“My name is Kirileigh Jones and I’m an artist”

“I grew up in Alameda, California. When I moved to Denver, I just wanted to do anything that was art involved, and then I painted a mural and then I made another mural, and now I just paint a lot of murals.”

“I have been painting murals for four years. I didn’t go to art school. I haven’t taken any art classes in my life, so I don’t really understand a lot of the proper process to do a lot of things. I kind of do things as fast and as easy as I possibly can.”

“The first step when creating the mural is conceptualizing and presenting my idea and ask if you would like to see a sketch. I’ve definitely painted murals where I was like, “I want to do something half flowers, half mandala.” And someone was like, “Great, go paint.” And then I did.”

“I have to do everything by hand. I think probably the most fancy tool I use is a level. I just use string and tape and then yeah, I wear AirPods constantly. AirPods changed my life. Going between like three different podcasts and music. I literally only listen to murder podcasts and true crimes. It’s like this crazy balance of everything.”

“I need a lot of things going on at one time, and that’s probably why I’m also good at being outside and having it be a little performative because I’m like, “Yeah, you, I’ll answer you, but I’m also going to stay over here.” I do art constantly, like all day and a lot of it’s not to relax, it’s just because I have to be doing something.”

“Cannabis plays a role in my creativity because it creates a focus in my brain. It creates a place to filter all the thoughts and it definitely organizes them into one at a time. I definitely like a sativa or a sativa hybrid. I’m also a big CBD person because I have insane anxiety, so I like to kind of be up and mellow. I just like anything that’s going to make me feel what I consider to be normal.”

“I usually have a vape pen in the waistband of my leggings at just about all times, and then as I get home the first thing I’ll do is go to my sister and be like, “I just finished this thing. Let’s roll a blunt.” Because it’s like, that’s how you celebrate.”

“Mandalas represent the connection between everything in the universe. That’s why it’s the circular pattern, it usually has a square pattern too. I like tiny patterns. I like how things connect and how the layers have to go together. Mandalas for me are like everything is connected because the universe made it that way and just accept it and move on.”

“I do think everything happens for a reason, but now I am more focused on why. I really think art has the power to heal people. My Uber driver the other day was dropping me off at my mural and I did those morning glory flowers because they’re beautiful flowers and I just like the moon and I like flowers and I like white flowers, and so I put them in that.”

“My Uber driver saw what kind of flowers they were and she started crying because she was like, “I used to pick those flowers for my mother and pull them right out of the ground, dirt and all, and it was the ugliest bouquet ever made, but my mother thought they were the most beautiful thing in the world.”

“And that just brings me right back to that moment. Was I thinking about that when I went into making the mural? No, but it’s just creating this moment for you to have whatever moment you need.”

“I know it heals people and I know that it creates this sense of calming and belonging. Like you want to leave everywhere a little bit better than you found it, and I really think that’s what I’m doing, and then I just move on to the next thing.”

“My best advice is practice makes permanent. Like constantly practicing because eventually that’s so ingrained in you, you don’t know how to do anything else? This is what I’m supposed to be doing. Absolutely. There’s no if, ands, or buts about it.”

“I love Lightshade. They’re trying to create things for their community and I think that’s important. I think that Lightshade is trying to become something that’s changing the way people view cannabis, and I think they’ve made it a very safe space.”

“I saw a hundred year old lady walking in there and she was having the best day and then I saw a 21 year old kid walk in there and he was also having the best day. And I was like, ‘That’s the kind of energy I want everywhere.'”

“I am most looking forward to painting more walls, just doing more. I just want to create more. Shout out to Lightshade for allowing me to let this vision come to life.”

“My name is Kirileigh Jones and I’m an artist.”

Bridging the gap between the African American community and the cannabis industry in Colorado.

“My name is John Bailey and I’m the lead convener for the Black Cannabis Equity Initiative, which I started as opportunity to bridge a gap and relationship between the African American community and the cannabis industry and owners and operators in Colorado.”

How CBD and cannabis help an opera singer prepare for the stage.

“My name is Kasey and I’m an Opera Singer. CBD and cannabis has really helped me combat the effects of performance anxiety and I’ve been able to elevate my style of performance.”

During a time when medical support is more important than ever, we had the privilege of (virtually) sitting down with Katherine Golden and Jennifer Axcell, founders of Leaf411. Leaf411 is the first FREE cannabis nurse hotline, providing the necessary support and advice that dispensaries cannot provide. Check it out!

