What do you need?
The voice that screams. The risk of listening.
I’m every girl I’ve ever been. They sing inside me like a choir: the believer, the invalid, the seductress, the victim, the fighter, the heretic, the forager, the student, the survivor. Uncivilized, hungry angry, wild.
Each of these girls have taken turns at the wheel, depending on the season. Each one kept me alive in a world that did not always feel safe. None of them are wrong or obsolete. They aren’t past versions of me, they are living currents, still moving under the surface, still reaching for the light.
And right now, one of them is screaming.
Not speaking, or requesting, or making a reasonable case for herself.
Screaming.
She is loud in a way that feels embarrassing. She’s irrational, demanding and wild in a way that doesn’t translate into polite conversation or well-managed days. She interrupts. She disrupts. She refuses to stop.
It’s hard to listen to someone who sounds like chaos.
Sometimes I’m moving through my life, steady hands on the wheel, making good choices, tending to what needs tending, and then
flash—
the walls close in.
I’m small again, folded into a metal box barely large enough to hold me, knees pressed to chest, breath shallow. The air smells like dust and iron.
Outside, there’s a performance happening. A voice announcing me like a spectacle: Ladies and gentlemen, the Great ghost of Houdini will spear this child. Watch closely now. Watch to see whether she survives. Metal rods slide forward, inch by inch, the sound of them ringing through my body. I claw at the dark, nails catching, splitting. My lungs burn.
I knock, once, twice, then harder, begging, but no one opens the box.
Houdini inserts steel rods into the box, in one side and out the other, crisscrossing in the middle. The audience gasps. Certainly he is spearing the little girl inside, but no one comes to save her.
Houdini continues to insert more steel rods until the box is sufficiently pierced, and then he pauses and the audience is silent and they wait. Houdini pulls out each rod, one by one, a trickle of air wafting through the box so I can breathe again.
The audience sees a black box that looks like it’s riddled with bullet holes. As Houdini opens the lid, the audience anticipates the carnage.
Then I stand up and smile, waving my hands, showing the audience I have survived.
But I’ll tell you a secret. There’s no magic in Houdini’s box. I maneuvered around the steel rods by being flexible, that’s all, just contorting myself to fit around them. And I could hold my breath for a very long time.
I’m a child who learned that crying doesn’t change the outcome.
So I stopped.
And that’s the part of me who is screaming now. Because she remembers what it feels like when no one comes.
What would happen if I pulled over and stopped the car?
Not to override her, or silence her or tell her she’s being dramatic or inconvenient. But stop the car and sit on the side of the road, engine quiet, and turn toward her and ask her, what do you need?
And then listen to her. Really listen to her. Not as a problem that needs to be solved, but as a voice worth hearing.
What do you need?
Paying attention is not passive. It’s not soft in the way meditation is quiet. Attention is an act of creation, an act that reorganizes the world around what you find valuable. It asks us to allocate time, energy, resources to what is true within us, not to what’s loudest outside of us.
And that is terrifying.
Because if I really listen, I might have to change something. I might have to disappoint someone. I might have to leave the highway on which I’ve been driving on cruise control. I might have to admit that the part of me I’ve been calling “too much” is actually the part that knows the way out.
There is risk in letting that girl take the wheel, even for a stretch of open road.
She doesn’t drive according to the old rules. She doesn’t optimize for approval. She doesn’t care about arriving on time.
She cares about not being left in the box.
The parts of us that scream are not trying to destroy our lives. They are trying to return us to them.
To a life where we are not performing for an audience. To a life where, when we knock from the inside, someone opens the door. To a life of aliveness.
When I pay attention to her, really pay attention to this girl, I meet the world differently. I become less armored. Less compliant. And more available to what I feel.
Attention, it turns out, is a form of devotion. And when I devote myself to listening, the scariest thing is not that she’s screaming.
It’s that she might be right.
A gift for you:
Forager Field Note #7 - Road Trip!
And, while you’re on Spotify, consider giving Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult a listen, free for those with a Spotify account. Thank you. It means something to me.
More ways to connect
Online — The Understory (an alternative to the artist’s way)
Begins June 27, 2026. Free for paid subscribers ·Zooms on June 27, July 25, Aug 29
(No book, no religion, no “tasks.” Just curiosity, pleasure, and play.)
The Art of Storytelling
Saturday, April 25 - 10:30-2:00
If you’ve ever wanted your stories to land, this is for you.
In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to build vivid, emotionally resonant scenes you can use anywhere: in your writing, your work, your relationships, or your everyday storytelling.
We’ll focus on what actually makes people lean in, so your stories don’t just get told, they get remembered.
Summer Solstice Retreat
June 18–21 - We’ll gather at the longest light of the year to write, walk, hike, dance, and celebrate together. ONE SPOT left for a private room. ONE SPOT left for a shared room. If you’d like more information, or want me to hold a place for you, send a note to me at booking@michelledowd.org
In-Person - Yoga at the Maloof - Rancho Cucamonga – Fridays at 10 a.m. Yoga on Tap at Claremont Craft Ales – 2nd & 4th Sundays, 11:30–12:30
Who Am I?
I’m a writer, teacher, and lifelong forager.
I was raised in an apocalyptic cult in the mountains of California, where I learned to survive off the land and listen for what lives beneath the surface. My memoir, Forager: Field Notes on Surviving a Family Cult, tells the story of leaving everyone and everything I believed in.
Now, through this newsletter, along with retreats and workshops, I help others build creative lives rooted in attention, embodiment, and relationship with the natural world.
Michelle, your essay today reminded me so much of parts work in Internal Family Systems theory. I have been working on listening to my exile - the wounded child who cried but was not comforted - because she has been begging me to love her. No one else will. No one else does. But I know I can.
Thanks for reminding me of this.
Thank you for the curated playlists on Spotify! I'm really enjoying these every week. Many of the songs are familiar and some great new ones too. The recommended Spotify playlists are sometimes hit or miss and often just pull from my existing favorite songs, but having a selected set that someone else puts together is really fun. It's a gift every Friday so thank you for that!