Chrissy Harrell
Bri Smith
Kenya Alexander
LaWann Stribling
KC Santana
By Dustin Hoxworth
There’s a line from the movie The Crow that hit me like a prophecy the first time I heard it Brandon Lee, with that haunted calm, saying: “Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of all children ”
I didn’t know why it rattled and stuck with me so much back then I just knew it felt true in a way that clung to my ribs. As I got older, I understood it wasn’t about anything holy or heroic, but about the pull mom’s have on our lives. That invisible force a mother has over you, even when she doesn’t know the whole story And for a long, long time, my mother didn’t know mine.
She thought I was “landscaping” my way through college, hustling dirt and mulch to keep myself afloat And yeah, maybe there was a rake or shovel involved once or twice, but the real truth was growing in backpacks, baggies, jars, and quiet back bedrooms where you learn how to scale survival into something that looks like a future It definetly wasn’t landscaping
I was selling weed so I could stay in school, pay rent, and eat something that wasn’t ramen or regret. But I never told her. Not for many years anyway
Because when you’re young, you think protecting your mom from the messy truth is the same thing as protecting her love You think the parts of you that don’t fit the world’s script don’t belong in her story And you convince yourself that the distance created by silence is somehow safer than the truth.
Jessica Reilly-Chevalier
Photo by Derrall Peach
It wasn’t until my late 20s, hell, maybe even creeping into my 30s that I finally let her into the real version of who I was and who this plant had already made me become And here’s the thing that still gets me: She didn’t flinch, turn away, or love me any less for it. If anything, she understood me more
That’s the power of motherhood. It’s not about knowing every detail of your kid’s life, it’s about loving them through every version of themselves, even the ones they’re scared to say out loud.
Cannabis shaped me But my mother? She anchored me. And somewhere between the lies I told to survive and the truth I finally learned to speak, she helped me become the man who could build something like Fat Nugs Magazine - a place for all of us who walked strange roads to get here, who hid huge parts of ourselves to keep moving, who found our way to community through a plant that never judged us for the things we carried
I didn’t tell her everything back then. But she’s the reason I can tell the truth now
Motherhood is already hard enough Life is hard Work is hard Family life is chaos with a pulse And somehow, while women are out here doing the impossible every day; holding families together, holding careers together, holding themselves togetherthere’s this wave of small, loud, insecure men trying to drag them backwards a century
Men who want to take away their rights, voices, and autonomy Men who think women shouldn’t vote, shouldn’t speak, shouldn’t lead, shouldn’t breathe without permission. Men who want women to “serve” husbands but can’t serve anything themselves except fear
Add to that the stupid, outdated stigma around cannabis, the same plant that has saved more lives than these men will ever understand, and suddenly the world is telling mothers they aren’t allowed to heal either That they can juggle everything under the sun, but they can’t use a plant to calm their anxiety, ease their pain, or treat their trauma Life should not be that hard
My mother and I learned that the hard way We survived things we weren’t supposed to survive, especially at the hands of men who tried to shrink us both
She protected me, I protected her, and together we pushed through a world that wasn’t designed to care whether we made it out whole.
And that’s why cannabis became medicine for me long before I ever had the words for trauma. The plant didn’t judge, control or try to silence me It didn’t hurt me the way people had Cannabis saved my life and my mother’s love made sure I stayed alive long enough to find it
So when I talk about women, when I talk about mothers, when I talk about why this plant matters, it’s not theoretical or political It’s personal It’s carved into bone. It’s wired into my survival. Because of what my mom and I went through, and because of what we endured together, I will never stop fighting for women to have every tool, every right, every voice, and every piece of medicine they need to live fully in a world that constantly tries to drain them
Cannabis didn’t just help me heal, it helped break the cycle of pain that so many mothers and kids are forced to inherit. And if there’s one thing I learned from the woman who raised me, it’s this: Women deserve ease, safety, and choice. Women deserve the right to feel good without fear apology, or permission from anyone
“My mother didn’t understand my relationship with the plant at first, but she understood me And that was enough to save my life more than once ” ~ Dustin Hoxworth
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