The Clarity Shift

Have a Virginia address? The Sands & Semilla online shop is live!! You can buy my small-batch cacao drinking blends, cocoa-scented candles, and a few other goods. I operate under Virginia cottage food law, so for now I can only ship within Virginia (a Virginia address is all you need).

If you want to say hi in person and try some of the goods, I’ll be at the Christmas Farmers Market on the Mountain at Bluemont Vineyard on Sunday, December 13th, from 1 to 4 pm, and back at the Eat Loco farmers markets in March.

What’s in the Sands & Semilla online shop?

* Cacao drinking blends: cacao combined with spices and herbs for different effects, always with the cacao as the base

* Cocoa-scented candles

* Hand-designed and printed stickers and canvas tote bags

This is the first phase of what I hope becomes a growing tree, a growing garden, a growing business, where all of us can flourish!🌱🌱

My business operates under cottage food law, which means I can only sell and ship online within the state of Virginia for now. Once I set up a commercial kitchen and start producing out of it, I can ship to other states. More to come on that.

You don’t have to live in Virginia; you just need a Virginia address. If you have a friend with a Virginia address, you can order cacao and have it shipped to them. Totally fine.

I was surprised, and so grateful, to get my first online purchase unexpectedly earlier this month! This whole cacao business, the farmers’ markets, and this new chapter have been a happy surprise from the start. I didn’t know what to expect. I stay open and curious, and try to run this business in a spirit of creativity, community, consciousness, and intentionality.

Ideally, I’d love this business to become part-time income. If you’d like to be part of my journey in one way or another, the online store is one way to do that, and so is sharing it with people who live in or travel to Virginia 🌱

In a time of so much uncertainty, and so much change both internally and externally, I’m really, really grateful that my goods and my energy have been received with kindness. This business, this relationship, this community, and this offering keep growing slowly and surely.

I’m still very much a part of the farmers market community!

COMING SOON🤗🤗 : Christmas Farmers Market on the Mountain at Bluemont Vineyard

* Date: Sunday, December 13th, 1 to 4 pm

* Address: 18780 Foggy Bottom Road, Bluemont, VA 20135

This is going to be such a cozy time! The holiday season is my favorite time of year. I can indulge in cookies and baked goods, hot chili, gumbo, and a good Vietnamese pho. I grew up in Florida, but there’s something about the crisp season. It’s a time to tuck in and get cozy.

Eat Loco farmers markets

* They currently run markets in Reston, Ashbrook, and Brambleton.

* I won’t be at Eat Loco for the winter. I’ll be back around March for the Arlington and Reston locations.

* I might do another pop-up before then. Stay tuned…

Northern Virginia seems small, but it holds so many different interests, cultures, foods, and kinds of people. Finding my community here is part of the fun.

Why is winter the best time to drink cacao?

Cacao is my thing, and winter is a wonderful time to experience it more consistently, more deeply, and more nourishingly.

In the northern hemisphere, we tend to look inward in the winter. It’s darker, and we turn toward ourselves. The trees are quiet, and some animals have gone into hibernation or headed south. It’s a great season for grounding, for getting rooted in whatever that means to you. Maybe that’s your next chapter, your current work, your creative life, or your relationships.

A warm mug of cacao in both hands is a simple way to practice that.

I can’t wait to see you in person, or to keep hearing from you online. Feel free to shoot me an email. I’m just an email away. And I’ll still be doing the weekly Substack, so stay tuned for more.

FAQs

Does Sands & Semilla ship outside of Virginia?Not yet. I operate under Virginia cottage food law, so online orders ship within Virginia only. Once I have a commercial kitchen, I can ship to other states.

Can I order cacao as a gift for someone in Virginia if I live somewhere else?Yes. You just need a Virginia shipping address, so you can send it to a friend or family member there.

Where can I buy Sands & Semilla in person this winter?At the Christmas Farmers Market on the Mountain at Bluemont Vineyard (18780 Foggy Bottom Road, Bluemont, VA 20135) on Sunday, December 13th, from 1 to 4 pm.

When will you be back at the Eat Local Loco farmers markets?Around March, at the Arlington and Reston locations.

