Kristal Bush on Freedom and #FreeMyWeedman

by Cherri Gregg

“To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” 

Nelson Mandela

Kristal Bush spends most of her mornings in the gym. She slings weights, and embraces high intensity cardio, challenging her body while strengthening her mind. Her physique is fit, but she’s earned every curve, paying for it with discipline and sweat. 

“I just feel like this superwoman when I’m in the gym,” says Bush, “the gym is freedom for me.”

At 35, Bush is a serial entrepreneur. Her latest venture, Stay Lyfted, is a community space where women come together for wellness, obtain their medical marijuana cards, and legally consume cannabis without fear  of stigma. As easeful as this may sound, however, Bush discovered her love for wellness and fitness during one of the darkest times in her life.

“I look at those old pictures of me and I think, ‘She looks sick,” she says. “I was skinny; I wasn’t eating. I was not taking care of myself.”

At the time, Bush was taking care of everyone else.  

A low point.

The year was 2017. A then 27-year-old Bush was running a van service that took families to see their incarcerated loved ones at prisons across Pennsylvania. Her business, Bridging the Gap, was highly successful with a small fleet of five to six vans. The company provided door-to-door service, helping dozens of families each day stay connected with loved ones despite the disconnection caused by incarceration. Bush’s work and its impact were featured in local news stories. She was honored by KYW Newsradio as a Philadelphia GameChanger during Black History Month, and the accolades kept on coming.  

 “To the world, I was winning, but internally, I was very low,” recalls Bush, “I was burnt out.”

The road to burnout began years before. Bush, the youngest of three siblings and the only girl, has spent most of her life supporting loved ones impacted by the criminal justice system. Her father, Victor, spent 25 years of her life in prison. Her brother, Jarvae, spent a dozen of those same years behind bars. In her early 20s, Bush began raising her nephew Nyvae, Jarvae’s son, after his mother began serving time. Bush also had cousins, an uncle, and friends who did time. While she has never been behind bars, her freedom on the outside has been impacted by the incarceration faced by her loved ones. 

“A lot of the burden was on me,” she says, “I was the backbone of my entire family.”

As a child, Bush and her mother, known as “Big Crystal,” held the men down through letters and financial support.  Then, as soon as she was old enough, Bush took the reins and began making the drive for in-person visits. She built community by carpooling to the prison; the carpool evolved into the van service.

“I saw a need,” says Bush, “the van service reunited all these women with their loved ones, but it was also what I needed at the moment.”

For a long time, the drives to the prison were therapy. Bush didn’t mind getting up at 4 a.m. five days a week to pick up families, drive them to the prison, stay all day, and drive back in the dark hours of the day— that was what healing looked like at the time. She believed she was keeping families together, but her feelings about the service she provided began to shift over time. 

The women who used Bridging the Gap were often sacrificing their last dollars to visit their incarcerated loved ones, facing evictions and losing jobs. Bush realized that merely transporting them to prisons was not enough. She needed to address the root of the problem.

“I was running a service, but not once was I teaching these women that they had to do more,” says Bush.

Evolving to find healing

The turning point came when Kristal’s father and brother were released from prison within six months of each other. The burden of supporting them on the outside fell on her shoulders. She learned that instead of driving to the prison to provide support, she needed to help them re-establish their lives. 

“It was like ‘How do I become the daughter on the outside or the sister on the outside?’” Bush recalls, “I couldn’t navigate that and run the van service.”

Bush needed to fund their re-entry by paying rent, buying clothes, and helping her father and brother get jobs. She still needed the van service to pay for her life, but the driving portion that had felt like therapy transformed into trauma.

“Going up to the prisons felt different for me–I’d sit outside crying,” she confessed.

The service took up all of her time, and she missed Nyvae’s games and school gatherings. She felt trapped. Seeking relief, Kristal turned to a therapist, who helped her find the courage to step back from the transportation business. But even after she stopped driving, she still could not find peace.

“I couldn’t rest [on] the days my vans were on the road,” confessed Bush, “I would track them all day, making sure they made it to the prisons safely.”