Katherine: I’m Katherine Golden, CEO, co-founder of Leaf411 and I have been a registered nurse for 22 years.

Jennifer: My name is Jennifer Axcell. I am COO and also co-founder of Leaf411. We are a charitable nonprofit organization that operates the country’s first free cannabis nurse hotline available to the public to answer health related cannabis questions.

HOW WAS LEAF411 FOUNDED?

Jennifer: I came into the cannabis industry after a really terrible car accident 10 years ago that had me dependent on a lot of pharmaceuticals for many years and my quality of life didn’t get better. And when I started looking for information and getting support from the medical professionals I had at the time to use legal cannabis to get off those medications, I was turned away because they didn’t know anything. And so that sent me on this path to educating myself on how to do this and that was really frustrating.

Katherine: We saw there was this missing component. I knew about medical cannabis being a cannabis nurse. Jennifer knew it by being a patient, but what about all the other families out there that want to explore cannabis medicine that didn’t have someone like us to come to? How do they get information? And that’s where the idea was born and it evolved into making sure that it was accessible, being a hotline and free.

HOW DOES LEAF411 WORK?

Katherine: The way Leaf411 operates is that we have a team of registered nurses that take shifts on our call line and we operate remotely and we can be in our own homes and we take calls from all across the country. All we see is a phone number of the caller come through. We have no identifying information, it’s completely anonymous and we take calls Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM mountain standard time.

Some people might not be aware that bud tenders are not allowed to legally answer your medical questions, so that is what’s wonderful about our service and partnering with organizations like Lightshade is that we, being licensed medical professionals, can answer those questions for you. We can give you some guidance prior to you entering the dispensary, so it’ll make your interaction very quick. You don’t have to stand there wondering which product would best suit my needs for my conditions. We can arm you with all that information prior to going into a dispensary.

WHO IS LEAF411 FOR?

Katherine: Leaf411 really is created for everyone and we mean everyone, whether you are a new person to even thinking about taking cannabis to an experienced user to a healthcare professional or anyone in that industry calling us, like social workers who come against their own patients that have these wonderful questions about the plant, but they can’t answer them. It’s not their specialty. So who do they go to? So we get calls from every spectrum. We’ve even had people calling us about grow questions as well.

HOW CAN I ACCESS LEAF411?

Jennifer: After all, we are a free cannabis nurse hotline, so we encourage everybody to give us a call, first and foremost. Our number being 1-844-LEAF-411. That’s 844-532-3411. Another great way to, especially for millennials, people who don’t like to talk on the phone like myself, we do have the robust chat feature on our website that also has translation services in it. It doesn’t matter where you are calling from or what language you prefer to get this information in, we do have that available to you. That is on our website, which is Leaf411.org. We’ve built the website to be a really robust resource for consumers and it’s also a great place to start. We’ve got information on there on our resource pages about our vetted members, so if you’re looking for state compliant dispensary’s and products to purchase, this is a great place to start getting an idea of who’s doing it right out there because we have done our due diligence on your behalf to vet these companies long before they ever get listed on tour website.

We also have a blog with information on there that our nurses are creating for you guys and most importantly is the Leaf Library, which is a fantastic resource that our nurses created that is a searchable database where consumers can easily find the information, the science behind what our nurses are telling them, so you don’t just have to take our word for it. Go onto our Leaf Library. You can type in psoriasis and it’s going to pull up clinical research done on cannabis and psoriasis. It’s a really user friendly way to see the information for yourself. And then, obviously, being… this is the 21st century we are on social media, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

WHAT ARE THE NURSE QUALIFICATIONS?

Katherine: Leaf411 nurses are all cannabis trained. They have been through rigorous training through TMCI, which is The Medical Cannabis Institute. We were all trained by Radical Health, which is a wonderful cannabis therapeutic for medical professional platform that was designed by Eloise Theisen, who works out of Walnut Creek, California, and is also the incoming president of the American Cannabis Nurses Association, which we all are members of as well. What that does is provide us a scope in standard of practice that we all follow as nurses. We’re registered nurses through the state of Colorado. We’re compact nurses, which means that we can legally practice in 34 states total, but we can take questions from all areas of nursing and be able to guide to the appropriate resource.

DOES LEAF411 WORK WITH MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS?

