Canna Mom Power
Tennis, faith and writing, with a little bit of cannabis sprinkled on-top, was the recipe that healed me during a time when I was feeling like a big-old loser. I’m an introverted-thinker whose been in search of a community for most of my life and thought I would find that in a profession like the urban policy, politics or the law. I was wrong.
But I did find community in tennis. In that solitary, focused, somewhat serious community I’ve found others just like me. Regardless, my tennis-playing, pearl-wearing world does not completely define me.
My community of faith is another bedrock of my identity, and I consider myself a writer, too. I don’t believe we are all one thing or another, but fall uniquely on a spectrum of many choices and are perfectly capable of being many things at once.
And then there’s cannabis, what an expansive community I’ve stumbled into.
As a mid-century-modern woman I’ve been allowed to live a life few women before me were allowed to live. I’ve travelled the world, earned multiple degrees, and have taken many leadership roles. But when I did what women have always done - created life - the trajectory of who I thought I would be ended and I had to learn to be somebody new.
A mom.
Now a canna mom!
A decorator once asked me if I was a green or a blue, as if that were a community that defined me also. At the time I preferred the color green and spent years never crossing that self-defined decorating dictum.
But I know now that I am not what I do or how I decorate, I am, like you, a unique combination of my DNA, natural inclinations, and experiences in combination with all that I’ve learned to do thorough practice and habit. For a few years I was a practicing family law attorney, an emotionally destructive career that I wasn’t really that good at. It’s not that I don’t like to argue, I went to law school to learn how to fight. But what I found when I was fighting so hard for what I didn’t believe in was that I was constantly disappointing others and ultimately disappointing myself.
Did I mention that when I was fired from my last lawyer job I said “thank you”?
After that disastrous career-fiasco I did other things for free, as all women and moms have always done. I became that mom at my kids’ school who did all the unpaid work that keeps communities together. But I also found relief from my mild depression and feelings of inadequacy through cannabis. And now I’m learning how I was never alone in my feelings of displacement and the relief I found in my quiet, cannabis habit. It’s taken me a while to step outside the “green closet.”
I’m back in the professional world with the creation of The Canna Mom Show because I have something to say and share with the young women who are following me on this unchartered future of cannabis and motherhood. Over the past year I have spoken with local moms like Cara Crabb-Burnham, a founder of Elevate New England, about her experience changing maternal cannabis reporting policy at a Boston hospital. I’ve connected with Kelley Bruce, founder of Cannamommy in California who has impressed me with her extensive knowledge of and advocacy for mother’s rights in the cannabis space. And of course Samantha Montanero who I met this summer when she was on an east coast tour for her group Tokeativity and who spoke with Amie and me earlier this year.
Now, here I am, so excited to speak with all of you brave women who crave a place to tell your cannabis stories and speak freely about the health and wellness you achieved through this plant.
The tribes we divide ourselves into are not exclusive and I’d argue cannabis may touch them all. But we need transparency for this to happen because invisibility allows fears and misinformation to persist. We must believe that the love for this plant will push out the misdirected fear to create a united community that can embrace the power of cannabis to heal.
The stunning reality of this can feel overwhelming and there will be pain, for some, as they share how cannabis works in their lives to those who cannot, and may never, be believers. That does not mean we should remain quiet. Discussion is good. Pain is natural. But we should not be required to suffer for our goal of revolutionizing the conversation about motherhood and cannabis.
First, we must acknowledge others’ pain so that we can open ourselves up to hear how cannabis gives mothers a life free of unnecessary suffering. We all deserve that.
Next, we must tell stories that touch the hearts of those who do not understand and, I think, we should try being funny. It’s frightening, I don’t disagree, but to find a courageous place in the world we must take fear on the journey. That’s my big idea.
Learning how to be a mother in a world where all the rules had been thrown out felt very lonely, and I know that being really well-educated didn’t really help me that much. But it helped me think about it in different ways and there are mothers across this country who need to shed the shame of cannabis use, and we are here to help.
If you want to hear cannabis stories from the secular to the sacred on how it heals, enhances and elevates the lives of moms from coast to coast, The Canna Mom Show is a community for you.
What’s your cannabis story?