It was the first week of school and SEPTA cuts loomed. The craziness, chaos, and uncertainty of the last it all made mom-of-two Rachel Robbinswant to scream.
So nearly a month later, at Pier 53 alongside the Delaware River, she finally screamed.
And eight other women screamed with her.
“I figured I could not be the only one who needs this,” she said, standing beside her neon pink “Community Scream” poster board on South Christopher Columbus Boulevard.
This was Robbins’ inaugural group scream Sunday morning, an exercise for moms, parents, or really any one who needed to vent — viscerally — and build community as part of the South Philly woman’s broader initiative to “village-ify” modern parenting.
Sunday’s group — which included a 12-week-old baby and a toddler in strollers, and a 4-year-old poodle mix named Ollie — scribbled down their woes on memo pad paper and trekked down to the river just after 10 a.m. Then, in unison, they roared.
There were unwavering sustained bellows, staccato wails, punchy, high-pitched cries, and feral howls. Some women ripped up their notes; participant Ceara Guest, 34, said she planned to burn hers.
They screamed because of motherhood, single- and co-parenting, and the roller coaster of raising teenagers; they screamed because of climate change, the dark underbelly of the internet, federal job cuts en masse, and attacks on immigrants.
“Millions of people are suffering around the world,” said Meghan Adamoli, who works in gun violence prevention and recently lost her bid to become a Collingswood commissioner. “Our leaders are just making everything worse. It’s just a heavy time.”
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Recently laid off from the Environmental Protection Agency, Johanna Goetzel thought about the undermining of and dismantling of climate science. A mom, she also thought about the patriarchy and how terrifying it is to raise two boys.
Afterward, Goetzel, 40, said she felt accomplished: “It’s cathartic, and I think to do it in the company of others — I think it’s totally empowering.”
Adamoli, admittedly, felt a bit dizzy. Rollins said it left her buzzing.
“This feels like a deep, cleansing breath, times a thousand,” Adamoli, 44, said.
The idea of therapeutic screaming has been around since the 1970s, coined by a Californian psychologist. It’s a very human response to pent-up frustration (think screaming into a pillow or belting Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats in the car).
Rage rooms — where people pay to smash dinnerware, club TVs, or bust up cars — grew in popularity during the 2008 financial crisis, and “primal screaming” reentered the zeitgeist amid the pandemic, notably with The New York Times’ “scream after the beep” hotline. Communal screams have popped up in New York City, Chicago and Austin, Texas.
“The more people that can get some stress out, the better — that’s all it is,” Robbins said.