‘I’m not doing anything wrong’: Pot-smoking L.A. 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.

To Read The Rest Of This Article By Adam Tschorn on Los Angeles Times

Published: May 04, 2022