✌🏽 Puff, Puff… Peace Out
Some Roll Deep, and Some Ride Dirty.
This is a story about friendship. The kind that holds you together and the kind that disappears when you need it most. It’s about chosen family, and the people who feel like home until you realize you were just a stop along their way. It’s about the ones who rolled joints and rolled with you, and the ones who rolled out the minute you stopped being useful. It’s about what really matters when the smoke clears. Who stays. Who sees you. Who never really did. And it’s about coming back to yourself, when all the noise is gone and the only thing left is truth.
Between the ages of 13 and 17, while my home life was a full-blown circus without a ringleader, my friends were my lifeline. They were my chosen family. They were the ones who made sure I didn’t spend too many nights alone on the railroad tracks of life, literally and metaphorically. They told me I wasn’t fat when I swore I was, and mocked me in the most loving way when I got a bad haircut. We shared jeans, eyeliner, and whatever cheap perfume was trending at Rite Aid. Together, we’d storm the local mini mart like it was Studio 54, eating Froot Loops straight from the box, swishing it with a pint of milk, and scream-singing Skid Row like it was gospel.
Our summer rebellions of ’89 through ’92? Pure Gen X glory. We didn’t care what the world thought of us, because we were too busy living, feeling, being, and smoking j’s. Youth gone wild? Damn right. We weren’t trying to be anything except free.
My friend group called ourselves the 4 Ms, Maria, Melena, Molly, and me, Mary Jane. We were inseparable. Melena and Molly were only children who lived two doors down from each other and were born two days apart. They were practically sisters. Maria and I had the same kind of bond, although we each also had sisters of our own. She lived five houses away, and together we wreaked kindness and chaos all over our humble, lower-middle-class neighborhood.
We were latchkey kids. Divorcees. Parents with two jobs. Parents with no jobs. My parents working and not working the steps. Molly’s dad was an officer in the Police Special Victims Unit, which added a strange weight to our rebellion, but didn’t slow us down a bit.
We were all rock and roller girls with Deadhead hearts. Band tees with holes. Eyeliner sharp enough to cut through our grief. Our hearts and thoughts were way too big for our age.
And the neighborhood guys? We had the dream team. I even married one—Big Ben. Three years older, owned a car, a kind soul, and a quarter pound of weed stashed under his bed like it was treasure. He was our unofficial plug before “trapping” had a name, and naturally, my stash came free. He mostly moved eighths, quarters, and ounces—nothing flashy, just steady smoke. Me and the other M’s would light up fat joints in the backseat of his ride, windows down, tunes blasting, chasing the kind of mischief only Friday nights and teenage rebellion could offer.
We’d cruise around, roll up on CD booklets, and smoke under power lines, behind schools, in dead-end streets wherever life paused long enough for us to feel it. The next day, Ben’s backseat would be littered with beer caps, cigarette burns, and enough shake to roll one more.
He never complained. He knew he was lucky.
We all were.
That era was magic. No smartphones. Just mixtapes. Corner store snacks. Shared trauma. And a kind of joy that only exists when you’re too young to know how hard life can hit, but old enough to already be taking some of the punches.
We weren’t perfect, but we were real.
And real kept me alive.
Keeping it real was my anthem at 13, and it still plays on repeat at 49. That’s why I wrote Too Real for the Room. Because I’ve always been a little too much for places built on pretending. I wasn’t raised to chase titles or smile through my teeth. I wasn’t taught to win at someone else’s expense. I didn’t even know where my parents were half the time. But I knew exactly who I didn’t want to become.
No one told me I could go to college. Although it wasn’t discouraged, it just wasn’t imagined. Dreams like that didn’t float through our house. But deep in my gut, I knew I had to carve a new way forward, and not just for me, but for the girl I was and the woman I was becoming.
They called me a rebel, but I saw and still see myself as a free spirit.
I wasn’t out to burn the world down. I was just trying to build something better with the broken bricks I’d been handed. I wasn’t running from rules. I was running from numbness, from silence, from the quiet ache of people who never asked why they hurt or how to heal. What looked like rebellion was really resistance, and a refusal to inherit someone else’s unprocessed pain. I didn’t want to repeat that shit, but I wanted to rewrite it.
Which is why I brought my whole, unfiltered self into every inch of the universe I ever occupied. At any workplace I ever stepped into, I didn’t wear a corporate mask. There was never any code-switching. Just me. Real, resourceful, and maybe a little too emotionally intelligent for industries built on ego.
