A journey of learning about this plant — this plant medicine — and how it has traveled across continents, across languages, across civilizations, across cosmologies.

How cacao transforms us not only through consumption, but through observation, mindfulness, reflection, embodiment, and relationship.

This is Episode Two. And as always, I don’t edit these.

I like things raw, rugged, unpolished — as natural as possible.

So you may hear the wind in the trees, my footsteps on the trail, the grass brushing against rocks.

I want you to feel like you’re here with me.

Let’s begin.

Cacao’s True Origin Story (The One Most People Don’t Know)

We often hear the story of cacao as a Mesoamerican plant — Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras.

And yes, cacao is deeply woven into those cultures.

But the cacao tree is actually **native to South America** — specifically Ecuador, northern Peru, and parts of the Amazon basin. The earliest evidence shows that 7,500 years ago, people were already working with this plant.

Almost 8,000 years of relationship.

8,000 years of transformation. 8,000 years of meaning. And somehow, this plant survived:

- civilizations rising and collapsing

- colonization

- forced labor

- language shifts

- cultural erasure

- industrialization

- globalization

It survived all of it.

The Olmecs: The First Keepers of Kakawa

The first archaeological evidence of cacao use comes from the Olmecs — around 1900 BCE to 300 BCE — along the Gulf Coast of what is now southeastern Mexico. Archaeologists found ceramic vessels with theobromine residue, a compound found in cacao.

Imagine that traces of cacao remain thousands of years later. The Olmecs didn’t call it cacao.

They called it kakawa — spelled *k‑a‑k‑a‑w‑a* — a word traced to the Mixe‑Zoquean language family.

Even the word itself has lived many lives. The Maya inherited both the plant and the word. And for them, cacao wasn’t just food — it was cosmology.

In the Popol Vuh, one of the oldest surviving Maya sacred texts, cacao appears as part of the Sustenance Mountain — the mythical source of life itself.

Cacao was:

- written into stone monuments

- painted on vessels

- placed inside tombs

- used in marriage ceremonies

- used in coming‑of‑age rituals

- used as offerings to the gods

- used as currency

- used as medicine

It was divine. It was relational. It was alive.

And I think about that often — what it means to hold something so sacred that it transcends time, space, and form.

Do we have anything like that today?

The Aztecs — the Mexica — had their own cosmology around cacao. In their tradition, the god Quetzalcoatl brought cacao to humanity as a gift.

They called it cacahuatl — cacao + atl, meaning water.

Water — the most essential substance for life. Water — the thing our bodies are mostly made of.

Cacao was reserved for:

- rulers

- warriors

- priests

It was mixed with chili, vanilla, or flowers. It was poured from a height to create foam — the original froth.

Cacao beans were currency. A tamale costs a few beans. A turkey costs many more. Cacao was so valuable that people counterfeited cacao beans.

When the Spanish arrived in 1519, it wasn’t a “new world.” It was a world with complete systems — spiritual, agricultural, economic, cosmological. But because it didn’t match what the Spanish understood, they destroyed what they couldn’t comprehend and took what they wanted.

They burned the codices.

They suppressed the ceremonies.

They fractured the knowledge.

They enslaved the people.

They brought diseases that collapsed 90% of the Indigenous population within a century.

And cacao — this divine, relational, sacred plant — became a commodity. The Spanish added sugar and cinnamon. They heated it. They processed it. They turned it into chocolate.

By 1544, Mayan delegates brought cacao to the Spanish court — one of the first documented introductions of chocolate to Europe. And from there, Europe became obsessed.

Cacao Becomes Chocolate: Extraction on Top of Extraction: Once demand exploded, plantations spread. The Portuguese transplanted cacao to West Africa. Forced labor and slavery fueled the industry. The Industrial Revolution gave us the chocolate bar.

And cacao — once a sacred plant — became a global commodity built on extraction:

- extraction of land

- extraction of labor

- extraction of culture

- extraction of meaning

A complete inversion of what cacao once was.

Why This Matters to Me — A First‑Generation, Small‑Batch Cacao Maker

I think about all of this constantly. Because I’m not outside the critique. I’m inside it.

I’m a small‑batch cacao blender — one woman, one tiny brand — trying to do this with integrity, sustainability, and reverence.

I’m not here to commodify cacao. I’m here to be in a relationship with it.

