Be Kind to Spiders Week 2022: My Passion for Be Kind to Spiders Week

Have you ever wondered where my passion for “Be Kind to Spiders Week” stemmed from? Well, it’s time to explore the web that is my love and affinity for spiders!

I have been quite diligent on sharing arachnid-inspired posts since 2019. I learned there was a whole week dedicated to showing kindness to arachnids going as far back as 2012. Since it happens to fall in my birthday month, I couldn’t resist falling in love with the concept. But where did this affection for spiders stem from?

The Journey to Cobwebs, Cocktails and Be Kind to Spiders Week

Thanks to my dad, I have always been a spider protector. He always insisted on taking the spider outside instead of squashing it. Then my mom shared the myth of how it was bad luck to kill a spider inside and my interest only continued to grow. They’ve always been hanging around (no pun intended) and I couldn’t help but be enthralled every time I was blessed with an encounter. Halloween hunting frequently included scores of cobweb items or arachnid-accented pieces. All the while, rescuing a little arthropod friend from my arachnophobic sister became routine. In complete transparency, I didn’t actually associate these small gestures as signs of my love of spiders until 2016.

The Candy Corn Crew, a trio of candy corn obsessed spiders was a mere sketch on a page. However, it grew into something more and these spider siblings and their real world cousins were frequently on my mind. Eventually, this realized forward passion for spiders grew and I discovered Be Kind to Spiders Week was a thing in late 2018. My blog vision got a new direction and rebrand in 2019 and now here we are!

But Why a Passion for Spiders, Chelsea?

You know, it’s kind of hard to explain. I have always had an affinity for the lesser-appreciated creatures and an infatuation for the villain. Tie that in with being raised around all types of animals, constant exposure to zoos, aquariums, an out-of-control passion for biology sciences and a never-ending stream of NatGeo and Animal Planet documentaries and here we are. If you’ve been around my blog since the early days, you know I have a huge love of sharks; another poorly represented animal in the modern world.

Sharks and Spiders have a lot in common in the modern world of being treated like real-life monsters when really, all they are doing is what Mother Nature intended. Everything they do is all really amazing and actually to our benefit, but when we invade their spaces, they’re considered the bad guy. They may not look cute and adorable to many, but myself and many others find spiders gorgeous and fascinating. I genuinely find them beautiful and there is still so much we’re learning about them.

It is so important to push away the stereotypes that have become so solidified in our human perceptions and Be Kind to Spiders Week presented itself as the perfect means to share my love for these arachnids and hopefully diffuse the misconceptions about them.

Merging My Passion into a Week-long Celebration

I’m not looking to make everybody love spiders. I get it. They’re not what one would consider a cute and cuddly animal that you can snuggle with. (Please don’t snuggle your spiders. They’re not really the hugging type.) However, I do aim to have you walk away with acknowledgement of all they’re really about and how much they contribute to this beautiful world we share.

I’m super excited to once again bring my love of spiders and cobwebs to the world wide web in a week full of celebration and affection for the eight-legged master of the web.

And so, I kick of the week with this ode to my passion and a toast; to Be Kind to Spiders Week!