What do you sell?Small-batch cacao drinking blends, cocoa-scented candles, and a few other goods.

Share with a friend:

Thanks for reading Miriam Raquel Sands ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

* What does money mean to you now?

And not just in the short term. What does money mean to you in the long term? In your relationships with others? In the lifestyle you’d like to have? In your values? Or the values that you want to develop? What does money really mean to you?

* And what does time mean to you?

In the short term. In the long term. Are there certain things you’re not willing to trade in exchange for your time or your money?

And looking at these examples of the buffalo and cacao: Neither is extinct now.

But the legacy—the history, the systems, the things that transpired in order for these entities, these life forms, to exist as they do now—means that they are not what they used to be.

I don’t think the buffalo can just roam as they once did. Just like cacao. Now there are farms. There are supply chains. There are markets.

So what does it mean to be in relationship? To be in a reciprocal relationship? To have reciprocity in your life?

But for me, as I develop, continue to experiment, and continue to learn in this business as a farmers market vendor, as someone who still has an office job, I ask myself the same questions:

How long will a job be worth it for me?

When is enough enough?

And for the sake of what or who?

I feel a deep sense of pride and humility and gratefulness that I get to be a steward of cacao on behalf of my ancestors.

And in this way, I develop and hone and strengthen my relationship with my ancestors. With my family. With my lineage. With my culture. With my history. And I also get to create a new chapter.

A new sense of meaning and value and culture.

Because I don’t speak Nahuatl. I don’t speak Qʼeqchiʼ.

And now there is a new language I speak. I am cultivating new ground. And I think that’s ultimately where we will wrap up this journey. Because the journey is, I think, creating, sustaining, and then creating again.

That’s the circle.

And I think we, as a people, are coming to that full-circle moment.

Share with a friend :)

Thanks for reading Miriam Raquel Sands ! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Hi friends! If you haven't met me in person and are in the northern Virginia area come on out to Ashburn! I'll be here from 9am - 2pm at the Eatloco Farmer's market.

I sell hand-made cacao drinking blends (grounded cacao herbs and spices ready to drink in the morning or night time. Add in with your coffee or milk/creamer of choice), hand-poured cocoa scented candles, tote bags and stickers all hand-designed!

This may be my last farmers market of 2026 so stay tuned for an update on my online shop where Virginia residents can buy cacao, drinking blends and candles from me

Note: My business currently operates under cottage law which means that I can only ship in the state of Virginia for the time being next year. I hope to get a commercial kitchen and be able to ship throughout the East Coast and the USA.

See you soon! Thanks for being part of this online and in-person community ❤️

The word edge comes from Old English, and it carries two meanings folded into one: the cutting side of a blade, and a point — a tip, a limit, a place where something ends.

I find that distinction worth sitting with longer than we usually do. An edge is both a tool and a boundary. It’s the thing that can sever, and it’s also the place where something simply stops. We use the word constantly without touching either of its original meanings — I’m at the edge of something; this is an edge for me to push through — but we rarely ask what we’re actually invoking when we say it. A blade. A limit. Something that can cut, and something that contains.

This is the real question underneath capacity: how do you define how much you have, in any given moment, with any given person? And once you know — or even if you don’t fully know, even if you can’t articulate it — are you willing to act on that information?

Hello, hello — and welcome back to The Cacao Series.

This corner of my larger podcast is where I sit with the cacao plant — its medicine, its history, its agriculture, its sociology, its ancestry, and my own. It’s where I talk about what makes my cacao blends different (emphasis on blends, because I don’t grow cacao, I don’t own a farm, and I don’t pay farmers in the global South directly).

I do my best to ethically source from Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, and Guatemala — and one day, I hope to collaborate deeply with the people, the farms, and the land. Maybe one day I’ll even have a farm of my own.

But today’s conversation is heavier. Necessary, but heavy.

We’re talking about appropriation. We’re talking about ethics.

We’re talking about culture, power, history, and the invisible threads that shape how we consume, create, and build businesses in 2026.

And we’re talking about cacao — not as a trend, not as a “ceremonial” marketing buzzword, but as a plant with lineage, land, people, and memory.