My ancestry — confirmed by DNA and lived experience — is Indigenous, West African, and Spanish. My lineage reaches into the places where cacao grew. My people’s histories are woven into this plant.

But I didn’t grow up with cacao in a ceremonial or embodied way.

That transmission was interrupted — the way it was interrupted for so many of us from colonized lineages. So I’m not reclaiming something I fully understand.

I’m returning to something I’m still learning. Something I’m still listening to.

Something I’m still tending.

With humility. With excitement.

With grief. With joy. With gratitude.

The next time you hold something made with cacao — a drink, a piece of chocolate, a bar, a blend — pause.

Take a breath.

Feel the weight of it.

Feel the history of it.

Feel the journey of it.

This plant has:

- crossed oceans

- crossed languages

- crossed civilizations

- crossed cosmologies

- crossed trauma

- crossed time

It has been a phoenix — dying, resurrecting, transforming, surviving. And now it is in your hands.

If you feel called, say thank you to the plant.

If you feel called, say thank you to yourself for listening, learning, remembering.

Thank you for being on this journey with me! Thank you for creating space for your own transformation.

Thank you for tending to your own soil.

I’ll link the references below.

If you want to refill, join the waitlist, or go deeper — leave a comment or send me an email.

This is about community, relationship, and growth. Take care of yourselves. Be well. I’ll talk to you next time 🤗🤗

References & Further Reading

Archaeology & Early Cacao Evidence

* Ancient Cacao Use in South America — Zarrillo et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution (2018).Earliest known cacao residue (7,500+ years old) found in Ecuador’s Upper Amazon region.

* Theobromine Residue in Olmec Pottery — Powis et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).Chemical analysis confirming cacao use among the Olmec.

Mesoamerican Cosmology & Cacao

* The Popol Vuh — Sacred Maya text referencing cacao as part of the “Sustenance Mountain.”

* Maya Cacao Rituals — Coe & Coe, The True History of Chocolate.Foundational text on cacao’s spiritual, economic, and ritual significance.

Aztec Use of Cacao

* Aztec Cacahuatl — Ethnohistorical accounts describing cacao as elite food, currency, and sacred offering.

* Quetzalcoatl and the Gift of Cacao — Nahua mythology linking cacao to divine origins.

Colonization & the Transformation of Cacao

* Spanish Conquest Accounts — Hernán Cortés’ letters describing cacao in Montezuma’s court.

* Destruction of Aztec Codices — Documentation of colonial suppression of Indigenous knowledge systems.

* Cacao in Early Colonial Europe — How sugar + heat transformed cacao into chocolate.

Slavery, Plantations & Global Chocolate Industry

* Cacao Plantations in West Africa — Portuguese transplantation of cacao to São Tomé and Príncipe (1822 onward).

* Forced Labor in Chocolate Production — Historical accounts of enslaved labor in cacao cultivation.

* Industrial Revolution & Chocolate — How mechanization created the modern chocolate bar.

Linguistics & Etymology

* Etymology of “Cacao” — Linguistic evolution from kakawa → cacao → cocoa.

* Mixe‑Zoquean Language Family — Origins of the earliest known cacao word.

Cultural Lineage, Identity & Reclamation

* Indigenous Mesoamerican Foodways — How food, plants, and cosmology intertwine.

* Reclaiming Ancestral Practices — Contemporary scholarship on cultural return and lineage repair.

* Colonial Interruption of Plant Lineages — How colonization disrupted generational knowledge transmission.

So, here’s where I am now.

From Library Shelves to Cacao Blends: The Full Arc

I’ve been a professional job-offer-hopper since, officially, 2008 — my first part-time job at a library. Before that, I was helping my dad run his business in middle school, which would put us somewhere around 2005. Unofficial secretary.

Since 2008, I’ve been a graphic designer, a writer and editor, a website designer, a dog walker, a yoga teacher, a front desk person at a physical therapy clinic, and a yoga studio manager.

I’ve worked for nonprofits, for-profits, and for the government. Most recently, for the past few years, I’ve been primarily a contractor.

A contractor, here in the US, can be treated as a W-2 employee but within a defined contract window — usually a year, with the possibility of extension or full employment.

A consultant operates differently, often on a 1099 (in Virginia, it’s typically an 888 form), more like a freelancer, project-based, without the same benefits structure. I’ve been both.

We went there for religion. On faith. On what it means to be a millennial who grew up inside systems that told us how to think, what to believe, who to be — and what happens when you decide to start discerning for yourself.

