The past year there’s been a few television scenes that have been seared into my brain. Several of them have been scenes of women stifling a scream or two by biting themselves and/or burying their faces into a pillow. The Netflix show called Spinning Out featured a main character was bipolar who often would stifle her screams of agony by biting her arm. She would bite deeply drawing blood and leaving scars behind. Then on Sharp Objects the main character was a traumatized reporter who would scream into a pillow to ventilate her pain. Those scenes would repeat on the respective series and in my head.

I would contrast those scenes with the primal scream events at college. Those were fun, silly, empowering events where we would scream outside at midnight. We would scream and scream. I would giggle in between. It felt wonderful to scream out loud. It was, of course, socially sanctioned as part of college life. I have often wanted to do group primal scream events but it has been difficult to rope others in as adults.

Sadly, we allow ourselves to lose the ability to scream out loud cathartically and push so many to having to scream into a pillow. That is just not healthy for society. I could open up, perhaps, a sip and scream cafe to help us get back on the healthy screaming path. I like that idea. Now I need an investor. Healthy screaming rooms at the workplace could be a good thing depending on the workplace. I know the other day, I was very tempted to scream into my coat but stopped myself. I don’t believe anyone should have the power to silence my screams. But I was also mindful of where I was at. Instead, I laughed and laughed. And, that worked as well. Next time, however, I’m going to scream out loud.