Can you feel it? Rising up – in fact, already risen – simmering at the back of the head, caught in the throat, knotting like rope around the shoulders. The scream.
A friend from another city shared a post about a group of women gathering to yell in a park. She’d shared it in jest, but I knew what I had to do. Conceived just like that one night over a glass of wine and a fit of pique, I made a quick call-out on a local Facebook group: “Does anyone else feel like screaming?” Response after response poured in. A parade of frustrated women and non-binary people. I received more than 100 messages in an hour.
At the time, I was exhausted and frustrated. Weren’t we all? Parenting. Work. Covid. Endless rain. Just life. I wondered if I had the spare energy to pull this off. But women want to scream! Why wouldn’t I help them?
“Does anyone else feel like screaming?” Response after response poured in. A parade of frustrated women and non-binary people. I received more than 100 messages in an hour
How do we actually do this? A quick search on Google showed others had gone before me. I went through the suggested protocols, and added a few:
A slow whoop to get us warmed up.
Introductory scream: Screaming to test the waters.
A full-throated scream for particular issues we might have.
Add swear words as needed.
A scream for others who can’t be there but want to scream too.
A belly laugh.
Two minutes of silence for reflection.
I wondered about the potential for triggering distress. Group members Amber, Leanne and Maryanne volunteered to provide mental health first aid, offering certified trauma-informed care to anyone who may be vulnerable, even to walk them home. Their mere presence made it all feel safer.
I set a date. Next, where to do it without freaking out the neighbours? It’s crowded where we live, but there's a big park in Sydney’s inner west. I had no idea how far the sound would travel, but the park would do, and it would be after dark when the dog walkers would have gone home.
Memes were shared, articles too. Names for our group were suggested: Scream Masters? No. Scream Ma’ams? We settled on Screamstresses. Someone offered a of approval.
I suggested people bring a cushion or pillow to our inaugural meet-up to scream into, in case they felt too self-conscious to let it all out. But over chat, we all began to feel confident in our screaming-to-come.
As the big night approached, I worried no one would turn up. But in truth, the worst that could happen would be that I’d sit alone for a bit in the night air, and go home
When I arrived there were fitness classes dotted around the oval. But look! One woman was there early, waiting. We introduced ourselves and spoke quietly, playing “spot the screamer” for the next few minutes. Slowly they came, meandering along the park’s footpath beside wet green grass, under the darkness of the trees and towards the pool of light at the little sports pavilion meeting spot. Each looked uncertain but shyly delighted. It was about to happen.
We greeted each other carefully but openly, united in our need to let out a certain amount of frustration. There was nervous laughter. Eventually, there were nine of us.
The screaming kicked off with a countdown: Three. Two. One! Standing and grasping our knees, shaking our hair, we howled at the moon. We giggled. We screamed over and over
We decided to get out of the limelight and away from the last of the exercisers as they finished their stretching, and set out to explore behind the building, down a narrow dirt track through the whispering casuarina trees, then out onto a low, grassy hill, edged to the west by a path and the expanse of the park, and to the east by a busy road and an industrial area. Already we were in the territory where women would often choose not to go alone in the dark. But now we were unafraid.
There, we formed a circle.
I had made the plan, but how does one commence making unearthly sounds with strangers? The whoop. Do the whoop. But what does a whoop actually sound like? Bravely, I made it up. We laughed. And then, the screaming kicked off with a countdown: Three. Two. One! Standing and grasping our knees, shaking our hair, we howled at the moon. We giggled. We screamed over and over. My list of screaming protocols was not enough. Let’s do another.
Three more joined us – following the sound from the oval.
The screams reverberated around the hills, and were sucked into the low hum of the passing traffic.
We stopped for the silent meditation, lying back on the cool grass, to gaze at the sky and think about it all. Then we stood up and screamed again.
After that, we sat and each described why we were there. No ranting or limelight hogging, but out it came, sharing with strangers. A sentence or two was enough. Work. Workmates. Relentlessly demanding kids. Oblivious partners. Neighbours. Home-mess-Covid. Moments of mansplaining, teensplaining. Encroachments that were all too much for people already giving everything they had.
There were murmurs of agreement, cries of: Oh my god, yessssss! One woman said she didn’t know why she was screaming, but had been told it was time to get in touch with her anger. “I suppose I have some,” she added. We all cheered at this excellent answer. There were tears from a mother of four children, all of whom have been school refusers (putting my own, similar troubles into perspective). And hugs for her from the woman beside her.
I noted how, just 50 metres away, up the hill along the path as we screamed like murder victims, there were men, unafraid of the dark, jogging or walking. They did not turn their heads. I wonder what went through their minds when they heard us. Was this really happening? What if someone was being hurt? Who knows what they were thinking. But we had reclaimed a space that none of us would have ventured into alone.
It was over in half an hour. Afterwards, we wandered, chatting, across the hill, up the path through the trees, and into the light, down the paths we had come. We’ll do it all again.
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