After years of separating motherhood, work, chronic pain, and cannabis, Stephanie Gelinas decided she was done making herself smaller for other people’s comfort.
If you had told me 20 years ago that one day I’d be writing for High Times about motherhood and cannabis, I probably would have laughed. Not because I thought it was impossible, but because those identities simply didn’t belong together in the world I grew up in.
The messages were subtle sometimes and blatant at others. Good mothers held everything together. Good mothers put everyone else first. Good mothers might joke about needing a glass of wine after a long day, but cannabis belonged to an entirely different category of people. Cannabis users were portrayed as irresponsible, lazy, and disconnected from real life. Mothers who consumed cannabis weren’t part of the story at all, and if they were, they certainly weren’t women you were supposed to admire. I absorbed those messages without even realizing it. Then I became a mother myself.
Like so many women, I had a picture in my mind of what my life would look like. I built a career in beauty and wellness and eventually opened my own studio. I loved helping women feel confident and cared for, and I treasured the relationships I built with my clients over the years. Running a business wasn’t just my job. It became part of my identity. I was the service provider, marketer, receptionist, bookkeeper, cleaner, and problem-solver. I was also raising two children, trying to build a stable home and create the kind of life I had always imagined for my family. For a while, I thought I had figured it out.
What most people didn’t see was what was happening behind the scenes. Chronic pain and spinal …
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Author: Stephanie Gelinas / High Times
