She's Taking a Break: How Joyce Gerber Wrote the First Cannabis Friendly Fiction Novel
- Ishqa Hillman
- Apr 14
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 26
Joyce Gerber is the kind of person who makes you feel like everything you've been quietly building actually matters. She hosted The Canna Mom Show for over five years, gave voice to hundreds of women in cannabis and caregiving, and then — when most people would have taken a break — she wrote a book instead.
She's Taking a Break is available now and I am already two chapters deep. Annie and JP and whatever is happening with that priest — I'm in. Fully in.
Who Is Joyce Gerber?
Joyce Gerber is an attorney, creator, and caregiver. For over five years she was the executive producer and host of the award-winning podcast The Canna Mom Show, where she used her unique voice to influence the narrative around cannabis and caregiving. Although the final episode of The Canna Mom Show was recorded in 2024, Joyce has continued using her voice advocating for the normalization of cannabis and caregivers.
Joyce was inspired to write a story that elevates a heroine who is a proud sophisticated stoner because of the many women she's met in the cannabis world who want to see themselves as strong and empowered while also openly consuming cannabis. She's Taking a Break is the first novel Joyce has written in a genre she calls cannabis friendly fiction.
When not advocating for cannabis normalization, Joyce is active with many community and civic organizations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, daughter, cats and the occasional student from the Berklee School of Music. In her spare time she has managed a rock band, ran for a local political office, and likes to create beautiful quilts for friends and family. Joyce has degrees from Northeastern University, Tufts University and Connecticut College. When asked to describe his mom, her son Josh said, "she's a force to be reckoned with."
Cannabis Friendly Fiction — A Genre Joyce Created
This is the part that stopped me mid-conversation. Joyce didn't just write a book. She named a genre.
Cannabis friendly fiction. Stories where the heroine consumes cannabis not because she's bad, not because she's a cautionary tale, just because it's part of her life. The way it's part of ours. She said it simply:
"I knew a whole world of women who wanted to see themselves in stories."
Women who are strong, professional, multifaceted, and yes — openly consuming cannabis. That representation didn't exist in the books on the shelf. So she created it.
She's Taking a Break is a contemporary romance about Annie McGrath, a cannabis-loving woman who returns to her childhood home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a fight with her husband, a famous guitarist, in LA. Annie stays in Cambridge to help her mother and sister care for her dying stepfather. During her stay, she examines what happened between her and the boy across the street — now a priest at the local parish — to decide if she should stay in Cambridge or return to her life with her husband, JP.
As Joyce puts it: it's a contemporary romance about what happens when two sisters, one priest, and a rock star smoke a joint.
I mean. Yes.
The Stories That Change Hearts and Minds
Joyce spent five years on The Canna Mom Show doing something specific: talking to women. Moms. Caregivers. Women who were healing, building, advocating. She gave them a mic and let them tell their truth.
What she learned is something I believe deeply too — it's stories that change hearts and minds. Not data. Not legislation. Stories.
"I don't know how we change hearts and minds except through personal experiences," she said.
The book is her way of extending that. A story someone can hand to a friend who's still on the fence. A way in for people who aren't in the cannabis world yet but might be ready to open the door.
She also talked about something that hit close to home — the double standard on social media. As someone who has had nearly 995 live interviews taken down myself, I felt that one deeply — the double standard is real and it is infuriating.
Meanwhile fitness influencers who have never posted a single cannabis-related thing can go viral saying things that are factually untrue about the plant, using every word we're not allowed to use, with zero consequences.
"You can talk bad about weed and say cannabis all day long if you're talking bad about it — but not if you're promoting its benefits."
The Secret Writer Who Finally Went Public
Joyce has always been a writer. She just kept pushing it down because it seemed like a silly thing to do. Sound familiar?
Her first real attempt was processing a local political campaign she ran — with an 11-year-old campaign manager named Zev, who got to meet President Obama in the process. She lost the race and wrote a story about it to make sense of it all. That pattern followed her through every major life transition.
When she was doing the final season of The Canna Mom Show, she serialized the first draft of the book — releasing a chapter a week instead of a blog post. By the time the podcast ended she had a full first draft. She took writing classes. She found an editor. She pushed through the moments when she wanted to quit — including one in October when a friend reminded her she'd said she was done.
She kept going anyway.
The paperback and ebook are both available now. If you're a sophisticated stoner who's ever wanted to see yourself in a story — this one is for you.
What She Wants You to Know About Cannabis and Caregiving
Joyce came into cannabis in 2016 after a trip to Denver. She went on a private tour, had what she describes as a cannabis awakening, and came back to Massachusetts the same year the state passed its recreational adult use ballot initiative.
She entered the industry thinking she'd use her law degree to make money. That's not what happened. What happened instead was advocacy — because once she understood the plant, she couldn't unsee what it meant for caregivers.
"The idea that I could have used cannabis when my kids were little and relieved a little bit of that stress never occurred to me," she said.
She thinks about the generations of parents who didn't have access. She thinks about moms who can still be tested, who can have children's services involved for using a plant that helps them be better parents. She thinks about the fact that no child has ever asked their mother to have another martini — but kids who grow up watching cannabis used as medicine will tell their moms when they need it.
That's the advocacy. That's why she stayed. That's why she wrote the book.
One More Thing
Joyce said something toward the end of our conversation that I've been sitting with:
"If stories weren't so powerful, they wouldn't try to ban books."
Yeah. That's it exactly.
Watch the Full Interview
Prefer to watch? Catch the full conversation with Joyce on YouTube below.
Connect with Joyce Gerber:
Website: thecannamomshow.com Instagram: instagram.com/thecannamomshow
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joyce-gerber
She's Taking a Break is available now in paperback and ebook.
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