Last night, a group of mothers gathered in West Peabody to scream — just as they did two weeks ago, and just as they did in March 2021. They screamed for themselves, for everything that had been canceled, and for people who couldn’t scream for themselves. They screamed profanities. They competed for who could scream the longest. But, above all, they just screamed.
Sarah Harmon, who organized these screaming events, joined Boston Public Radio to talk about how mothers are coping during the pandemic, and why sometimes screaming just feels good.
“I’m a therapist and I’m a mom of two young girls, so I’ve been living the reality of parenting in a pandemic with the women I work with,” said Harmon, who specializes in therapy and mindfulness for mothers. “Needless to say we were overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed … we didn’t have those coping outlets that we normally do.”
Harmon emphasized the feeling of community that came from mothers joining to scream together. And she’s not the only one. In December, Harvard’s annual primal scream made a comeback, as students — some of them clad only in their underwear — ventured out to Harvard Yard before finals started to shout. In 2015, a Scream Club made up of entrepreneurs and PhD students met up in Cambridge to scream.
“The scream is the ultimate sympathetic nervous system arousal,” Harmon said. “We're actually taking our body and our nervous system to that peak point, and there's nowhere else to go but down from there.”
Harmon explained that part of the reason screaming feels good is because anger can be taboo, and that people, especially women, often do not validate their feelings of anger.
“When we allow ourselves to go there, it’s almost like a reset button to the nervous system, and it allows that parasympathetic response, that relaxation response, to flood in,” she said. “Anger is on the tip of the iceberg … underneath it is just all the things that contribute to it: isolation, anger, anxiety, fear.”
Screaming can provide a release for mothers struggling during the pandemic, as well as many others. Harmon suggested finding a comfortable place where others will not worry about the screamer’s safety, and then not holding back. “Listen to your body,” she instructed. “That's the most important part.”
Boston Public Radio took emails and calls from listeners on their experiences with screaming and other outlets for anger relief.
“I’m a mother of three, I’ve been screaming in my car when needed for 14 years,” Melissa emailed.
Avery, the mother of four young boys, started screaming during the pandemic. “I would drive to the completely empty MBTA parking lot to the far corner and get out of my car and scream by myself,” she said. “It was my escape.”
In New Hampshire, Erica has 8- and 9-year-old children, and her husband is deployed in the Middle East. “I just head to the garage and there’s some donate boxes — and I just whack it galore,” she said.
Linda called to say she once invited her neighbors to scream when the Celtics were tanking. Beth in Cambridge said her daughter requested a COVID-19 molecule-shaped piñata for her 18th birthday party tomorrow.
Cara from Belmont, who is the mother of 10-year-old twins, joined Harmon at last night’s scream. “We were all there together and we all let it out. And my throat hurt a little bit after, and I was OK with that,” she said. “It just felt good.”
Sarah Harmon is a mother, a therapist, a yoga and mindfulness teacher who runs multiple wellness groups, including Sarah Harmon Wellness, The School of MOM and The Postpartum Wellness Group.