Why This Conversation Matters (Especially Now)

We’re living in a time of deep division, deep denial, and deep anger. A time of I’m right, you’re wrong rhetoric. A time when people cling to identity as a shield instead of a doorway.

And when we talk about appropriation, discrimination, capitalism — these massive forces that shape entire cultures — it’s easy to collapse everything into individual blame.

But I don’t blame individuals for the entirety of history. I don’t blame my white friends for Jim Crow. I don’t blame every white person for the KKK.

What I do acknowledge is that cultures — not individuals — create patterns.

Cultures create systems. Cultures create the conditions that allow extraction, exploitation, and entitlement to flourish.

And cacao sits right in the middle of that conversation.

Where the Word “Appropriation” Even Comes From

I always start with etymology because the root always grounds hard conversations.

Appropriation comes from the Latin appropriare — to make one’s own.

To own. To possess. Someone sees something.

They like it.

They want it.

They take it.

They reshape it.

They profit from it.

That’s the lineage of the word.

Cultural appropriation, as a term, didn’t even exist until the 1970s, when British historian Kenneth Coutts‑Smith wrote about cultural colonialism. And we’ve been trying to define, refine, and understand it ever since.

Culture is not just food, clothing, music, or rituals. It’s not just what you can taste, touch, see, or hear.

Culture is also:

- values

- mannerisms

- invisible codes

- inherited ways of being

- the things you feel but can’t always name

In Latin America, you greet everyone when you enter a home — with a hug or a kiss on the cheek.

In the U.S., you don’t.

In Europe or the Middle East, it’s two kisses.

Culture is embodied. It’s lived. It’s practiced.

So when we talk about appropriating culture, we’re talking about taking something that is lived and embodied — and removing it from its context, its people, its meaning.

Appreciation vs. Appropriation: The Line Is Commodification

There’s a version of this conversation that says:

Appreciation is fine. Appropriation is not. But the line between them is not “liking something.”

The line is commodification.

I can appreciate Holi — the Indian festival of color — without selling it.

I can practice yoga for my own healing without turning it into a brand.

I can meditate with mala beads without pretending I’m a lineage holder.

The moment you:

- extract

- distort

- profit

- whitewash

- remove context

- erase the people who created it

…you’ve crossed into appropriation.

And that’s where cacao is being mishandled today.

The Yoga Example: When Appreciation Turns Into Industry

Yoga changed my life. It found me when I was a self‑conscious high schooler shelving books in a library. It gave me breath, softness, community — something that wasn’t punishment or diet culture. But when I went deeper, I saw the commodification:

- no national regulation

- Yoga Alliance as a membership badge, not a lineage

- studios selling certifications like products

- white‑washed versions of ancient practices

- people becoming “experts” in traditions they didn’t descend from

And something in me said:

I don’t have the right to teach this.

Not because I’m unworthy — but because I refuse to extract from something that isn’t mine to sell.

That same instinct guides me with cacao.

Because appropriation isn’t just “taking.” It’s stripping.

Stripping the meaning.

Stripping the lineage.

Stripping the people.

Stripping the context.

Stripping the power.

It’s turning something sacred, cultural, or ancestral into a commodity — often for the benefit of people who were never harmed by its history. And that brings me to cacao companies in the U.S. that market cacao as:

- mystical

- magical

- otherworldly

- a spiritual portal

- a euphoric experience

…while hiding the farmers, the wages, the land, the lineage, and the truth.

The NIMBY Effect: Not In My Backyard

There’s a term in environmental justice: NIMBY — Not In My Backyard.

People want:

- the products

- the convenience

- the consumption

…but they don’t want to see the landfill, the factory, the prison, the pollution, the exploitation.

Cacao is the same. People want:

- the “ceremonial” experience

- the spiritual branding

- the aesthetic

- the wellness identity

…but not the reality of:

- farmer poverty

- land extraction

- colonial histories

- racial hierarchies

- Global South labor

That’s NIMBY. And it’s everywhere in the cacao industry.

Argentina, Whiteness, and the Erasure of Blackness

This part is uncomfortable, but necessary. Argentina is a Latin American country, but culturally, it is deeply European.

