Originally published on September 3, 2017

Musician and artist Laurel Sprengelmeyer goes by the stage name Little Scream, and there's a reason for that. There's so much she is yearning to express - hence the scream - but she's a gentle, lovely person - so it'll just be a little scream.

Based in Montreal, she's originally from Iowa, where she was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. When Sprengelmeyer was in grade three, her mother was disfellowshipped from the faith, but Sprengelmeyer chose to stay.

Laurel Sprengelmeyer with her mother and brother

"I looked at the world, and it seemed like there were so many problems, and that was a thing that had been presented to me as the solution to all of the world's problems, and all of people's problems. So I really embraced that wholeheartedly."

But there were challenges in reconciling her faith with her studies.

Laurel Sprengelmeyer

"I loved science, I was such an inquisitive kid. And I loved reading about everything. So having a fundamentalist doctrine about the world being created 6,000 years ago and all of the literal biblical fundamentalism, that was also really difficult for me to navigate with all of the things I was learning about the world."

She was overjoyed when she was accepted into a NASA space camp, until she shared the news with her Jehovah's Witnesses spiritual mother.

"She said, 'Well you know Laurel, if you go to this thing, you're going to be around worldly people and you know we're not supposed to spend any extra time with worldly people, and you're also going to be exposed to ideas that aren't in the Bible - things like evolution and all of these other ideas that you shouldn't be exposed to and I really don't think you should do it."

When Sprengelmeyer eventually left the Jehovah's Witnesses, she regretted some of her previous life choices such as not having attended the NASA space camp and she abandoned any religious practice altogether.

But soon, Sprengelmeyer felt there was something missing in her life.

"To find myself in a completely secular world, and not having anything that touched that part of who I was, it did feel really quite lonesome, so I asked my father, I said, 'Well the next time you are going to a Buddhist event, would you let me know?' "

Little Scream (Zach Hertzman)

Her father took her to a Buddhist retreat in Texas, and that was the beginning of the next stage of her spiritual searching. Later, upon the recommendation of a friend, she visited a small community in Brazil which was slowly becoming a cult. This experience inspired her album Cult Following.

"So the leader of this community claims that she hasn't eaten in four years. I know she was drinking juices and having coconut water and stuff like that. But yeah, hadn't eaten in four years, which I think for the people for whom that works for, they have figured out a way to get their metabolisms into a very high functioning state. But then there were other people walking around that looked like they were starving."

Sprengelmeyer is a big fan of Prince, who was starting his life as a Jehovah's Witness just at the time Sprengelmeyer was leaving hers.

"I understand why people become Jehovah's Witnesses. Yes, I was raised in it, but … it gave me this sense of purpose in life. It made me feel like I was loved and special," she tells Mary Hynes. "There are a lot of really loving things in these communities. That's why people do it. And this world does not offer people a lot. It's just rampant consumerism. Where's the substance? What connects us to each other anymore? It's tough out there."