Katherine: The wonderful thing about Leaf411 now and the reputation that we’re building as this very reputable, relevant nurse organization is that academic institutions, hospital institutions, private practices, we’re ready to have the discussion about cannabis or either their patients or their communities are now welcoming us in because of that validity of what we provide, which is this free resource to the public and guide them on safe use. It’s been really wonderful that we have now partnered with different physicians and we go together as a team to provide a cannabis 101 to their community and then Leaf411 as that partnership, that back up to them saying, “Now that you’ve learned about cannabis in your community has, we can be the place that they come for their additional questions and continue that journey and continue that guidance for them.”

HOW IS LEAF411 INVOLVED IN THE COMMUNITY?

Katherine: Leaf411 has a very large outreach in the community. We have worked very hard to reach out to different community groups, our veterans groups, our senior groups. We’ve worked with LGBTQ, we’ve worked with trauma and resilience, cancer societies. We want to make sure that we touch every group, even anyone using it just for recreational purposes. We want to make sure that we are there to answer any questions. Young demographic groups to senior demographic groups in all in between, we want to make sure that we touch all those communities.

HOW CAN I CONTRIBUTE TO LEAF411?

Katherine: What you can contribute to Leaf411 would honestly be telling everyone, telling your friends, telling your neighbors, telling your family when they come to you with questions. Maybe they know that you use and they’re asking you are medical questions. Send them to us. Let that responsibility go on to us and we can take it from there. We would love to answer their questions. Really a big contribution would be telling everybody about us, whether it’s just reposting something from our social media to just screaming from the rooftops. We want everybody to know that this free service exists for everyone.

Jennifer: Leaf411 is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit. Our funding model relies heavily on our cannabis industry members to financially support us and keep our calls free, but there are opportunities for you, the general public to give back and participate with tax deductible donations that can be done both via Facebook and also our website, there’s PayPal, there’s old school, if you want to mail a check, do any kind of donation, anything like that, that you would do with a traditional nonprofit, that’s us. We would love to talk to you and you can get more information on our website.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF LEAF411?

Katherine: The future of Leaf411 is limitless. We have expansion plans already in the works. We have new programs that we’re starting, accessibility. We are starting programs to really address different communities and we are working with wonderful companies, like Lightshade, on their corporate social responsibility to make sure that we are all a family in this and we’re a part of this.

Jennifer: We are already taking calls from around the country and even calls outside of the country, because this resource is so necessary. And it’s important to us for 2020 that we continue our outreach into the rest of the country so that every state has everything that we provide Colorado in their state as well. And all of the rules and regulations are different, but plant medicine is the same. We encourage people, if you know they’re here in Colorado, spread the word. If they’re somewhere else in state, your grandma lives in New York, we’d love to talk to her too, and we’re still able to do that. But definitely for 2020 we are doing a lot more to bring Leaf411 formally into the rest of the country.

We got the privilege to sit down with retired Denver Broncos stars, Reuben Droughns and Tatum Bell. We talked football, we talked cannabis, we talked friendship, and we also passed a Dadirri caviar joint. Yes, it was absolutely as fun as it sounds. Check it out!

“My name is Cayla and I’m a Yogi. CBD allows me to maintain my yoga practice along with my running and anything else that I like to do. And it’s just a way for me to feel like I’m giving back to my body and a safe and holistic way.”

“I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, playing volleyball through most of my childhood and was fortunate enough to go to Chapel Hill to play Division I volleyball. And I didn’t play around with yoga much until I moved to Denver about six years ago. That’s when I took my first Vinyasa class and completely fell in love with the therapeutic effects that it had on my body. Yoga meant so much to me that I really wanted to take my training and my own understanding of yoga to a deeper level. And I really wanted to find a way to share that with other people, particularly my parents, as they get older, how can I help them move their bodies in safe and effective ways to optimize their longterm health.”

“I couldn’t really afford teacher training, and so I would clean yoga studios on Friday nights for about six to eight months. It allowed me to join the teacher training program in October of 2015 and complete my 200 hour teacher training certification in February of 2016. I think yoga is whatever you want it to be. For me, it was a way to ground who I am, replenish all of the joints and muscles that I strained during those years of volleyball, and to really start to internalize what it means to love myself, and to eventually share that love with other people. Yoga brought me a sense of identity and a sense of comfort and healing and I really feel like it has shaped me and the person that I am today.”

“I was really on the fence about CBD. Lightshade really made me feel comfortable and at home. Their bud tenders are super knowledgeable and really allowed me to focus on what I was looking for and I’m really grateful for that experience and that’s why I keep going back to Lightshade.”