White‑skinned. Spanish‑speaking. Italian last names. European architecture. And historically, Argentina systematically erased Black people from its population — through policy, census manipulation, and cultural rewriting.

So when I see cacao companies founded by Argentinian siblings selling “spiritual cacao experiences” to white Americans, I have questions.

Not because individuals are bad. But because culture matters. And when a country that erased Blackness profits from Indigenous and Afro‑descendant plant traditions…

I have to talk about it.

Especially when, in 2024, Argentina was one of only three countries — alongside the U.S. and Israel — that voted against the UN resolution condemning the transatlantic slave trade.

History is not the past. It’s the present time, wearing different clothes.

Ethics: From the Greek Ethos — Character, Habit, Way of Being

Ethics isn’t a policy. It’s not a marketing statement. It’s not a sustainability badge.

Ethics is:

- what you do when no one is watching

- how you walk your path

- what you refuse to step on

- what you refuse to exploit

- what you refuse to distort

Ethics is character. And sometimes, ethics means not making something yours. Sometimes ethics is restraint.

Cacao has been part of my life for years — not as a mystical portal, but as a plant I respect, a plant I descend from, a plant that is woven into my ancestry. Half of my lineage — if not more — is Indigenous and specifically Mesoamerican.

Cacao is not a trend for me. It is a return. And because of that, I refuse to:

- use the phrase “ceremonial cacao” (it’s a marketing invention)

- sell euphoric fantasies

- whitewash the plant

- extract from cultures that have already been extracted from for centuries

- pretend cacao is a spiritual awakening tool for people who don’t know its history

My business is not built on mystique. It’s built on relationships.

On ancestry. On ethics. On character.

Questions to Carry With You

As you build your business, drink cacao, or interact with any cultural practice, ask yourself:

- What am I tending to?

- What am I honest about?

- Where am I acting from character, not performance?

- What are my ethics — and how do I practice them?

- Am I appreciating, or am I extracting?

- Am I honoring the lineage, or am I…

The word edge comes from Old English, and it carries two meanings folded into one: the cutting side of a blade, and a point — a tip, a limit, a place where something ends.

I find that distinction worth sitting with longer than we usually do. An edge is both a tool and a boundary. It’s the thing that can sever, and it’s also the place where something simply stops. We use the word constantly without touching either of its original meanings — I’m at the edge of something; this is an edge for me to push through — but we rarely ask what we’re actually invoking when we say it. A blade. A limit. Something that can cut, and something that contains.

This is the real question underneath capacity: how do you define how much you have, in any given moment, with any given person? And once you know — or even if you don’t fully know, even if you can’t articulate it — are you willing to act on that information?

This episode, we’re going somewhere I’ve been wanting to go for a while. We’re going deep into culture — what it actually means, where the word comes from, how it has been used and misused and weaponized and reclaimed. And then, inevitably, we’re going somewhere personal: my own culture, my own mosaic, and what it means to be first-generation born in the United States with a whole lot of layered, tangled, beautiful, complicated inheritance.

Start at the Root: What Does “Culture” Actually Mean?

The word edge comes from Old English, and it carries two meanings folded into one: the cutting side of a blade, and a point — a tip, a limit, a place where something ends.

I find that distinction worth sitting with longer than we usually do. An edge is both a tool and a boundary. It’s the thing that can sever, and it’s also the place where something simply stops. We use the word constantly without touching either of its original meanings — I’m at the edge of something; this is an edge for me to push through — but we rarely ask what we’re actually invoking when we say it. A blade. A limit. Something that can cut, and something that contains.

This is the real question underneath capacity: how do you define how much you have, in any given moment, with any given person? And once you know — or even if you don’t fully know, even if you can’t articulate it — are you willing to act on that information?

Hello, hello, and welcome back.

This one is different. I want you to feel that from the start.

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking together — about the anthropology of cacao, about the etymology of culture, about colonization and language and identity and reclamation. And all of that matters. All of that is part of this series.

But today, I want us to put the thinking down for a moment. I want us to *receive* instead.

This episode is a journaling exercise—a nourishment practice. If you’re driving, if you’re at your desk, if you’re in a cubicle with people three feet away — do what you can. You don’t have to write anything down. You can just listen and let the words land and notice what comes up. There’s no interpretation required. There’s no right answer.

