There will always be parenting days when everything feels really hard, you know the types of days I’m talking about.
For most of my life on those types of days I would lean in, when what I should have been doing is leaning back or even out.
And because I was so focused on what was going wrong on those hard days, repeating whatever happened back to my husband the moment he walked in the door, it feels like I remember more of those moments than I should.
Seeking joy wasn’t on my radar when I was caring for my children when they were young. But I was always hoping to find happiness, which on most days felt elusive and now I understand why.
Those were the days before cannabis.
What I understand now is that seeking out joy is essential, otherwise all we encounter is the sorrow in life. The sorrows will always find us, but joy needs to be sought and then savored.
This isn’t just my opinion, there is now brain science linking happiness to attention.
On my favorite podcast, Hidden Brain, this exact topic has been discussed on the You 2.0 series Make The Good Times Last and Slow Down episodes.
For far too long, moms who used cannabis were not allowed to savor their cannabis consumption moments because of the shame surrounding the plant.
Not understanding this shame was a product of the false narrative manufactured to debase it, this shame burdened moms from savoring the consumption experience.
This diminished their joy and dimmed their desired happiness, because finding joy and experiencing happiness requires slowing down and savoring the moment.
If I’d been a cannamom—back in the day—I would have had a tool to slow myself down, to narrow my focus so I could pay attention to more of the good in the hustle of the busy mom life.
And if I’d savored the moments, those fleeting moments of joy with my children in the throes of the chaos, my memories of parenting would be filled with more of the joy I now seek, and not the sorrow that always finds us.
Here are 3 ways I slow down & savor the moment now as a busy CannaMom:
And don’t forget to give yourself plenty of grace as you create these new habits! Learning to slow down will take time and patience.
As moms it is often our curse to focus on our failures, but when we focus only on what we haven’t done well we will miss what we’ve achieved.
I could publish an impressive CV of my professional failures, but my lost ambitions and misdirected professional adventures are no match for the days I felt defeated by the one job I couldn’t leave, motherhood.
My parenting failures are many, and although each frustration felt personal and I often felt defeated, I kept going day after day— like all good parents do—because the goal of a parent is bigger than ourselves.
And those lessons from failure will transform you into someone better, if you let them.
Although it’s hard to shift direction once far down the chosen course, because it’s demoralizing to think about not achieving the goal if you’re only focused on winning.
But parenting isn’t a game of winning, and often the things we get wrong are telling us something about ourselves.
If we think about failure as a gift that allows us to extract information we otherwise wouldn’t learn, we are unburdened from the conflation of our self-worth from our goals. And it is a gift to learn from the unexpected source, often times that is our children, our own creations.
This of course brings me back to the cannabis industry and why we, the caregivers of the world, must create the future that normalizes cannabis by telling our stories and changing the narrative.
The emerging cannabis industry has experienced some failures in its infancy, but we are learning. And the women in my community are still focused on their goals and working every day to create a better future.
My own journey with cannabis began with the dream of making money, but the gift I’ve been given is community.
Over the past four-years of talking with the women of cannabis, my network of inspiring leaders in cannabis across the country, and around the world, includes women of different ages, different ethnicities, different stories of faith—but we are all connected by cannabis.
To celebrate our community, The Canna Mom Show is partnering with the iconic My Bud Vase and Courage in Cannabis stories with a special giveaway of the Sapphire Blue Jewel water pipe featured in the Boston Magazine story The Really High Housewives of Metro West Boston and Volumes One and Two of Courage in Cannabis.
My Bud Vase founder, Doreen Sullivan, has created a line of products that encourage us to savor the cannabis consumption experience. Her one-of-a-kind and artisan designs give us permission to allow space to savor our moments with cannabis.
The Courage in Cannabis series includes stories by a collection of 60+ diverse authors that show how cannabis has changed their lives.
We are using our combined platforms to lead the way in normalizing cannabis use for all of us!
I’m excited to share that we want to help you find the joy you’re seeking in this most wonderful time of year, Celebrating Back To School Canna Mom Style, with the opportunity to win your own beautiful consumption piece and both volumes of Courage in Cannabis.
Be the glitter in the grimness with this beautiful piece that should not be hidden away, but displayed and cherished like a special vase or art piece.
Join us in crushing the stigma and elevate your consumption experience with a My Bud Vase piece, because when you savor the moment, happiness will follow.
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About the Author
Joyce Gerber is an attorney, advocate and writer with exceptional organizational
skills, patience, creativity, and compassion – all of which shine through in her
work as founder and host of The Canna Mom Show podcast.
When not advocating for cannabis normalization, Joyce is active with many
community and civic organizations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lives
with her husband, children, pets, and students from the Berklee School of Music.
In her spare time, she has managed a rock band, ran for local political office, and
creates one-of-a-kind quilts for friends, family, and the occasional winner of the
annual Canna Mom Show Mother’s Day quilt giveaway.
Joyce has degrees from Northeastern University, Tufts University, and Connecticut College. When asked to describe his mom, her son Josh said, “she’s a force to be reckoned with.”