This one is long. This one is messy. This one is real. Buckle in.

Refresher: What is The Capacity Conversations series

Do we actually have the capacity to live the lives we want?

Through challenging dialogue, ancestral storytelling, nervous system awareness, social history, and honest reflections on identity, work, and humanity, this series dives into the forces shaping our exhaustion — and the possibilities for reclaiming self-trust, purpose, and aliveness.

Each episode blends:

* Millennial survival tools

* Global + ancestral context (colonization, capitalism, migration, lineage)

* Nervous system + somatic wisdom

* Spiritual and cultural literacy

* Real strategies for rebuilding capacity

* AI-era awareness + digital overwhelm navigation

* Modern identity, burnout, boundaries, and self-trust

If you’ve ever felt tired for reasons you can’t name, overwhelmed by the world, disconnected from your purpose, or trapped in roles that no longer fit — this show is for you.

In This Episode 9: The Question We Couldn’t Not Ask

Have we been betrayed by religion?

Not religion as a concept. Not spirituality. Not the human impulse to reach for something beyond yourself. But religion as a system — as an institution with rules, hierarchies, gatekeepers, and the power to decide who is worthy, who is silent, and who gets to speak.

We’re talking primarily about what we know — Abrahamic traditions, specifically Christianity in America. Because that’s where we grew up. That’s what shaped us. That’s what we’re still, in some ways, metabolizing.

And the honest answer?

For some of us — yes. There was a betrayal. Not always dramatic. Not always visible. Sometimes just a quiet, accumulating cost.

The Slap in the Uterus

Because that’s what it was for her.

Growing up in a conservative Christian environment where sovereignty — real, embodied, self-directed sovereignty — was something that had to be outsourced. To the man in the church. To the doctrine. To the institution.

And she’s not talking about the extreme cases, though those exist, and she named them. She’s talking about the subliminal messaging. The slow, ambient teaching is what your job is to submit. That your body is not your own. That the man holds the power and the woman holds the silence.

“Women keep silence in the church” — taken to its extreme in the most conservative corners of American Christianity. And even in its mild forms: a slow erosion of the belief that you are enough, that you know enough, that you can trust yourself enough to lead your own life.

The deepest anxiety for some of us is still tied to the fear of hellfire. Am I good enough? The answer, according to the system, is no. You are not, by nature, enough. You need saving.

And I don’t want to be a fish. I don’t want to be sold fish. I want to be a fisher person.

That’s the whole thing, honestly.

Religion as a System — What It Does and What It Costs

Here’s the thing about systems: they do something useful. They create a container. They provide structure when you don’t have one internally. They say this is the substrate of reality, this is how you orient, this is what the world is.

And that’s genuinely powerful. When you’re a child. When you’re in survival mode. When you don’t have the internal resources yet to build your own compass.

But here’s what happens to some of us: the system becomes a substitute for discernment.

You go. You confess. You say your Hail Marys. You’ve got your hell insurance. And then you go back to your life unchanged because the system processed your sin for you. You didn’t have to sit with it. You didn’t have to look at how it lives in your body, how it shows up in your relationships, what the fruit of your actions actually is.

You outsourced it.

And outsourcing — whether it’s to religion, to a job title, to a relationship, to money — feels like safety until it doesn’t. Until one day you wake up and realize that no one has been driving. That you’ve been sedated the whole time.

I don’t want to be sedated.

I want to be conscious at all times. Even when it’s hard. Even when nobody’s watching. Even before bed, turning over the day, asking: Did I say that the way I meant it? Did I cause harm I didn’t intend? Was I true to myself in that moment?

That’s not a punishment. That’s a practice. That’s the work.

The Slave Bible — When the System Shows Its Hand

This came up in our conversation, and it stopped both of us.

The Slave Bible. An edited version of scripture used during the transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath, in which the chapters on freedom and sovereignty were literally removed. Because if the enslaved people had access to the God who liberates, the system would have had a problem.

That is religion as a tool of control made visible.

And what it reveals is something worth sitting with: the institutions that claim to point us toward the highest good have historically had a vested interest in deciding which humans deserve that pointing.

The cherry-picking of what knowledge the plebs are allowed to have. The withholding of the higher version of truth. The cathedral, with its eyes pointed upward — drawing your attention to the divine — while the institution below controls the terms.

This is not to say that all religious practice is this.

