If the stress of living through a pandemic has made you want to give up and scream it out, you aren’t alone. More than a dozen Boston-area moms recently met up in an empty field on a quiet weeknight to do just that. Sarah Harmon, a therapist and yoga teacher who founded the wellness group School of Mom, organized a “primal scream” meetup as a way for moms to express their anxiety and frustration about everything they’ve been dealing with for the past two years because of COVID.
“It felt so good to scream with this group of women at the 50 yard line,” Harmon writes in an Instagram post about the event. “We screamed. We yelled (a lot) of profanities. And then we laughed. And that’s the beauty of allowing yourself to feel and express an emotion. You move through it to find a new one on the other side such as relief, peace and/or joy.”
Harmon first came up with the idea to organize a “primal scream” last year. She hosted the first group screaming event in March 2021, but it’s the latest outing, held on January 13, 2022, that’s received viral attention and praise from other parents online.
“As a working mother, I can totally identify with the need to scream it all out,” one mom writes on Twitter. “I think an organized primal scream is in order for all who want to attend (Moms, Dads, Grandparents, Employees, Everyone).”
“If you need me, I’ll be on a field,” another person adds.
Harmon, the mom of two 3- and 5-year-old kids, tells the New York Times she used her children’s light-up unicorn wands to conduct each round of screaming at the event. Participants yelled through five rounds, divided into sections for normal screaming, a swearing free-for-all and an extra scream for all the moms who couldn’t be there.
She organized the scream because she needed it, and she knew other moms did, too. “I knew that we all needed to come together and support each other in our rage, resistance and disappointment,” she writes on Instagram.
The latest phase of the pandemic has been particularly difficult on parents. Schools and day cares are in a constant state of flux as they battle rampant COVID cases and staff shortages. Additionally, kids under 5 still don’t have an approved vaccine and are getting sick at extremely high rates. On top of everything else, millions of moms have also been forced out of the workforce and are facing record levels of burnout.
Moms can’t change the state of the pandemic, no matter how much they may want to, but Harmon’s primal scream event at least offers a cathartic way to work through some of the rage and stress people are feeling right now. It has even inspired others around the country to organize their own primal screams. In New Orleans, a group of moms hosted their own copycat #MomScream on January 22.
“A scream is an intuitive, natural way to move an intense emotion like rage out of your body,” Harmon says. “Giving yourself permission to scream, especially in a community of other moms who get it, can be so incredibly healing.”
