filled with money. When I first arrived, I was mesmerized by the prettiness of the area, but I quickly came to find out that this community was not all it pretended to be.

Prior to moving to Florida, I was struggling with my healing journey and had spent four months cloistered in my house reliving the trauma from my teen years. I had never felt so insane and also sane at the same time. I was constantly triggered with PTSD flashbacks, nightmares, and my body reliving what I had survived. I spent months shaking on the floor as I processed horrors I had long kept buried within my body. My mind swung from doubt and self-criticism, to feeling the release and relief of finally facing the trauma that had been living in my body for over a decade.

I hoped that the move would bring me some comfort and relaxation. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans for me. I found the saying to be true – you really do follow yourself wherever you go. I continued to be plagued by triggers of what I survived in my teenage years and couldn’t stop thinking about death.

I had been grappling with the realization that what happened to me in my teen years was a near-death experience. I could have died. It was violent and involved being strangled to unconsciousness by a boy two years older than me. This was a detail I hadn’t always remembered, but as I peeled back the layers of trauma, it was a layer that my body had not forgotten. For months I would awake in the middle of the night from nightmares of being strangled, I would nap and awake as though someone’s hands were around my throat, and then I would see the image of this boy with his hands around my neck and a look of hatred that still haunts me to this day.
 

When we moved into our new home by the beach, I immediately felt as though I was being followed by a ghost. The more I pondered this feeling, the more I realized that I felt that I was the ghost. I felt like I was being haunted by my teen self. There were things I had not accepted yet that she wanted me to accept. Everything reminded me of death and what I had survived.

One thing I felt my teen self calling me towards was making peace with the woods. Our new rental was surrounded by tall trees and was connected to a wooded nature preserve. At this time, I was still terrified to enter a wooded area all by myself. I loved nature, but tended to venture to beaches, desert landscapes, and open fields. The darkness of the woods still brought chills up my spine.  Seeing the woods reminded me that 15 years ago I had excitedly entered the woods with a friend to meet some guys we went to school with, and I had exited the woods by being dragged home unconscious after being violated in ways I often struggle to articulate.

The first day we moved in, I decided to go for a walk. I entered the woods and felt fear. Through my healing journey I found that fear kept me prisoner, and freedom lied on the other side of all those fears. So, I chose to take to the woods every day.

At first I would walk in about 100 feet and run back out like a scaredy cat. Some days I would bring Evan with me, but most days I entered alone. Over time I found a spot that I called my own. I’d bring seashells and rocks I found at the beach. I decided to make it pretty this wood I resided in.

Each day as I entered the woods, images of my teen years would flash through my mind. Faces I tried to shove down. Feelings like terror and panic. Images I still struggled to believe. Sensations that I used to run from, but instead began to process, feel, and accept.
 

Over time I continued to venture deeper into the woods. I didn’t talk to many people at this time, so I became familiar with the trees, often speaking to them like they were my friends. We would talk about my fears. I would cry into the Earth. I became familiar with the animals of the forest. I spoke to the bunnies and the deer. I spent time watching the birds. I joked I had become Snow White.

In the spot where I spent most of my time in the woods, there was a spider. I’d sit with it daily. I was enchanted by its uniqueness. I had never seen a spider like it. It was black with a red dot and its web was pristine and beautiful. It wasn’t messy or dirty, it was intricate and detailed. It was complex. I would put my face up real close, not understanding that what I was mesmerized by was also very dangerous.

As I spent more time in the woods and less time with people, I felt as though I was a madwoman. I felt wild. Unhinged. I was grappling with truths I had shoved down for far too long. I began to see not only what happened to me in my teen years, but how it kept me a prisoner for so long. How being violated in the woods had made me afraid of living. How I still felt so undeserving of my own life, and how worthless I felt after being pinned down and ravaged by monsters.

Throughout this time of me venturing into the wilderness, my body began to be covered in rashes that several doctors could not diagnose. The rashes plagued my eyes, throat, wrists, and vagina, coincidentally mirroring the places I had experienced trauma 15 years ago. For days, I lied in bed for hours with an icepack on my eyes stuck in darkness. During these days I was non-stop processing trauma because as I lied with the inability to open my eyes I was forced to sit with the images I had tried to keep buried inside my body.  

The more I processed, the more I felt like a ghost was following me around. As I spent more time in the woods, the more I thought I heard whispers with messages of encouragement. Was it just the wind playing tricks on me?

One day, after feeling distraught and broken, I decided to google murder and the name of the community I was living in. I don’t know what got me to actually google it, but as I sat in my car in front of our house, a story appeared. A story of a teenage girl who was brutally raped and murdered in the woods that I spent every day in. I couldn’t believe it.

This is when I first learned of Courtney Wilkes. A young teen girl, who I never met, but who has had a profound impact on me and my life. You can call it coincidence, fate, or divine intervention, but something brought us together in spirit and caused our paths to cross in those woods off the beach in Florida.