It is to say that the impulse toward control and hierarchy will colonize anything — including the sacred — if we let it go unexamined.

Lowercase f: Faith as a Personal Practice

Here’s where Sarah and I both land, and it’s not in abandonment.

We both believe in something. We’re both people of faith in the lowercase-f sense — the inner compass, the mystery, the relationship with what we call the divine without needing to give it a specific name or gender or doctrine.

Sarah calls it the highest good. I call it the Great Mystery, the Great Grandmother, the universe, the divine — whatever language doesn’t close the door.

And what both of us are doing is placing the responsibility of our own discernment back on ourselves.

We’re not outsourcing it. Not to the church, not to a man, not to a doctrine. We’re in a relationship with the mystery directly — like calling a friend, as I said in this episode. Not through an institution. Just: Can you help me here? Can you witness me?

That’s the same thing I needed from Sarah. And the same thing the mystery offers when you stop outsourcing it.

Millennials as the Bridge Generation — And What We’re Holding

We kept coming back to this: who are we as a generation? What is our actual situation?

We grew up without the internet, and then the internet grew up with us. Flash drives, CDs, hit clips, iPods, laptops, smartphones — we didn’t get handed a world that was already formed. We watched it form. We had to adapt to every pivot. And that gave us something the generations before us didn’t necessarily have: an ability to hold uncertainty as normal.

We’re the bridge between analog and digital. Between the post-WWII baseline of at least we’re not in a global war and the new baseline of AI, gun violence, climate, economic precarity, and the ongoing reverberations of every historical trauma we were never taught was happening.

We’re in our 30s and 40s, and it still feels like we’re supposed to have figured it out. But we’re the first generation to be doing this — whatever this is — with this level of emotional awareness. With therapy language. With the ability to say I need space right now in a way that small children in Seattle apparently knew, but many of us didn’t learn until we were adults.

And Sarah said something that I keep returning to: Because we’ve never known, we can create it and define it for ourselves.

That’s the lens. Not the trauma of uncertainty but the possibility of it. We don’t have a blueprint. Which means we can build one.

What Thriving Looks Like When You Stop Waiting for Permission

The culture wars, at their core, are an argument about thriving. Everyone thinks they know how to thrive better. Everyone is fighting for the right to define it.

But here’s what I think most people are actually fighting against: the feeling that someone else is defining it for them and getting it wrong.

Religion as a pseudo-parent says: if you just do X, you’re fine now and you’re fine for eternity. The formula. The guarantee. The insurance policy.

But eternity is incomprehensible. And the formula keeps failing us. Not because faith itself fails — but because the system that packaged it was built by humans with human agendas, human hierarchies, human blind spots.

So what do you do when the system fails you?

You don’t throw away the impulse toward the sacred. You reclaim it. You do the work of discerning it for yourself — without the guarantee, without the insurance, without someone else telling you whether you’re good enough.

You ask the question at the end of the day: Was this good?

And you answer it honestly.

That’s the whole practice. That’s the whole thing.

What This Has to Do With Work and Money

I know. You might be wondering what any of this has to do with income sovereignty and cacao blends.

Everything.

The same pattern that lives in religious outsourcing lives in professional outsourcing. We hand our sense of worth to a job title.

We hand our financial security to a company that can eliminate our position in a quarterly restructuring.

We hand our daily reality to a system that was not built to steward us — it was built to extract from us.

And then we’re surprised when we feel betrayed.

The work I do — the income sovereignty work, the career transition work, the building-something-of-your-own work — is the same as reclaiming your discernment from a system that was never designed to honor it. It’s saying: I am not a fish. I am not going to be sold fish. I am learning to fish.

The cacao in the tin on my table is the same. It’s something I make with my hands from a plant my ancestors knew, in a kitchen in Fairfax County, sold at a farmers market to people who want to know where their food comes from. It’s not outsourced. It’s not extracted. It’s mine — all the way down.

That’s what sovereignty tastes like. Whether it’s spiritual, financial, or professional, or embodied.

The same.

A Few Things We Didn’t Resolve (And That’s the Point)

This episode didn’t tie anything up neatly. Neither does this essay.

We didn’t settle the question of whether faith requires a community or can be entirely personal. We didn’t resolve the tension between the genuine good religion has done — the cathedrals pointing eyes upward, the radical inclusion of Jesus walking with women when no rabbi did, the genuine comfort of a story that says you are not alone — and the genuine harm.

