Canna Sisters - The Musical

I’ve never really been the best at anything, but I’ve never really been the worst either. For most of my life I would say I have been solidly in the middle. Where most people are. At a legal cannabis event I attended this month there was little humility on display by the people who think of themselves as the best declared webinar after webinar that the industry of cannabis would most definitely follow the same old business-world rules of growth and acquisition. Meaning that the middle, where most small business will be, won’t survive. And the longer I listened to their assured statements and financial predictions I wanted to throw things at my computer and yell, Who gave you the right to declare how this industry will go? You are just a small part of it?! 

But because I’m just an average person stuck in the middle, I wasn’t invited to speak.

The idea that only the biggest will survive in this industry - depriving the rest of us the generational wealth this industry should produce - must be fought.  I refuse the see the world through the eyes of those people who believe they are the best, and ask that we are allowed to use our imaginations to create a different type of business created by and for women where we have a place and don’t have to twist ourselves to fit a view of who we should be and how things should be done.

We all hide behind something, but to be healthy and  human we must discover what we are covering up. As a culture we must discover why we continue tell women and caregivers to hide their humanity in the professional world as if we can separate who we are. Women have had to hide their alter-ego as mom or caregiver since first being allowed to monetize their time, and that is wrong. We all know that is wrong.

To achieve the most obvious  task of uncovering the truth we are hiding, we must find the humility to correct the narratives in our own heads. An accomplished friend who I’ve known for over thirty-years - a leader and highly regarded professional - confessed just the other day that the narrative in her head included the ideas that she is lazy, unimpressive and that her body is sluggish and imbalanced. None of which are true. She runs; teaches at a college level; and is an artist in both fabric and clay. But her confession got me thinking about perception versus reality in regards to the narratives in our own heads, and why those at the top feel that they have the right to control those narratives and why we let them. 

I’m always suspicious of people who claim to know what others are thinking, it seems so improbable given that most of us don’t seem to know what’s going on in our own heads. Yet it’s shocking how easily we can submit our agency about reality to the biggest voice in the room. That seems to be what happened to my friend at a micro-level with her own sister, but more frighteningly it seems to be happening at macro-level to America right now.

Building this cannabis sisterhood is very important if we are going the wrestle this industry away from the capital intense interests that seem to control everything in this world.  But we all understand that a sisterhood can go a couple of different ways. Sisters can be nice, supportive, and encourage positive and empowering narratives. Or, Sisters can be bullies whose intent is to make others internalize their own hateful projections and cause women to believe narratives that are not true. Like my friend who said it was her sister who told her all those terrible and untrue things which my friend believed because she trusted her sister.

It’s hard to know what to believe in this big and unknowable world, and what I’ve learned is that sometimes we just believe in the wrong things. People who can’t see themselves because they are hiding behind something that conceals their own truth are very susceptible to trusting the wrong people who justify a misgotten fear. Those who take advantage of the precious gift of trust and abuse their power are the most dangerous types of people because of their power to control and their disregard for the chaos they create. 

We are not meant to hate ourselves, and when I hear justifications that violence and fear justify the end I say bullshit.  For our world to have good character we all must care about others and we must not hate ourselves or act with bad intent. Character is defined by what you do and how you treat others, not what you achieve.

I’ve always believed that everything I needed to know about life could be learned from a good musical, movies and  live theater. When I was young I’d listen to records (yes, records) that felt like friends sharing stories and insights about life. On those lazy afternoons, lying on the floor or dancing in my room, it was that unity of voices and exaggerated feeling of joy and sadness that I needed, to escape into my imagination and learn something new. 

I returned to musical theater after the seven strange months my family huddled together in our home and were forced to create a new narrative of life because things were falling to pieces around us.  In August we sent our daughter back into the world so she wouldn’t miss the opportunity to fly from us and spread her own wings. On that first night when my family was gone on their cross-country adventure from Massachusetts to Arizona, and I had to create a new rhythm of my life without my husband, son and daughter by my side, in my house,  suddenly living without the burden of meeting the needs of others. On that first night I lit my Shabbat candles, joined in Zoom prayer with my temple community, and danced to the sounds of  service music in my kitchen, a place I mostly avoided for the previous months. It was an unsettling freedom, like I was living in my own musical.

It was a moment to think about reclaiming the narrative of my life and think about what it felt like to be just me. Turns out when I’m alone and have no responsibilities and no place to go, I like to listen to show tunes and organize. It sounds a little weird, but cleaning is a universal ritual and from my own Jewish perspective I believe that we must clean to create something new.

On the candle-lit porch on the twelve-nights of my solitude I felt guilty that I hadn’t used the precious time  alone to finish my novel or exercise more. What I had done was deep clean my house and fill myself with good stories through movies, books and podcasts so that the narrative in my head, the things I believe about this world, could be positive and forward thinking and full of hope and songs. 

We all want to find a place where we fit in and don’t have to contort ourselves to unrealistic expectations so we can be ourselves at our best and not punished when we fall short. To do this we, the Canna-Sisters, must build it because if we leave it the people with the most money and historic influence they will build it in their own image and forget, again, about the rest of us. In true musical theater tradition let’s all join hands, strengthen the middle and raise our voices together to bring joy and healing to this world.