Bridging the Gap soon became untenable. She scaled back the business.  When the pandemic hit, Bush took it as a sign to move on.

“It was time for a change,” says Bush.

Step one was to get well. That’s when she ramped up her commitment to the gym. Soon after that, she was introduced to the cannabis industry as a patient.

“I was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety, and of course, they wanted to give me pills,” says Bush, “that’s when I admitted that I consumed marijuana.”

Caping up for Cannabis

Bush had been self-medicating for years. She consumed marijuana in college during her years as a social worker, and as an entrepreneur.  However, she was never open about her use due to the social stigma around cannabis. But once she learned she could legalize her consumption by getting a medical marijuana card, Bush leaned all the way in.

“Once I got that card, it was like my badge,” she says.

She didn’t want to consume alone. So, she created Stay Lyfted to build the community of women cannabis consumers she needed in her journey to wellness. Her idea was to create a space where she could do yoga and learn how to enter the cannabis business. Bush held events in the city. She soon took things a step further — taking the money from the van service to build Lyft Cafe.  After getting the health department’s approval, she opened the space with a lot of hope.

“I was so excited,” she says, “but…I got shut down because it was cannabis.”

The closure hit her hard. 

“I was just so used to creating something and going [all the way] through,” says Bush, “this was the first time I faced resistance.”

Instead of giving up on the project, Bush changed direction.  

“Bad things happen, but I’m like, ‘okay, this happened to me, so what’s the lesson,’” says Bush.

An accidental activist

Bush learned that in order to operate freely in the cannabis space, she would need political power and support. That’s when Bush founded #FreeMyWeedMan. She used the hashtag online, out of frustration, and the effort went semi-viral, eventually evolving into a grassroots activist campaign and a non-profit.

“We need to make sure that those who were most affected by the war on drugs are now the ones who benefit from legalization,” she insists.

Under the banner #FreeMyWeedman, she fights for the legalization of recreational marijuana and aims to ensure that the communities most harmed by marijuana prohibition can benefit from its legalization. Bush says the work is deeply rooted in her belief that cannabis can be a tool for social justice. She advocates for policies that prioritize equity and reparative justice, ensuring that Black and brown communities are not left behind in the burgeoning cannabis industry. 

The Temple grad decided to go back to school, earning her Master’s degree in Cannabis Science and Business from Thomas Jefferson University in 2024. Now, when she enters the room, those with power are more willing to listen.

“When people see you in this industry…they think that you’re only advocating because you like to smoke weed,” she says, “[but] that degree was a freedom moment for me— now I get respect.”

After graduating in May, Bush helped organize the ‘Joints for Justice’ rally at the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg. #FreeMyWeedMan has since lobbied for and earned the support of the Pennsylvania Black Legislative Caucus. Bush says she is now one of the individuals helping to draft legislation that could legalize recreational marijuana in the Commonwealth. There’s even a push to take #FreeMyWeedMan national, but Bush wants to stick close to home for now.

“Once we roll out some programs where we are able to give resources back to the communities, I will wash my hands and move on to the next thing,” she says.

Bush sees herself as a disrupter and change agent.

“I create movement in community for people who are voiceless,” she says, “but it all comes from the grassroots.”

For Bush, the ability to shift to fill the needs of those in her community is freedom. She believes that education and the respect it brings is freedom. She also sees freedom as the ability to set boundaries and create time to care for and feed oneself.  

Bush is ever-evolving.  She’s already lived multiple lives. She is a mother, now an empty-nester: her nephew Nyvae, who she adopted, is headed off to college. She went from bridging gaps in the carceral system to building bridges that could make recreational marijuana both legal and lucrative for the people in Pennsylvania most harmed by its criminality.

It takes audacity, boldness, and courage to experience hardship and respond with solutions that help the masses. Kristal Bush is just getting started. Why? Because what she has achieved so far has not fully opened the doors for people like her and her family. She believes true freedom will not exist until they work to eliminate fear and stigma.

“Freedom to me is being able to live my truth without fear,” she says.

And Bush is working to do just that.