Pot-smoking moms on parenting while high
From the outside, the moms gathered in a Santa Monica living room could have been conferring about carpools, school boards or fundraisers, any of the myriad mundane meet-ups that come with parenting.
A quick survey of the scene might miss the spindly potted pot plant a few feet away on the deck. It most likely would have skipped right over one mother's dangly pot-leaf earrings or another's black T-shirt emblazoned with “Moms who smoke weed aren't bad moms.” And you'd practically have to be sitting on one of the couches in the compact, art-filled space to notice that the children's book on the coffee table in front of them was titled “Why Mommy Gets High.”
The living room belongs to the author of that book, Wendy Brazill, and on a sunny April morning she invited fellow local moms Angie Stocker, Shonitria Anthony and Alyssa Wraylie over to talk not about homework or healthful snacks but about marijuana and motherhood. (Brazill has a blended family of six now-adult children with husband, comedy writer/director Chad Einbinder.) Brazill “absolutely” believes consuming cannabis made her better at being a mom.
“I know it did,” Brazill, 57, said of her experiences with being a “cannamom,” a hashtag on social media given to mothers who enjoy marijuana while parenting. “Conversations were deeper. Our playtime was more enjoyable. In my head I wasn't thinking about the bills I had to pay and things I needed to get done before tomorrow. I was actually able to sit with [my kids], enjoy them.”
For those whose notions of what a mom should be skew more June Cleaver or Clair Huxtable than Lucille Bluth, it might be hard to imagine how puffing pot could be beneficial to the parenting process. However, modern-day mothers have been far more open than past generations about advocating for self-care to address the challenges and stresses of motherhood, and, as cannabis has continued to move mainstream, that conversation includes more moms who find a little weed does what a glass or two of Chardonnay did for their moms by taking the edge off after a long day of raising those little bundles of joy.
Stocker, 39, a West Adams comedian/dispensary receptionist with two children, ages 3 and 6, and an Etsy shop side-hustle selling weed-themed merchandise, is one of those who sings the plant's praises as mommy's leafy little helper.
“It's burnout, it's stress,” she said. “But it's also just sometimes you can't quiet your brain when you're doing an activity with your kids because you're like `Oh, this is making such a big mess.' … Cannabis can help you to be like `I am in this moment,' so you're not thinking about the mess.” (For what it's worth, Stocker said the right dose of cannabinoids also makes her better at building Lego megastructures. “I can really zone in and be like `Boom! Spider-Man's playhouse!'”)
“This isn't like when you're in college and you're getting stoned and falling asleep on the couch,” added Wraylie, 44, who lives in Topanga Canyon and describes herself as a “mom, herbalist and nurse” with two children, 6 and 9. “This is a very active high. You're doing all the things of your daily living — and more because you're doing it for a little being — and then you have to be present and interested in it. And you know, the world is a really stressful place. It always has been, and these days it's not getting any better.”
Brazill emphasized that “Why Mommy Gets High,” self-published late last year, is an honest-to-goodness kids' book aimed at kids and not a cheeky children's-book parody for adults (such is the case with Adam Mansbach's “Go the F— to Sleep” ). And she thinks “Why Mommy Gets High” could be an appropriate part of the pot-andparenting discussion starting with preschool-age children.
“I think that it would be a wonderful book for you to read to your kids so that they understand why Mommy's freaking out,” Brazill said. The book also would help explain why Mommy steps away for a few minutes and then returns saying, “Hey, I feel much better!”
And that it does, in just over a baker's dozen of pages (illustrated by Daniela Teichmann) that has a youngmommy version of the author cavorting with her children below large-print text. “It's hard to have fun with so much on my mind / Sometimes Mommy needs a way to unwind,” reads one memorable pair of pages (one of which depicts mother and children tending to a backyard pot plant). You can probably guess what comes next. “Mommy may slip away for just a minute or two / I'll come back carefree, ready to bake cookies with you.”
Brazill didn't have “the talk” with her own children until they were in college. (“Their father had become a born-again Christian,” she said. “It just wasn't something I felt I could speak to them about.”) However, the other cannamoms clustered on her couches said they had already broached the subject with their young ones.
“They know that it's only for grown-ups, that it's medicine,” Stocker said. “I think that just being open about it really, really, really helps from a young age so that there's nothing to hide. I'm not doing anything wrong.”
“It's the same for me,” said Wraylie. “We're growing it at home — well, we used to — and it grows at our friends' houses. These plants are just part of our gardens, [and] our kids know the plants.” Wraylie said she's taught her children to treat the plant like any of the other plants growing in the family's Topanga Canyon garden — with one exception. “They know it's mom's and dad's and not theirs.”
Shonitria Anthony, 33, who lives in West Hollywood and has a podcast and website called “Blunt Blowin' Mama” (and has little ones ages 3 and 7), said starting early is paramount. “The whole key,” she said, “is to get to them before schools get to them. You want to relay your message first and let them know that you are the authority on this. So they're not going to be like, `But my teacher said, but my counselor said, but my friend said.' It's `This is what my mom said.'”