Cannabis & Motherhood with Joyce Gerber

As a working mom of young kids, Joyce was offered the standard remedies for stress. “You can have pharmaceuticals, you can have a drink, or you can suffer through.”

Though she knew cannabis made her feel better, it incongruent with what she was told. The lies around cannabis were pervasive and easily believable. “I thought cannabis was like alcohol and would take you away from the moment. I didn’t know it would take away all the mental stuff going around in my head and give me the present moment.”

As the years passed, the pressure in her life continued to expand as her career grew and her kids got older. The stress was unbearable. “I did everything I was supposed to do. I leaned in, and it was the worst advice I’ve ever gotten. There was no structure to support me, and I just felt like I was failing over and over again.”

Joyce faced a struggle that working moms know well when put between a rock and a hard place of family and careers. “Every time something happened with my kids, it was my career that took the hit. I was desperately trying to keep it together, but I was far more afraid of failing as a professional than a parent.”

Changing Her Mind About Weed

Eventually, Joyce could take no more. In 2016, she and her husband embarked on a tour of Colorado. They were fortunate enough to get an inside look at the new cannabis industry. “I realized everything I knew about weed was wrong.”

A short time later in 2017, several life changes collided at once, and Joyce found herself without a job. Getting a new one proved challenging  – until she had a crazy idea: working in weed.

In pursuit of the traditional milestones, Joyce went so far as to go to career therapy, but her entire body rebelled against getting back into law. In 2017, the market in Massachusetts was just starting to open up.  “You never get to be a part of something new,” She said. “And my career therapist liked the idea.”

Ultimately, it was a wild swing for the fences for a woman looking for something new in her life. “It was a combination of desperation, isolation, and failure that brought me to the industry.”

Become the Host of the CannaMom Podcast

Joyce is perhaps best known as the host of The Canna Mom show, which ran from 2019 – 2025.

It was 2018 when she was hired as the executive producer of a cannabis media/ podcast company. A conversation with a mom friend who had younger kids about how to talk about the newly legal substance sparked an idea: an interview show.

The podcast started as her own personal research project to learn as much about weed as possible. She wanted a deep dive into a topic that had previously been utterly taboo. And now she felt like she had nothing to lose. “My journey into cannabis came because I failed. At a lot of things.”

Joyce ended up leaving the podcast company in 2019, but they let her take the CannaMoms show with her. 2020 came quickly with its myriad of unexpected changes and challenges, but it also presented an opportunity.

“People had nothing to do, and they wanted to share their stories,” Joyce told me. She was overrun with guests and produced 50 shows during COVID.

“I want to share the stories of women in this industry,” Joyce said. “This plant is a caregiver, women are caregivers, and this should be a woman’s industry.”

Stepping into Her Weed Mom Era

Now that she knows what she knows, Joyce wishes things had been different when she was a young mom. “I wish I had used cannabis when the kids were little and I was really busy. I would have been able to enjoy the experience more, to connect with them and myself more.”

Joyce believes that being able to be open and embrace cannabis consumption would have changed her. “It would have totally reshaped my motherhood experience”

It’s not about getting high or feeling removed – in fact, it’s the exact opposite. “I had no mind/body connection. I didn’t believe in it. I was pregnant in law school and took the bar! I was taught to ignore my body’s signals. ”

The belief in perseverance and traditional success at the expense of health is one many Gen-X women know well. And for Joyce, it took her out of her body completely. “I was entirely focused on the law and not my pregnancy at all. I didn’t buy into any of it. But cannabis has been so useful for changing that and helping me develop a mind/body connection.”

Today, Joyce holds a very different set of beliefs around cannabis and the mind-body connection. She credits the plant with helping her open up new avenues of adventure in her life. “My marriage improved when we started to smoke together. We sit on our cannabis porch, and we talk. It settles us.”

Her kids know Mom smokes weed. Now adults, they were teens when Joyce entered in the cannabis industry, so I have to know: what did they think?

“My kids were very happy about my change in attitude. They came home during COVID, and I was running around stocking up on cannabis before they got home!”

Ultimately, Joyce’s relationship with the plant has helped her deepen her most meaningful relationships. “My kids – I know so much more about their lives than my parents did at this age because of [weed].”

That includes the relationship with herself. “Cannabis has calmed me down. I lived with anxiety my entire life, and while it’s fueled me in many ways, I never thought it would go away. Anxiety made me miss things I didn’t know I was missing.”

Looking back, it’s obvious how anxiety and fear pushed her forward. “I wish I could have just sat on the floor and been there more when my kids were little. It was a crazy headspace, being a divorce attorney and coming home to toddlers. A hit or two in my bedroom? It would have changed everything.”

What Joyce describes is something I’ve heard other parents echo; cannabis is incredibly useful for switching from a “work” headspace to a “home” headspace. “Kids just want you to pay attention to them and not be mean. It’s so small, but it’s so hard to achieve when you have so much going on.”

Opening the Door for Moms to Talk About Weed

Over the course of her tenure as the host of the CannaMom podcast, Joyce conducted hundreds of conversations. She was searching for knowledge for herself, but what she found was far more profound.  Her guests opened her eyes to the parents who desperately need cannabis for their kids. “When parents are giving their kids cannabis, it’s out of desperation. It’s a last resort. They have no medical help.”

Cannabis is still not fully accepted in mainstream society today. “There’s still so much shame around the idea of consuming cannabis. The idea that moms have to take care of themselves in order to take care of kids is still stigmatized.”

Her position in Massachusetts and as a member of the industry means her voice in these conversations carries far less risk than others – which is why it’s so important for her to speak up. “I’m in a legal state with older kids. I’m not taking a risk. The moms using cannabis to help their kids out of medical desperation? In prohibition states? They’re risking everything.”

Her breadth of knowledge on cannabis has proven useful for more than just her kids. “My son’s generation – they medicated those kids since a young age. But my son didn’t like it. He found weed on his own, and used it to come off his meds. His friends wanted to know more, and they would come to me with questions about how to use it and how to talk to their parents.”

These days, Joyce fields questions from generations on both sides. “My mom didn’t understand cannabis at all, but her friends were curious. I gave them CBD topicals for pain.”

She acknowledges that her change of mind on the plant is helpful to reframe other conversations. “When people see someone they love use this plant medicine in a way that changes them positively, it opens them up to accept they could be wrong about the plant.”