I read the details of her story and though hers is more tragic than mine in many ways, I also saw myself in her. We were the same age. We both met a boy who charmed us and we put our trust in. We both had been lulled into a false sense of safety. We were both violently raped and strangled. We both had become trapped in a web that we would not be able to escape.

I read articles about who Courtney was before this tragedy. She was young. She was innocent. She was smart. She was kind. She was loved by all who knew her. She was an angel long before she left this world.

I sobbed uncontrollably in my car. I drove to the closest grocery store in a haze. I bought a bouquet of red roses. I sprinted into the woods. I was manic. I was crazed. I felt anger, sadness, despair, guilt, and desperation all at the same time.  I ran around the woods I had become so familiar with looking for where this heinous crime may have happened. I sprinkled rose petals in the sites that resembled the description I read. I didn’t know where it happened, but I needed to honor her. I needed her to know that her life mattered and that I understood her so deeply. I was overtaken by grief for a girl I didn’t know and never would have the pleasure of meeting, but who I felt a deep, intimate connection with.
 

I eventually returned to the spot where I had created my own haven with shells, rocks, flowers, the spider and its intricate web and dropped to my knees and sobbed. How could this horrible thing have happened to such a beautiful girl? How could someone do something so awful? Why had this happened?

As I sobbed into the Earth, I began to see the truth that the woods had been trying to teach me for months. I had come into these woods daily to overcome my fear of the woods, but also because the woods had a lesson to teach me.

I had spent months grappling with what I had survived. Understanding and accepting the facts of the situation, but I had not yet accepted a deeper truth. An inner truth. A soulful truth.

The truth was that yes this horrible thing had happened in my life and changed me on so many levels. But, it was not my fault. I had been punishing myself for what happened to me 15 years ago, believing it meant I was worthless and that I was a horrible person. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

It was so easy for me to see the truth of Courtney’s situation. I saw her beauty, innocence, and purity. I saw how something horrible had happened. I saw how she became trapped in a web of a dangerous predator. I saw her beauty and the tragedy. I did not judge her, instead I felt deep love and compassion for her.

Why was it so easy for me to see Courtney so clearly? But, still impossible for me to see myself? Why was it so easy for me to see her as an angel, but I still labeled myself as worthless and unlovable? Why was I still punishing myself for something that wasn’t my fault?

I felt immense pain and peace as I began sobbing at the realization and the deep inner knowing that what happened to me that night 15 years ago wasn’t my fault. I had to forgive myself for being young, innocent, and vulnerable. I found that in my teen years, others blamed me, shamed me, and shunned me. I felt as though I was being punished over and over again, so I then continued to punish myself for the next 15 years for an experience that I was now clearly seeing I had no control over. 

As I sat up, I saw some of my animal friends nearby. A pack of bunnies stared at me. A deer moved closer, and a hawk circled overhead. To this day, I question if this was a coincidence, but I’ve chosen to believe that it was a sign from something bigger than me reminding me that I was never alone.

I stared at my animal friends and began to take deep breaths. The animal did not run from my pain, instead they stayed with me.  As my breath deepened, a second realization hit me. I had a second chance. Courtney and I had a similar story but I hadn’t died that night in the woods.

Since that night 15 years ago, I felt deadened inside. It’s hard to explain the aftermath of sexual violence, but a part of you does die. The naïve part. The trusting part. Sometimes the happy part. The girl I was before did die in many ways. I may have been dragged out of the woods and woken up the next day, but a crucial part of me had been left behind. The young girl who believed she was worthy of love.

I spent years living life as though I was a ghost. I looked out at the world and wondered what it would be like to feel alive. I felt numb, pain, trauma, fear. Something was taken from me that night in the woods, but I realized that I had been given a second chance. I had been given a gift that not all who experience sexual violence get. My healing journey had brought me to this moment of finally feeling like a survivor.
 

I stood up from the floor of the woods for one last time. I thanked the woods, the animals, and the trees. A weight had been lifted that I didn’t even know I had been carrying. As I exited the woods for the last time, I felt as though a boulder rolled off my back and fell into the spot that had become my own personal haven.

Evan and I left that Florida beach community and moved back to Arizona the next day. I had gotten everything I needed.

As we drove out of the Florida panhandle, I told Evan about Courtney and my spot in the woods. As I recounted the story, I was shocked to learn that the spider I spent time with was a black widow. It felt symbolic to have escaped danger in the woods for a second time, but this time I really believed I had escaped. I no longer felt entangled in the web I had gotten stuck in 15 years ago. For the first time since that traumatic night in the woods, I was able to start living because I finally felt as though I had survived. I had been called a survivor before, but it wasn’t until my encounter with Courtney that I truly understood what that meant.