Kristen Bell Has the Best Hack for Moms Who Need Alone Time

Kristen Bell starts off our phone call by telling me she's lurking my Instagram feed. "I like to see who I'm talking to on the phone," she says.

Bell's chipper voice combined with her unparalleled friendliness and unabashed honesty immediately puts me at ease. It feels like you're chatting with a pal on your Instagram close friends list, and therefore, believe in anything she's selling — whether it's Hello Bello's baby products or her newest venture, Happy Dance, a line of simple CBD products that are vegan, clean, and cruelty-free. The collection is created in collaboration with Lord Jones, a luxury CBD brand.

The actress and entrepreneur created the line in hopes to demystify the confusion and misconceptions surrounding CBD oil by creating quality, simple products at accessible price points.

Happy Dance launched in fall 2020 with just three products: a bath bomb, multitasking coconut melt, and body butter, all priced under $30.

Now, Bell is bringing Happy Dance to Ulta Beauty. The brand lands on the retailer's website on Mar. 5 and will rollout to over 550 brick-and-mortar stores beginning Mar. 15. The new partnership is also the reason why I ended up on the phone with the narrator of Gossip Girl and Anna from Frozen.

"Having Happy Dance on shelves with a trusted brick and mortar and online shop like Ulta Beauty is going to be a game changer," Bell tells me. "There's so many misconceptions about [CBD], mostly because people think it will get you high, which we had a lot of fun making some silly, comedic content of me fighting with myself about whether or not it would get me high."

Ahead, I catch up with Bell on how to do self-care right during a pandemic, her ultimate hack for moms who need alone time, how she likes to use CBD, and more.

How has your attitude towards self-care changed during the pandemic?

Well, look, it's been a wild year. I think that everyone has sort of discovered new ways to evolve their own self-care routine because of survival. I've learned how important it is to emotionally give each other and myself a little more grace. I have loved the time that I've had with my husband and kids and my family, which is I'm sure something that I will look back on so fondly. But like everyone, we lose our patience with each other very often. We're juggling work and home schooling, and by the way, have the privilege to even be juggling work right now.

Definitely. This past year has made many people rethink their priorities.

Self-care comes in so many different forms. It's not just taking five minutes out, but gratitude is a great form of self-care for me. Taking a minute to just acknowledge that I have a roof over my head, we have food on the table, we currently have our health, it really put things into perspective mentally. And then beyond that, the self-care of health and wellness and beauty can come after that, but not until I've centered my brain.

What's your favorite thing to do when you are able to take a moment for yourself?

I love simple things. I've always had an issue with people describing self-care as an event. Like, "I'm going to go to this yoga retreat," or "this is my once a month manicure." I would always think, no, no, it should be easy and fit into your day. Personally, the thing that I found the most beneficial for my brain and my soothing my soul is puzzles.

So if I'm feeling introverted, even if my whole family is boisterous during dinner, I can sit at the coffee table and do a puzzle and they will leave me alone. They'll know that I'm in my head doing the puzzle. It's a slice of the day that's just all mine.

I can relate. I've been doing Sodoku puzzles and you just zone out.

You do! And I know that sounds so cliche because you're stuck inside during a pandemic, you do puzzles, but I think I've broken down why it is so meaningful to me: it keeps my mind working, I get a sense of accomplishment when I finish, but there's also zero pressure to finish.

Speaking of zoning out, Happy Dance is launching at Ulta this month. How do you hope having the brand at such a big retailer will help demystify the confusion and misconceptions people still have about CBD?

We started Happy Dance to make trusted CBD products more widely accessible to people everywhere and sort of demystify the whole category. Anything I've been a part of, whether it was Hello Bello or Happy Dance, accessibility has been an incredibly important pillar. I have no interest in it being in a boutique in New York and LA so that my friends and family in Michigan can't buy it. CBD improved my life, and I wanted to build a brand that was easy to use and wouldn't break the bank and, honestly, also demystified it in that it wasn't playing into the stoner trope, and it wasn't playing into this weird clinical packaging where it feels like medicine, which it's not.

What is your current favorite Happy Dance product?

We wanted the three products we launched with to be super simple, but also have something for everyone, whether you just want a moisturizer after the shower to moisturize and soothe, an escape with a bath bomb, or a multi-purpose product, like the Coconut Melt. I didn't realize that it was going to also be my makeup remover, my eye makeup remover, my hair mask, and my cuticle oil. It smells so good and it's so simple because there's only two ingredients; it's become easily my favorite product.

But I'm also a big fan of the bath bomb. Being the mom of two little kids, I often feel like I have no breaks, because even during bathroom time, they come in. They knock; "I need water"; "I need help with Zoom"; fingers under the door; "the dog peed somewhere." Whatever, it's all nonsense. But here's what I figured out about the bath bomb, and I'll scream this from the rooftop: Moms, get in the bathtub, it's the only time your kids won't bug you. Do you know why? No one wants to see their mom naked.

That is 100% true.

Literally no one wants to see that. I don't even have to lock the bathroom door. I just close it and they're like, "Oh, give her like 10. Wait till she puts her robe on." You know what I mean? It's such a hack.

Moms have had to take on even more responsibilities during the pandemic. What advice do you have for anyone trying to hold it all together?

It's going to be different for everyone, but the things I've applied is a lot more breathing. Every time I'm frustrated, I make my first stop on the train to frustration town, a big belly breath, and a reminder that this is temporary. I will not be their teacher and their principal forever, and there's nothing I can worry about. I can't worry about the science of this pandemic. I can only worry about the health and safety of my family. And unfortunately, sometimes life is hard and now is one of those sometimes. So, giving grace to other people and to yourself is a great way to sort of feel like you're more in control.

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Happy Dance has a partnership with the New Way of Life Reentry Project. Why is this charitable cause important to you? How do you hope it sets a standard for non-BIPOC CBD brand founders to give back to communities that are disproportionally affected by marijuana-related offenses?

First and foremost, with every entrepreneurial step I take, it's been important to surround myself with people that are smarter than me and have aligned ethics and morals. I don't need another paycheck. I make that very clear to my partners when I enter a business deal. So unless there's a give back component, I'm not likely to get involved. The mission has to resonate with me, but also with the larger community. And there was no question that we were not going to partner with an organization that directly reached out to the communities that have been adversely affected for marijuana-related crimes throughout history.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.