This is just you, getting curious about yourself.

One Question. Four Words.

What are you nourishing?

I want to sit with those four words for a minute before we go anywhere else, because each one is doing something.

What — we’re specifying. We’re pointing at something particular. Or maybe multiple things. What asks us to name, to identify, to get honest about what’s actually there.

Are — and I promised I wouldn’t get too deep into linguistics again, but bear with me — *are* is part of the verb *to be*. Being. Not doing.

This isn’t about your to-do list or your output or your productivity. This is about your state of being.

How are you living? How you are *embodying*. Being and doing are not the same thing, and I think a lot of us have spent a long time confusing them.

You — which sounds obvious, but isn’t. Who is the you we’re talking about?

How are you identifying yourself right now? How are you feeling *with* yourself? Are you someone who knows where they are, or have you drifted a little from your center? No judgment in the question.

Just: Who is the you who is being asked?

Nourishing — which is not the same as fueling. Not the same as pushing, extending, performing, or optimizing.

Nourishing is tending. Nourishing is care. Nourishing is something you do slowly, with attention, with the understanding that what you put in determines what can grow.

So: What are you nourishing?

Try saying it to yourself with different emphasis each time.

*What* are you nourishing?

What *are* you nourishing?

What are *you* nourishing?

What are you *nourishing?*

Notice where each version lands in your body. Notice what shifts.

For me, when I land on that last word — *nourishing* — I get a small tingle in my chest—a kind of opening. Not everyone will have a physical response, and that’s completely fine.

But just notice. Just observe. Let your body be part of this conversation.

Words Are Spells

There’s a quote I came across somewhere — I don’t remember exactly where — that says: *words are spells.* And I love that. Because literally, we have to *spell* words. And also because there’s something genuinely magical happening when we choose specific words to convey specific meanings.

We’re getting clear. We’re casting something. We’re calling things into form that were previously just floating, undefined, and unnamed.

The difference between *nourish* and *fuel* is not small.

Fuel is transactional. You put it in, it gets used up, you need more. Fuel is about the machine.

Nourishment is about the living thing. Nourishment is about the whole system — not just what keeps you going, but what helps you *grow*.

So when I ask what you’re nourishing, I’m not asking what you’re powering through. I’m asking what you’re tending to.

What you’re giving conditions for growth. What you’re caring for — inside yourself, in your relationships, in your work, in your daily life.

The Oven You Don’t Want to Clean

Here’s the thing about asking yourself hard questions: sometimes we already know the answer, and the knowing is uncomfortable.

It’s like cleaning your home. You know the oven needs to be done. You know the bathtub needs attention. And you walk past it. You find something else to do. Because getting into it feels like too much, or it’s going to take longer than you want, or you’re just not ready to see how bad it actually got in there.

But at some point, it becomes undeniable. Unavoidable. The state of it starts affecting everything else.

Our inner lives work the same way.

There are places inside us we’ve been walking past. Questions we’ve not been asking. Things we know we need but haven’t permitted ourselves to name, to want, to tend to.

What have you been walking past lately? What is the thing, the person, the practice, the need — that you keep almost addressing and then moving on from?

What specifically is happening in your life right now that requires a different kind of attention and intention?

The Through Lines (And What Changes)

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about: some things stay constant in us across all the seasons of our lives, and there are things that shift and change and need to be renegotiated constantly.

The through lines are your core. Your non-negotiables, even when you can’t articulate them clearly. For me — and I’ve only gotten clear on this relatively recently — *autonomy* has always been mine.

It hasn’t always looked the same. I’ve been a contractor, a consultant, a yoga teacher, a communications specialist, and now a cacao blend maker. The actual work has changed dramatically.

But underneath all of it, the same thing was true: I needed to choose. I needed creative freedom. I needed flexibility.

Even in the moments when I was in a role that didn’t give me as much of that as I wanted, I was always asking: Is this affording me access to autonomy somewhere else? Through the income, through the connections, through the skills I’m building? If the answer was yes, I could hold the ground. If the answer started becoming no, that was information too.

