I finally held the snake.
I cried. Bawled, actually.
I didn’t want to.
But I wanted to.
I tried so hard to see this as one of God’s creatures. A creature that didn’t intentionally seek me out to instill fear. A creature that didn’t infest my childhood home as a means to torment me for the rest of my life.
The home I grew up in was the same home my dad grew up in. He and my mom moved into the farmhouse when my grandparents moved into town. My sisters and I were raised there.
It had yellow-orange medium shag carpet in the living room. My parents’ bedroom was off the kitchen, right next to the bathroom. When you walked into the house, you landed in an entryway with a sink, a big deep freezer, a cabinet full of random crap, and a set of stairs going down to the basement—usually left open unless we had to hunker down during tornado watches.
The living room sat just off the kitchen. My dad’s green recliner, a sofa, and a brown bean bag filled the space. The TV sat on top of a large radio console that played 8-track tapes.
Off the living room was the bedroom I mostly lived in. First with my older sister, then with my younger sister after she moved out of my parents’ room. My older sister got bumped upstairs.
Up those carpeted stairs was a small room filled with a fold-away bed, boxes of who-knows-what, a blanket chest, and a metal garbage can full of flour—because… farm life. Off that room was another bedroom with two queen beds, my mom’s old record player, cabinets full of treasures—her wedding dress, bridesmaid dresses, my dad’s Army uniform, crystal, old manuals—and a small door leading to the attic.
In the attic sat a single doll baby carriage.
Creepy.
I loved that home. Grandparents were always coming and going. Aunts, uncles, cousins—always around. My parents were farmers and ranchers, so they were often out in the fields or corrals, which meant us girls fended for ourselves (or with a grandma nearby).
The stairwell upstairs was perfect for shimmying up—one foot on each wall. Terrifying and thrilling.
The basement was cold. It had a pantry for canned goods, a small bathroom with a shower, two large tables (for butchering—or, more often, piles of laundry… usually socks), a side room with farm clothes, a washer and dryer, furnace, stove—and a hole in the cinderblock wall that opened into a hollowed-out dirt cave. I understood it was where coal used to be stored for the coal-furnace.
I should probably ask my parents about that hole.
But maybe I don’t want to know.
To understand why I finally held a snake, you need to know two things. First, there was a patch I wanted to earn. And I am absolutely, unreasonably terrified of snakes.
Seeing one—even a baby—completely shuts me down.
Doc (my husband) and I go for walks on a path near our house that winds through a marsh. Snakes are just… part of it. And when I say baby snake, I mean tiny. Like the size of a broken stick that fell from a tree. (He would say it’s the same size as a worm.)
Still—instant panic.
I can’t talk. I can’t think. If we’re in the middle of a conversation, it’s over. My brain just… stops. I freeze.
At the same time, my body is doing all the things: I want to bawl, puke, and crap my pants—all at once.
It’s completely irrational. And I know it.
But my body doesn’t care what I know.
There was one time—before the actual holding happened—when I tried to earn the patch.
Doc and I were walking the path, and he spotted a baby snake on a bridge.
I stopped. Dead in my tracks.
He gently pinned it with his foot, and most of the snake slipped down into a crack in the bridge, so only about an inch of it was visible.
“Come grab it,” he said.
Absolutely not.
I stood there, frozen. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.
After a couple minutes, I forced myself to take a few steps forward. Every step felt like I might throw up.
He kept encouraging me.
I finally bent down.
And in my head, I’m giving myself a full-on pep talk:
Come on, LeAnn. It’s a baby. You can do this. GET THAT PATCH.
But my body was like, Nope.
My hand started reaching toward it—but it didn’t even feel like my hand. It was like I was watching myself from the outside. Completely out-of-body.
My finger extended to touch it.
And I swear—it was like that snake had a force field around it.
Like something out of Star Wars. My finger got so close… and just… stopped.
I could not make contact.
Finally—after what felt like an eternity—I managed to boop it.
Just a quick little boop.
And then I absolutely lost it.
Not a couple tears. Not a quiet cry.
Full-on bawling. Like I had just watched my dog get run over.
In my head, I knew it was ridiculous. I knew this was a tiny, harmless creature.
But my body was going through something completely different.
I could not get home fast enough to wash that boop off my finger.
If I wasn’t a sane woman… I probably would’ve rubbed that finger right off my hand.
This is what I was up against.
This is why the patch mattered.
Because I didn’t just dislike snakes.
They owned me. …And I hated that.
Fast forward.
Doc came into the bathroom while I was cleaning up after a bike ride. He asked a question—I don’t even remember what it was. Then he paused before the second one, looking a little sheepish.
I knew that look. This was about to mess with my plans.
Finally, he asked,
“How bad do you want to earn that patch?”
The patch.
We had found the shirt at a vintage boutique in Arizona—Doc, my parents, and me. An old Boy Scout shirt with “TIM” written in the collar, though faint now. I googled it—likely from the 1940s.
The arms were too small, so I planned to cut off the sleeves and reattach the patches elsewhere and rock that “vest” like a vintage-loving fashionista…obviously.
One of those sleeve patches… was a snake.
Doc had said, “You can’t apply that patch until you overcome your fear of snakes.”
Part of me thought: I’m a grown-ass woman. Don’t tell me what to do.
But the deeper part said: I actually want to earn that patch.
