Submitted by: Satori, written by Danielle Rosellison
Recently, I was on a panel for the Women’s Professional Network here in Bellingham. To a room of approximately 70 business women, whose ages ranged 40-60, I asked how many of them knew someone who had benefited from medicinal cannabis. The vast majority of hands raised towards the ceiling, and my heart soared.
This is valuable for two reasons. One, and the most obvious, is that that many people knew someone who had benefitted from medicinal cannabis. This is huge in itself. Two, and maybe more importantly, was that these women were comfortable enough to raise their hands in a professional setting. That, my friend, is what real change looks like.
As we work to free the cannabis plant, personal stories are the most impactful. Grandparents eradicating joint pain through a cannabis topical. Veterans rejoining civilian life by utilizing a vape pen even though they are plagued with PTSD. Children prone to seizures, like Maddy, getting off pharmaceutical drugs and going from multiple life-threatening seizures a day to once a month.
Patients have been denied access to life saving medication and families have been torn apart because fathers, sons and brothers sold a plant to someone who wanted it. The more you educate yourself on cannabis prohibition, the better choices you can make now.
People ask me all the time how they can help. It’s so easy. If you want to help the cannabis movement, then all you need to do is tell your story. Tell people at dinner parties about how cannabis helps you sleep through the night. Tell co-workers that you know someone with Parkinson’s whose tremors decrease after ingesting cannabis. Talk about how you carry a cannabis pain stick with you to address migraines. It doesn’t have to be a big story. Every little story helps, and the more we, the women, the mothers, the daughters, the grandmothers and aunts, tell stories about how cannabis is helping people, the sooner we can begin to repair the decades of harm that prohibition has done.
Danielle Rosellison is an owner/operating manager of Trail Blazin’ Productions, a cannabis farm in Bellingham WA. She is also the President of The Cannabis Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to the advancement of a vital, ethical and sustainable cannabis industry.
Header photo courtesy: Focus Photography
