What I Wish I Knew About Cannabis Before Motherhood

Before motherhood, I didn’t know much about intentional healing. I knew survival. I knew hustle. And I knew how to hide my exhaustion with productivity. My energy was to be consistently buried with the soil of everything and everyone else but me, then and only then was I able to feel comfortable. It was the lack of ease and the constant battle that felt normal. Cannabis was there since college, floating in and out of my life, but it wasn’t a practice for me then. It wasn’t medicine. It wasn’t sacred. It was a momentary escape from all the weight I didn’t have the language to name. It was a relief from the pain and stress I thought was normal. Something I did with friends, casually, not realizing the significance of the rituals we were unconsciously creating for ourselves to unpack and really hear each other.. I didn’t yet understand its power—or my own, for that matter.

Then came motherhood. Boom. Twice. Seventeen years apart. Yup smh, you read that right.

There have been two completely different eras of parenting, two completely different versions of me. The duality necessary is painstakingly exhausting. Every day, I’m required to be different versions of myself for my boys, often simultaneously. This is the struggle I can’t just escape.

With my first child, I was younger, a little more terrified of life as a mom, and constantly worried I was one step away from doing it the wrong way and somehow misrepresenting my family and how I was raised. I avoided the glares of judgment of what felt like everyone around me— the concerns of human services departments, pediatric offices, and my nana’s nosy friends who were still here to criticize everything —followed me everywhere. I was so nervous about being a new parent, and I was overly concerned with what people might think about a young Black mother using cannabis. I didn’t brag about my consumption, but I didn’t necessarily hide it either. 

 I felt I had to prove I was a “good mom,” which at the time to me meant suppressing my pain, hiding my exhaustion, and accepting the suffering as part of the job. There was no space for nuance. No room for natural healing. Just a relentless push to survive, like I had seen my mother do so many times before. Swallowing her feelings, needs, self-care, for one more hour of pay, one more bonus that was never worth it, another night of worrying about how to make ends meet. I learned early that this was what motherhood looked like. The sacrifices for museum trips and zoo memberships were steep for my mom and I believed that was the cost of motherhood, and my kids were worth it.

So I consumed nothing but stress. I was in pain, unable to eat, dangerously losing weight, emotionally and physically broken, and still too conditioned to believe that caring for myself would risk me being seen as selfish or irresponsible. Uncommitted to motherhood like my mother was to me, but it was that commitment that made her sick. 

Fourteen years later, I was a mother again, but this time with the lived experience of being a cannabis advocate and business owner: the lived experience and the loss of the matriarch of our family, our north star. The closest thing I had to a baby manual, doula, and on-call doc was suddenly gone. But in my grief, I found clarity. I realized I needed to care for myself to care for others. I had learned and seen too much to ignore what I now understood: that wellness required more than willpower. It required permission. And this time around, I gave myself that permission.

Cannabis returned to my life—but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t casual anymore. I didn’t blindly consume and hope it killed the pain, or fix something beyond its reach. I had done the research. I had listened to stories, learned the plant’s history, studied its compounds, and witnessed its healing firsthand. This time, my relationship with cannabis came from a place of reverence and self-discovery. I studied terpenes. I tracked how different strains affected my nervous system. I paid attention to my emotions, my cycle, my triggers, and I kept a journal to remind myself of it all. I recognized when cannabis could help—and when I needed something deeper, like therapy with a good friend, unapologetic rest with magnesium on damp feet, or just stillness. I stopped using cannabis to escape. I started using it to return to myself.

I began to explore complementary herbs—not just as add-ons, but as partners in my healing. Through ritual and intention, I started creating small, sacred moments that supported the kind of pregnancy I wanted to experience and the type of mothering I was trying to practice. I started permitting myself to feel good, to be the priority again in my life. 

Somewhere along the way through all this, I realized: I was the garden. And for far too long, my soil had been dry. I had not been watering the many parts of myself that needed tending. Yet, I had still relentlessly required myself to show up, serve, and give endlessly to a community, family, and business that needed me, while neglecting the very root of my being. I had allowed motherhood to be something to struggle through instead of joyfully experiencing it because that’s what I was taught, shown for so long to do.

This time, my consumption was a form of devotion. A way to replenish. A small ceremonial way to remember to breathe, taking the moment to calm and reward myself with a slower vibe. Cannabis helps sustain me. Sustaining may not be thriving, but I’m no longer surviving either. I’m standing in the sacred in-between, rooted in the honesty of where I am, and actively working toward where I want to be because acknowledging the truth of our capacity allows us to expand it with care, clarity, and compassion.

I had fewer fears the second time around. I was more confident in defending my choices. I made decisions based on my specific needs, not out of fear or guesswork. Even now, as a breastfeeding mama (yes, I know—I’m trying to wean him, don’t judge me), I understand my consumption more deeply. I’m better prepared to explain it, even if I’m often too exhausted by the constant need to justify what I know is best for me and my family. I recognize that I am a black mother using cannabis as a tool for wellness, and that alone may not sit well with people. But I learned that sometimes you have to know a struggle to appreciate and understand it truly, so it can’t be the barometer for how I live my life. 

What I wish more mothers understood is that cannabis doesn’t have to be shameful or secret. It can be thoughtful. It can be healing. It can be part of a broader self-care strategy that honors your nervous system, hormones, trauma, and joy.

I also wish society would stop criminalizing our choices and start listening to our stories. Black mothers deserve autonomy. We deserve care. We deserve to explore plant medicine without fear of losing our children, credibility, or community.

Today, cannabis is not my savior—but it is my ally. It helps me regulate. It helps me rest. It helps me respond, not just react, to the daily chaos of mothering two children at opposite ends of the age spectrum.

I’m still tired, but now I’m tired and empowered, and that, to me, is progress.

About the author:

Sheena Roberson is the founder of Cannabis Noir and The Higher Conference