“The same way people make wine”
The first time researcher Heather McIlvaine-Newsad became aware of cannamoms was around 2018, due to the emergence of Facebook groups dedicated to the new social movement. A professor of anthropology and co-founder of the interdisciplinary minor in cannabis and culture at Western Illinois University, McIlvaine-Newsad noted that some of the Facebook chat groups have been running for several years. Today, she says, there are more than two dozen such groups on Facebook, with several thousand members.
McIlvaine-Newsad says the cannamom movement demonstrates something that hasn’t been said before: women – and mothers – are using cannabis in everyday life, including products such as soft drinks, edibles, tinctures as well as CBD (cannabidiol) products.
Latrese Thomas, 40, based in the US, says she combines cannabis and parenting her three children “in the same way people make wine”.
“After a long day with the kids – especially during the pandemic, when I was home with my three babies, all day – once they were asleep, I would run a bath, drop salts of cannabis bath in my bath and also vaped cannabis,” says Thomas, who has two teenagers and a toddler. Especially as a black mother, Thomas says amid racist social unrest affecting black communities, cannabis has helped her “deal with my anxiety as a mother — not just as a black woman, but as a mother of ‘black children’.
Barinder Rasode, 53, has also felt his stress increase during the pandemic. With three children, ages 28, 25 and 17, the mother from Vancouver, British Columbia, has struggled with parenting amid Covid-19, especially trying to explain to her youngest child what that was happening. “You’re dealing with a teenager whose world has been turned upside down, and you’re confined to a small space, all together, for more hours than anyone should be,” says Rasode, a former city politician turned medical cannabis CEO. . GrowTech Labs business incubator.
To help calm her frayed nerves, she used cannabis, which is legal in Canada. “My cannabis use not only helped ease my own anxiety about the situation, but made me a more patient parent.”
“The big misconception is that we only smoke to get high”
Many cannamoms, including Rasode, Thomas and Brand, all use “microdosed” cannabis – using the plant or its extracts in small doses.
“The big misconception is that we only smoke to get high,” laughs Thomas, owner of cannabis dispensary Releaf Health in Portland, Oregon, USA, and who runs the Living Unapologetically with Trese blog. “Well no. I’m still a mom. I still have to function. I still run a business. I still have to go back and forth and attend practices.
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