What are your through lines? What has been consistently true about what you need, even as the circumstances changed?

It might be autonomy. It might be community, or creativity, or safety, or connection, or being outdoors, or being useful. It might be something you haven’t found the word for yet, but you know it when it’s present — and you feel it acutely when it’s not.

And equally important: what has *depleted* you consistently?

Where do you notice yourself shrinking? There are certain environments, certain interactions, certain dynamics where you stop feeling like yourself.

Where you start going quiet in ways that aren’t peaceful — they’re just absent. Where you lose your energy, your clarity, your sense of aliveness. That’s information too. Depletion is data.

What Does Nourishment Mean *Right Now*?

Because here’s what I know: what nourished you five years ago may not be what nourishes you today. And what nourishes you today may not be what you’ll need in five more years.

Some things are consistent — we all need air, water, movement, connection, to feel seen and heard. Those are not optional. Those are not luxuries. They are needs, not in the sense of entitlement, but in the sense of basic biological and emotional reality. We are animals. We are living things. We have needs, and those needs are not selfishness.

They are just *needs*.

But the dial — the specific amount and form that each kind of nourishment takes — that changes. And knowing what your dial is set to *right now*, in this specific season, in this particular phase — that’s the practice. That’s the ongoing work.

Maybe right now you need something completely different. Something you’ve never tried.

Something that felt impossible or impractical before, but something is pulling you toward it, and you keep dismissing the pull. Maybe now is the time to stop dismissing it.

Maybe you need to go on that trip. Finally, have that conversation with your boss, your partner, your friend, yourself. Maybe you need to take a break from something that used to nourish you but is now just a habit. Maybe you need the mac and cheese and the familiar TV show and the deep rest of doing nothing that your nervous system has been asking for. There is nourishment in that,…

Capacity Conversations | One Year Anniversary Episode Hosted by Raquel Sands & Sarah Liljegren | Season 2, 2026

We almost did a song. We were this close to writing something and performing it for you, because — can you believe it — it has been one full year of Capacity Conversations. One year of two women, one from each coast of the USA, having honest, sometimes uncomfortable, always real dialogue about self-trust, transformation, and the reality most modern Millennials are navigating right now.

Do we actually have the capacity to do all the things we want to do?

That’s the question this podcast was built around. And one year in, we’re still asking it — but with more texture, more lived experience, and more willingness to sit in the complexity of the answer.

For those joining for the first time: I’m Raquel Sands, clarity and work strategist, certified yoga teacher, and graphic designer, supporting freedom seekers, freelancers, solopreneurs, consultants, and anyone in a nine-to-five who is committed to sovereignty and self-sufficiency. My goal is to help you create and sustain peace, purpose, and prosperity.

And my co-host is Sarah Liljegren — a rewilding real estate agent, certified yoga teacher, clinical herbalist, naturalist, and one of the most thoughtful people I know when it comes to the intersection of land, community, wellness, and work. More on her in a moment.

This episode? It’s about our Work stories. Capital W — not the job title, not the salary, not the LinkedIn headline. The deeper Work. The thing we’re planting and harvesting. The thing that provides for us and that we nourish in return. The thing that, over time, actually writes who we are.

Here’s ours.

My Work Journey: From the Library to Corporate to Cacao

I didn’t come into this world knowing what I wanted to do. I don’t think most of us do, despite what the college application process implies.

What I did know early: I wanted to get to the heart of things. Literally. I remember telling my parents I wanted to be a heart surgeon or a brain surgeon — because those are the organs we can’t live without. The heart keeps us here. The brain keeps us us. I wanted to work with what mattered most.

Then came the high school biology dissection. I couldn’t do it. There went the surgeon career.

So I turned to the next thing that felt like the heart of everything: words.

Books, writing, journaling, thinking about thinking. I lived in language. And eventually I got the degree to match — an English degree, after trying nutrition, global affairs, and a few other paths that didn’t quite fit. My logic at the time: everybody needs someone who can communicate. Writers, editors, communicators — that’s a need that never goes away. (And then AI arrived. But that’s a whole other episode.)