We didn’t fully reckon with what it means to be the children of the ones who outsourced our spiritual formation, not out of malice but out of exhaustion, out of survival, out of the limits of what they had access to.

What we did do is name it. Sit with it. Let it be complicated.

And I think that’s close to what any honest religious practice might hope for, too: not certainty, but the willingness to keep asking.

Listen to the full Capacity Conversations episode wherever you get your podcasts, or in the audio section of this Substack.

If this finds you at the right moment, forward it to one person; it might find someone else.

And if you’re in Northern Virginia, my first market day is May 23rd at the Eat Local Farmers Market in Reston. Come find me. There will be cacao.

About the Hosts:

Raquel Sands is a clarity and work strategist supporting deep feelers and purpose-driven individuals to create and sustain their peace, purpose, and prosperity on their own terms. Find her work at [your website].

Sarah Liljegren is a real estate professional whose passion and purpose is to rewild space and bring it into more connection with nature and our natural cycles. She works at the intersection of housing, community, and ecological restoration.

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

I’m Miriam Raquel. And this is Come Home — a five minute practice for stepping back into yourself.

You don’t need anything special for this. If you have your cacao in front of you — beautiful. If you have a different drink — that works too. And if you don’t have anything at all right now — that’s fine. This practice works either way. We’re using the cacao as an anchor, but what we’re really doing is coming back to the body. Back to this moment. Back to you.

So wherever you are — in your kitchen, in your car, on your commute — just let yourself arrive here for a few minutes.

Start by finding your feet.

Feel them on the floor. Or the pedals. Or wherever they are right now. Just notice them. You’ve been carrying yourself around all day and your feet have been with you the whole time.

Take one breath in — —

And let it go.

If you have your cacao in front of you — or any warm drink — I want you to pick up the mug or the cup that speaks to you right now. Not the first one you grabbed. The one that feels right today. We make small choices all the time without noticing them. This one — let yourself notice it.

Hold it in both hands if you can.

Feel the warmth coming through.

If you’re still in the preparation — if your cacao is in front of you and you’re about to make it — let’s do that together slowly.

Take a breath before you scoop the powder. Just one breath. — —

When you scoop it into your mug — smell it before you add anything. Really smell it. Cacao has a particular depth before it becomes a drink. Something earthy. Something that feels older than today.

Now the water. Pour it slowly if you can. Watch what happens — how the powder moves, how the water changes color, how the two things begin to become one thing. — —

Stir it. Watch the liquid settle.

And here — just before you add anything else — ask yourself: do I need something sweet today? Or do I need to sit with the bitterness for a moment?

There’s no wrong answer. Your body usually knows. The honey can wait until you’ve listened.

Now — if your drink is ready — take one sip.

Not a gulp. One sip. — —

Let it coat your tongue. Let the warmth move down your throat. Feel it settle somewhere in your chest.

This — right here — is nourishment. Not just the compounds in the cacao, not just the warmth, but the act of giving yourself this moment. Of saying: I am worth five minutes of my own attention.

As you sit here — if something is coming up for you, something you’ve been carrying — let it. You don’t have to solve it. You don’t have to name it perfectly. If you have something to write in — a notebook, your phone — and something wants to come out, let it.

And if nothing comes — that’s also information. Sometimes the body just needs to rest inside a quiet moment without producing anything.

Before you finish — wherever your drink is, whatever you’re holding —

Take one more breath. — —

And offer yourself a moment of thank you. Not for being productive. Not for doing everything right. Just for being here. For giving yourself this.

You deserve the peace you’re creating right now.

Carry a little of it with you today.

— —

If you’re in NOVA, Northern Virginia, I’ll see you at market.

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

Inside this larger container live two subseries — The Capacity Conversations and A Day in the Life — each offering their own lens on presence, identity, and the inner workings of a life in motion.

Season 3 opens in Aries season, spring 2026, alongside Raquel’s new cacao and ritual business: locally crafted cacao blends, candles, and grounding tools designed to bring us back into the now. This season features conversations with artists, seekers, builders, and spiritual practitioners like Anna Schmunk, inviting us into deeper awareness, gentler rhythms, and more honest ways of being.

If you’re craving presence, nuance, and the kind of conversations that feel like sitting on the floor with a friend — welcome. You’re in the right place.

Hello, hello. Welcome back to A Day in the Life.

