A Cannabis Mom: The Beginning

Thank you for reading The Canna Mom Show blog. And, just for the record (in case my mom is reading) becoming a loud and proud cannabis advocate isn’t who I intended to be. My journey from attorney and candidate to cannabis entrepreneur, or as my father would have said from politics to pot, began as such journeys do: moving forward from disappointment and failure. But I’m nothing if not persistent. Now, after a long and circuitous route over many, many years, I am owning my new identity as a Canna Mom.

Cannabis was introduced to me by my older brother around 1978, just as the war on drugs was heating up and drugs, all drugs, were very scary to me. I still tried some, including alcohol, but despite feeling pretty good when I smoked cannabis, I used it sparingly because I worried about damaging my brain.

Cannabis really came back into my life when I became this person I never expected to be, a mom. I was an ambitious young woman who at thirty decided to get a law degree as a way to elevate my voice and to make a positive difference in the world. I thought that if I expanded my mind with a solid, legal education, I could assume my place in the “real” world, like my father, and not get stuck in female domesticity.

But, during the second semester of my third year of law school I realized I did not have nervous indigestion during the weeks leading up to my mid-terms; I was pregnant. My husband and I were not planning on starting a family just as I was about to study for the bar, but sometimes life just happens. I like to boast that my son was with me when I took the bar, thus proving that a woman’s uterus and brain can work simultaneously. But when Josh arrived in this wild and unknowable, my world became transfixed on him. So despite my claims of equality and my rants against the constraints of domestic expectations in connection my own belief in agency, I became the person I never expected to be.

A stay-at-home mom.

Twenty-one years ago the turmoil and tedium of domesticity was cast upon me, and the mom friends I spent most of my time with did like their wine, but a few also liked cannabis. And I liked it too. I liked it more than wine because it helped me unwind in a way that felt healthier than alcohol. But because I was misinformed I was ashamed of what I was doing, so I kept cannabis a secret. Even as I lived it, I knew something was wrong with my shame of cannabis given that my husband was free to have a beer or two with no judgement, but there was something dangerous about my drug of choice.

I wish there had been a publication like Women & Weed and I had access to stories like Pot & Motherhood (Centennial Spotlight Publication) when my children were young. All I had access to were mainstream media stories that left me feeling fearful and secretive. But now I am a middle-aged woman with “almost” grown children who has a place for my grounded and informed cannabis voice to help the next generation of mothers and women taking care of others.

The voices of these advocates and practitioners will help all of us move beyond our misguided fears and demonization of this miraculous plant. Cannabis is a plant that crosses every industry and will have a place in every community in our country, very soon. And wouldn’t it be ironic if this plant that has divided our country along class and color since the end of prohibition, devastating families and communities across the continent, could be the plant that heals some of our many wounds.

But first, the positive and informed cannabis stories need to be told and many of them will be found right here at The Canna Mom Show. Amie and I are grateful for our growing cannabis curious community and look forward to sharing what we learn and answering your needs to find the right way for cannabis to help the people you love.