“One of the products that I really love from Mary’s Medicinals is their salve. For me, I feel instant relief when I put it right on the areas that hurt, particularly my knees and my elbows, and it has this really cooling sensation that makes me feel like it’s effectively doing its job. When I’m looking for something a little bit more intense and longterm as far as making me feel better and my joints feel better, I like Mary’s Medicinals CBD patches. I just stick them right on my shoulder blade or right on my hip joint, and I just leave it there and forget about it. And a few hours later, I can really feel the benefits of the CBD patch working through my joints and releasing all of the stress and build up.”

“One of the best gifts that you can give yourself in the New Year is time. Time for yourself, time for your breath, time for your body, and really the connectedness of all of those things combined. So I would encourage you to check out a new studio, a new community, and take a class or two and see how it feels for you. And if you’re interested in checking out CBD like I was, I recommend going to Lightshade. They can definitely help you find what you’re looking for.”

“My name is Cayla and I’m a yogi.”

New Year Sun Salutation A Tutorial

“For me, food played a huge role in growing up, because it’s what brought everyone together. Growing up, I had six people in my household, including my grandmother from my mom’s side, and she’s the one that taught me a lot about my Indian background and the food that I really want to bring to people right now, as a chef. When we cooked for six people, we actually cooked for 20. Every party, every holiday was over at the Hadley’s. That idea of hospitality and that idea of bringing people together and community, I feel, is what gave me the idea to become a true chef.”

“I love cooking because I’m able to put my passion, my anger, my excitement, my emotion, all on a plate at the time that I’m cooking. I grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, and as soon as I left high school, I went to the Culinary School of America, the best culinary school in the nation. My parents had high expectations for me. Telling them that, ‘Hey, I’m going to go work in the big mountain town with the big hotels up in Vail and up in Aspen.’ But really, what I was doing was trying to figure out my way in the marijuana industry.”

“I was looking online for places to come work in Denver. There was this spot called Acorn that was opening up at The Source building. This is The Source building. It’s where I got my first start in the Colorado food scene. There’s a restaurant called Acorn. It’s been around for probably five years. It’s where I met a lot of my friends and a lot of the chefs that are downtown.”

“From there, I got found by Biju Thomas for Biju’s Little Curry Shop. So I worked at the Curry Shop for about two years. And at that point, my friends were opening a grow operation, and I wanted to be a part of it. I thought it was something new and exciting. So at the same time as working at the Curry Shop, I was part timing at this production facility to make edibles. It was really cool to learn that side of the industry, because I got an understanding of where it all comes from. It shows the value that it brings to a community, that not a lot of people know about. Having all that prior knowledge in the cannabis industry, I started to focus my true love of creating food. And from there, Food Network found me here at the Preservery, and that’s where I got my start. Jumped on Food Network as the Cannabis Chef; it has grown into what I’m doing right now, which is being an advocate for the normalization of cannabis.”

“I know a lot about cannabis. And so when I go into dispensaries, I’m a little jaded sometimes on what people say. Let me tell you about Lightshade. They know what they’re talking about. Those people there, those budtenders are very educated about all of the products that they have in-store. They want to make sure you’re taken care of. I had a lot of questions. I put them to the test and they answered, and they knew what they were talking about.”

“Today, I happen to have my Spherex pen from Lightshade. Really, really awesome flavor. This is the mango kush. It’s really uplifting, it helps me be creative, tastes like mango. How can you go wrong with that?”

“The best way I like to use cannabis is probably through my own edibles. If you want to infuse your food at home, the best product to use, I think, is ripple. It’s a water-soluble THC powder that’s able to mix inside of anything. When cooking with cannabis, make sure to start with small dosing. It’s the best way to go.”

“I think another great product to use on the market is the Phyx water. Right now with microdosing and the way that we are in our world, like I said, I could drink that on the go. I like to use cannabis while I’m doing my job, because it helps me be involved and help me be with the people. And and helps me find the vibe that everyone is in. I think as I create the vibe with my food and love and passion that goes into each dish, that’s what microdosing does for me.”

“My goal is to de-stigmatize and normalize the idea of cannabis and the consumption of cannabis in general. And for me, just growing up in a family, especially a cultural Indian background where smoking and drinking and cannabis is something that is not talked about, it’s crazy how my parents have now come around to see what I’m doing and seeing how happy I am. Just because I use cannabis, it doesn’t define who I am.”

“I am going back home for Thanksgiving. It’s been 10 years. I am so excited to see my family, all 40 of them. They are very okay with me smoking now.”

“My name is David Hadley and I’m a cannabis chef.”