A Montreal singer named Laurel Sprengelmeyer, also known as “Little Scream,” has opened up about her past. She was raised with parents who followed the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine. As a child, she was fascinated with science, especially space. She was invited to go to Space Camp as a teenager, but her overly religious parents would not let her go.
Sprengelmeyer was told to follow the Bible to the letter and not to mix with “worldly” folk.
She said:
“I always did well in standardized testing, and I got chosen to go to NASA space camp. I was so excited, but the woman I was studying the Bible with said, ‘Laurel, you’re going to be hanging out with worldly people, who are going to tell you things that aren’t in the Bible. What would Jehovah want you to do?’ So of course I didn’t go to NASA space camp, and in subsequent years I dropped out of all my honors courses, because the church discouraged education and I wasn’t supposed to go to university.”
This girl dreamed of space, but her religion would not let her realize her dreams.
She split from the church as an adult, and now earns a living as a singer. She had to learn how to make friends outside of that environment.
This little girl should have been allowed to go to Space Camp.
Featured image by Bill Brooks via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
