Melissa Etheridge thinks it's silly that there's still a stigma around smoking weed -- especially since the plant helped her cope with her cancer treatments after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004.
Along with undergoing a lumpectomy, the "Come to My Window" singer had five rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.
"It wasn’t about being high," she said of using medical marijuana in a new Yahoo project "Weed and the American Family". "It was just being to a place where I could communicate with my children, to where I could get up, to where I could eat. It was great medicine."
Melissa Etheridge on Breast Cancer Diagnosis Melissa Etheridge: How My Life's Changed 10 Years After CancerEtheridge, 55, said she feels it's now important to educate her children about weed without a sense of shame.
The singer and her wife of three years, Linda Wallem, are parents to 10-year-old twins, Johnnie Rose and Miller Steven along with two adult children, Bailey, 20, and Beckett, 18.
"My children have a very clear understanding of cannabis," she said. "When I hold it without shame or confusion, then they can understand it as simple as if I was pointing to a bottle of Percocet and said, 'That’s Mama’s medicine.'"
Etheridge added, "You take the naughtiness out of it, and it’s not something that kids run to."
However, the singer admitted that she's smoked weed with her two adult children -- Bailey and Beckett.
"I have smoked with my older two," she said in the documentary. "It was funny at first, and then they realized, it’s a very natural, end-of-the-day [thing] and it brings you much closer. I’d much rather have a smoke with my grown kids than a drink -- oh, God, no."
The Grammy Award-winning singer said she's also smoked with her wife, calling cannabis "the best marital aid."