I’ve been working for thirty years now. I’ve done big pharma, hospital systems, corporate boardrooms with buzzwords and HR handbooks thicker than War and Peace. Never once did being myself cause an issue.
When I stepped into the cannabis industry everything changed. It was electric. The kind of place where dreams and dirt shared the same ground. I fell in love with the work. My hands were deep in hustle, and my heart rooted in the purpose. I fell for the plant even more when I learned about its ancient, generous, and wild spirit. I found kinship with the misfits and magicians, the visionaries who whispered to seeds and dared to build something holy from smoke and soil.
I had hope. Hope that cannabis wasn’t like Big Pharma, schmoozing doctors over shrimp cocktails while my Pop Pop rationed heart meds to make rent. But then the men in black showed up. Slick shoes, empty souls. They turned something sacred into spreadsheets. Strategy replaced spirit, and politics poisoned passion. And just like that, the thing I loved started smelling less like terps and more like trouble.
The suits who never rolled a joint? They didn’t love her. They wanted to own her. And with enough money, they almost did. I am smart enough to know that capital grows crops, but not all money is clean. Some of it bleaches your mission, wraps it in plastic, and sells it back to you like it’s doing you a favor.
I don’t exist to be palatable, but I do exist to be purposeful. I believe that I can build a cannabis platform and brand rooted in compassion, instead of material consumption. I want to grow something sacred, not just scalable. I want it to be both.
I believe movements can be built with heart and hustle in the name of equity. Because if we don’t build them that way, women and communities of color will keep getting shut out of an industry that was built on their backs, their brilliance, and their pain.
I didn’t survive everything I’ve been through just to watch privilege rebrand my struggles and those of others and sell them as progress. I came into the cannabis business to plant truth, to build with intention, and to rise in a way that makes room for others to rise too.
I thought I made good friends in cannabis. The kind you laugh with between chaos,
vent to in parking lots, share takeout and secrets and dreams with because you’re spending more time with them than your own family. But when I left, the silence was loud.
No messages. No check-ins. Not even a simple “How are you doing?” from the ones who once swore I mattered. And that’s when it hit me. They weren’t my friends. They were just people I worked beside while I dimmed my light to help them shine. What I mistook for connection was just proximity. What I gave them, my time, energy, and loyalty, was never mutual. And maybe that’s the lesson. That some bonds are built on convenience, not care. Still, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because leaving both cannabis jobs showed me who never saw me in the first place.
I don’t have many friends these days. The Four M’s, my soul sisters, are down to one. Two of them passed, each in their forties, both gone too soon and in ways that still ache. Molly is the last OG standing. She’s still here, still fighting, still holding on, just like me. We don’t see each other as often as we used to, but when we do, it’s like no time has passed. There’s a quiet gratitude between us now. The kind that only comes from surviving.
I spent too many years giving my energy to jobs that didn’t value me. To an industry that claimed to love the plant but never learned how to love the people who carried it. And now, when I sit with Molly, it feels like coming home. No pretending, no performance. Just presence. Because real friends don’t disappear when your job title does. They remember your laugh, your heart, your pain. They know who you are, even when the world forgets.
I don’t have a big circle anymore. But I have the right one. Big Ben. Our boys. Molly. The plant. She is still my friend, always was. I hope she always will be. The industry? Not so much.
Ben doesn’t sell weed anymore, and neither do I. But the ritual remains. I still visit the dispensary like a temple. I still roll the sacred leaf between my fingers, light it like a prayer, and exhale peace.
I no longer need saving. Not from friends who vanished when the smoke cleared.
Not from anyone, really. Because I’ve got me. I’ve got Big Ben, my forever flame. I’ve got five wild, beautiful boys who call me Mom and make me brave. I have more than enough. More than I ever dreamed.
Gratitude wraps around my ribs like sunlight. My heart? Overflowing. These days, I get high and by on love, laughter, and family.
I am blessed!
With Love and Gratitude,
Mary Jane 🌿✨
✨ Before you Roll….Ask Mary Jane!
She’s been through the grinder and came out loud, lit, and ready to help.
Drop your questions in the comments or shoot your shot in the inbox. No bullshit. Just blunt advice from someone who’s lived it, left it, and is building something better.
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