I always worked. Even before my first official job, I was helping my dad with his business in middle school. He ran a trade school, teaching men air conditioning, heating, and refrigeration — getting up to 20 or 30 men certified at a time. I was his after-school secretary, unofficial and unpaid, but I was working. I learned what it looked like to build something from the ground up.

And watching both of my parents shaped how I understand work to this day. My mom has a master’s degree. She went the institutional route — steady, structured, working for the school district for years. My dad pieced it together differently — teacher, handyman, maintenance worker, school founder. Two entirely different approaches. Neither one was purely about money. They were both, in their own way, about meaning. About finding a path that fits their hands.

That got into me early. Money was necessary. Money was not the point.

My official first job was at the library — because I loved books and the kind of people who also loved books. After that: kindergarten STEM teacher (bubbly energy, genuinely exhausting), yoga teacher, yoga studio manager, dog walker, front desk at a physical therapy clinic. Health kept showing up in my life even when I wasn’t the practitioner — just someone in the room where healing happened.

The majority of my career, though, has been in corporate communications — writing, editing, designing, and being the jane-of-all-trades communicator in organizations. Ten years across the government sector, nonprofits, and private companies. I’ve been an employee, a contractor, a consultant, and a freelancer. (And yes — contractor and consultant are two distinct legal and financial structures with different benefit implications, which matters a lot if you’re navigating independent work right now.)

I’ve worked alongside multinational giants like Deloitte and Uber, and also inside tiny nonprofits with 13 people. And what I’ve learned across all of it is that I don’t thrive in enormous spaces — the bigger the machine, the more invisible the human. I’m a suburban person: I like access to the city, but I need a sense of intimacy and proportion. I like being able to see the whole room.

And what I’ve carried with me into everything I now teach and talk about is this: the corporate structure, whether nonprofit, for-profit, or government, is a system that may or may not be built for you.

The ladder exists. The question is whether climbing it is actually taking you somewhere you want to go — and whether the ladder is even still there.

Recently — and Sarah knew this was coming before most people did — I launched a small batch cacao blend business.

I know. It sounds like a pivot. And it is. But it’s also the most direct line between everything I’ve ever cared about: health, ancestry, plant medicine, community, and nourishment as a form of sustainability. I’m 50% indigenous from Central and South America (23andMe confirmed what I already felt in my bones), and 8 to 12% West African. Cacao is Central American. It was used by the Mayans, the Olmec, the Aztec — not as a treat, but as medicine, as currency, as spiritual practice. Stepping into this work feels less like a business decision and more like a homecoming.

There’s also a practical need I kept bumping into: corporate coaching, career strategy, income sovereignty work — it’s all in the head. It’s conceptual. You can’t hold a mindset shift in your hands. And I was craving something that could meet people in their bodies, not just their brains. Cacao does that. It’s grounding. It’s tangible. It’s nourishing in a way I can actually pass across a farmer’s market table and watch someone receive.

My relationship to work has always been a question mark. When I graduated from college, it was survival mode: pay off the student debt, pay off the car, save money. That was the work. Concrete, pressing, legible. As I’ve built capacity — and it has taken years — the questions have shifted. What do I want to be known for? What do I want to plant? What does work mean in this season of my life?

Capital W Work is about meaning. Lowercase w work is about money. We need both. But only one of them, I think, is the foundation.

Sarah’s Work Journey: From Bait City BBQ to Rewilding Real Estate

She grew up in Napoleon, Missouri, a small population. The closest town was Bait City, four miles from the highway. And Bait City had a barbecue restaurant, and that barbecue restaurant was my first job, and she was there for eight years, on and off, starting at 16.

Bait City BBQ is having its 50-year reunion this summer. She’s going back to Missouri to be there. Some places just stay with you.

She started working because that was what you did. She started paying for her own gas in high school — that was the culture she was raised in. Work wasn’t optional. It wasn’t even really a conversation. And one of the first lessons she absorbed about work came from that restaurant. They were staffed mostly by women, and the message received was clear: a bad period is not a reason not to come to work.

That is a complicated inheritance. On one hand: resilience. On the other hand, the erasure of the body.

After Bait City BBQ, her job history reads like a tour through American labor. She worked in he…