Old-Fashioned Radical Girls

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day

Most of my funniest stories begin with failure, is that true for you too? But I don’t like to let failure keep me down and can usually find something amusing from every misdirected misfire. And the way I’ve learned to process what I can’t control, and don’t quite understand, is to smoke a little weed and write about it. A few years ago - after I’d finished writing several short novels and a memoir of running a political campaign - I even decided that cannabis might be helping me be a better storyteller. Which brings me to The Canna Mom Show.

I know the world needs more good stories about cannabis because quality stories will breathe life into this maligned and misunderstood plant through the connections and communities we are building. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know what I want to do now: raise the voices of cannabis storytellers that will get into your head and change hearts and minds.

Today my story will be a quick refresher on the power of words and why language matters and why I prefer the word cannabis to marijuana. The word marijuana was born from a myth through the perversion of language. It’s a bold example of a story impacting perception creating a word that wreaked uncontrollable havoc. This word was created with the intention to malign a plant that was connected with communities that spoke Spanish, and it disconnected the important industrial hemp plant from its closest plant sibling cannabis, and led to a century of prohibition. But sometimes what is maligned can be renewed through the creation of a better narratives. It’s a massive project to change perception because it’s hard to know what to believe in this ever-expanding media soaked world. So here we are at The Canna Mom Show to tell the stories in this new era of decriminalized botanicals. Cannabis is now accessible and considered beautiful, almost cinematic, by the industry believers. And we want to give those stories voice and elevate positive cannabis language.

I think that maybe all great ideas come from an active place of insecurity, because in the volatility of uncertainty we can create something new. What I also know is that desperation can open opportunities. I find myself suddenly, and unexpectedly, with a platform to be a maternal voice of cannabis. Not so much because of my great knowledge about cannabis, but because I’ve failed at so many other things! The trajectory of my professional life from divorce attorney to cannabis advocate was crooked and filled with potholes, but here I am ready to try something new.

Along this cannabis journey I’ve met an amazing community of women, like me, activists and entrepreneurs who want to build this emerging industry with rules that benefit the many and not just a few. Women are emerging as strong leaders in this industry and I want to use my platforms to highlight the contributions of women led research, business and social associations such as Elevate , C3RN, Tokeativity, and so many others I know are out there but who I haven’t met, yet.

I’m a quiet, cerebral, middle-aged woman whose funny but mostly ordinary. But now that I’ve connected with so many industry pioneers, I have the power to disrupt eighty-years of misinformation. And if I’ve learned anything in the last five decades of life in this crazy, unknowable world, it’s that laughter has the power to both heal wounds and open minds. Humor allows us to disrupt the negative narrative of people who refuse to believe, because good storytellers have the power to change how people understand the world. From banking to bong hits, from criminal justice to cannabis horticulture, The Canna Mom Show will be out looking for the stories that are transforming this world.

I’m a mom and my days tend to be cloaked in a veil of invisibility and, for the most part, that’s been okay. It’s been sort of a superpower for me and for so many other women I know. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but true. But it’s not okay to hide under our cloak of invisibility anymore because we’re ready to be part of something big that needs old-fashioned radical girls.