“How bad do you want to earn that patch?”
…I immediately started crying.
It’s fascinating—how my body can hold both fear and desire at the same time. The tears were fear but they were also Little LeAnn.
The little girl who loved her home, until it became filled with snakes.
Running down from upstairs and almost stepping on one in the living room.
Seeing one slither under my bed—and never finding it.
Lifting the washing machine lid in the basement and being absolutely startled. (That doesn’t remotely describe the feeling…and then still having to get the laundry done.)
Hearing my mom’s blood-curdling scream when she found a three-foot snake on the deep freeze.
Those tears were about invasion. About never getting to process what that did to me.
Farm kids are taught to be tough. And I was. In all ways. But sometimes that grit suppresses things—until they come pouring out in moments like this.
They invaded my home.
My safe place.
My family space.
And now I was being asked to face that.
But I wanted that damn patch!
That desire pulled me up from the hunker in my closet like I was a marionette on strings.
It walked me down the stairs.
Into the basement.
Out the back door.
Following my husband to the snake trap.
I saw that motherfucker in the trap—coiled up. Black with a yellow stripe. Looking like an innocent little garden hose.
I shook. I cried. I buried my face in my hands.
I hated it.
And I wanted it.
I prayed.
I asked God to remind me that He is my strength and my shield. That nothing can harm me.
Doc carefully dumped the snake into a bucket.
I asked him to set it down.
I stood three feet away. Crying. Praying. Shaking.
Then I moved closer.
Doc sat beside me while I looked in—and bawled even harder.
I put my hand into the bucket.
The snake was coiled at the bottom.
Doc reminded me gently that it was more scared of me than I was of it… and then he went quiet. Letting me do this in my own way, in my own time.
(God bless that man.)
I sat down, bucket between my knees tilted toward me. I reached in and touched the very end of its tail.
I was okay.
That was okay.
So I did it again.
And then… I left my hand there.
I thought about my friend Jesse—how she talked about loving her snake. Cuddling it. (Which, at one point, made me want to punch her in the throat.)
But now… it helped.
This is a simple creature.
That’s it.
Just looking for warmth.
So I started to gently stroke its body.
Slow. Careful.
And I could see it—its coil beginning to loosen.
“Just be kind, LeAnn. Just be kind. It’s just looking for warmth. Be warm. Be warm.”
For a moment… I wasn’t panicked.
I was present. I stayed here for a long time. Just noticing its scales, eyes, tongue, color. Gently petting, staying.
The snake began to uncoil more and move up my hand.
But then it moved a bit too fast.
And I lost it.
Not just tears—jumping from the bucket and moving to a full-on fetal position, face down in the lawn, body shaking. The kind of crying that has no dignity to it. The kind you don’t control.
I curled into myself like I was trying to disappear while begging God to give me strength and remind me this creature wasn’t trying to end my world.
Ten feet away, Doc sat calmly next to the bucket—steady, grounded—while his wife was in the yard absolutely unraveling.
I remember knowing our neighbor was outside. He was probably wondering what in the heck was happening. Why this grown woman was losing her mind in the lawn while her husband sat next to a bucket like it was just another Saturday.
This wasn’t logical fear.
This was something ancient. Something wired so deep in me that it bypassed everything I’ve built as an adult.
An uncontrollable reaction to something barely a foot long… barely wider than a pencil.
And yet my body reacted like I was under attack.
None of my strength showed up in that moment.
What showed up was that little girl.
And there I was—face in the grass—finally feeling what she never got to.
But, eventually, I sat back up.
Still shaking. But different.
Ready to try again.
I looked over. Doc had the snake in his hands. He held it gently—it was a straight stick not moving.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
And this time… I was.
Not because I wasn’t afraid.
But because I understood what I was actually facing.
I took it from him.
And I walked it to the woods. Released it into the marsh behind our house. Ignoring the fear-driven instinct to chuck it and gently put it on the ground where the woods began.
I did it.
I fucking did it.
And this time… it wasn’t just a box checked.
It was something released.
Not just the snake.
The fear.
The anger.
The invasion I had carried for years.
I still cried.
I still hugged that darling husband of mine.
And yes—I still needed to get inside immediately to wash my hands.
Some things don’t change overnight.
But I didn’t sit in it for long.
I had things to do that day. Big things. My women’s weekender was the following weekend, and I needed to be focused, dialed in, moving.
And yet… before anything else…
I went straight in, grabbed the patch, the shirt, thread, and a needle.
And I sewed that bugger on.
Right then. Right there.
No delay. No second-guessing. No waiting for it to feel like the right moment.
I had earned it.
And as I sat there, stitching it into place… I realized something had shifted.
I didn’t conquer snakes.
I didn’t suddenly love them.
But they don’t own me anymore.
Later, after all of it—after the crying, after the release, after I had already sewn that patch onto my shirt—Doc said something to me.
He said, “You know… that snake never released its protective scent.”
I looked at him.
He said, “When they feel threatened, they let off this smell. That one didn’t. Not once.”
And then he added, “When I picked it up, I didn’t even have to control it. I just held it in my hand… and it stayed extended. It didn’t coil. It didn’t fight.”
He paused and smiled a little.
“You charmed that snake.”
I now wear that shirt—my shirt, Tim’s shirt—with pride.
Not because I held a snake.
But because I faced something that once took me down to the ground…
and stood back up anyway.