If you’re new to this behind‑the‑scenes series, this is a vulnerable look behind the curtain—behind the door—of my life as I build a business in an overly (or maybe just deeply) saturated online market. Late‑stage capitalism. The global North. The United States. The East Coast. All of these layers folded into the long, slow work of aiming toward income sovereignty and sustainability as a woman of color, as someone who has navigated the corporate system for decades and created her own path, her own way out.

So welcome. 👋🏼👋🏼

I usually try to do this series twice a month. March 2026 has had other plans. Curveballs doesn’t even begin to cover it. There has been a lot happening—globally, politically, economically, culturally—and most likely that will continue. We’re all being affected, from different angles and at different intensities, but deeply nonetheless.

And maybe we don’t even fully realize how deep. How layered it all is. How much of it lives in our bodies before it ever reaches language.

To say it’s hard is an understatement. To say there is a path forward is also an understatement.

One of the things I’ve been sitting with—one of the reasons I didn’t show up twice a month the way I normally do—is this truth about cycles. Everything moves in cycles. Everything is iterative. History repeats itself. Our bodies repeat themselves. Women move through menstrual cycles that never look quite the same month to month. Weeks shift, energy shifts, capacity shifts.

And yet we’re taught to believe in a linear path. A straight line out. That someday we will get out of whatever we’re stuck in—out of survival, out of a job, out of scarcity.

But life isn’t trying to get out of anything. Life is just trying to live.

I don’t say that to minimize what we’re going through. I say it to name something fundamental. We don’t live in bubbles; we live in layers. Cultural, religious, societal, and economic layers are all moving at once.

And I’ve been reckoning—personally and professionally—with the work I do helping people, especially spiritually minded and environmentally conscious people, mission‑driven people, purpose‑driven people.

The people I serve, myself included.

What keeps coming up in conversation, again and again, is safety and security. And it usually comes out as money. I need more money.

Friends, family, potential clients—so many conversations are marked by desperation, by treading water, by fear. Fear of AI taking jobs. Robots are taking jobs. Mortgages. Bills. Survival.

I’m not negating any of it. I live with those questions too.

But what I’ve been filtering, sifting, and sitting with is this: we’re not actually trying to solve for money.

Money is the expression, not the root. It’s that saying—more money, more problems. Even if we all had what we thought we needed, even if retirement was fully funded, houses paid off, debts erased… would the problem go away?

No.

Because money is a societal construct. Money is something that has been given power. If we return to something like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, what we actually need is much simpler: shelter, food, water, air, warmth, and community. We are social animals.

But because of systems built by people who wanted to hoard power and wealth—colonization, extraction, political control—money became the gatekeeper. I remember seeing an exhibit at the British Museum last year tracing the history of currency. Coins stamped with the faces of Caesars. The same symbolism persists today. Faces on money are not neutral. They represent power, legacy, and control.

Those who hoard wealth are the ones who truly benefit from the system. Debt keeps everyone else working. Consuming. Chasing the next thing—another upgrade, another device, another promise of security. All of it serves those at the top while the rest of us scramble without land, without leverage, without real or cultural real estate to lean on.

This became especially clear in a conversation I had with a potential client. She wanted to know my story—how I job‑hopped, pivoted across industries, repositioned myself, and paid off over $100,000 in combined student and car debt in under a decade after graduating.

But at the end of the conversation, it came down to the house. Keeping the house at any cost. Because losing it felt like failure.

We’re not failing because we bought into the system. We’re not failing because we sustain it. We vote. We work. We pay taxes. We commute. We budget. We cut streaming services. Each of us is a drop sustaining the ecosystem.

And the ones who own the apartment complexes, the monopolies, the conglomerates—the literal and figurative real estate—benefit.

I think we’ve been at the breaking point for a long time. Now we’re feeling the whiplash. The dismantling. The slow death of consumer capitalism.

As individuals, we’re being forced to ask: What am I really willing to decide for myself?

Because if we’re always solving for money, the hamster wheel never stops. Another option—maybe the only option—is minimizing our footprint. Reducing debt. Detaching, where possible, from systems that extract from us even while we sleep.

This is why I’ve been rethinking my business.

I’ve never believed the corporate system was a path to freedom. I’ve always tried to speak to people who already see it for what it is and want to repurpose it on their own terms. But unless we’re all going off‑grid completely—and even then, money still shows up—we’re still inside this economy.

(See more in my Q&A with Anna Schmunk 😍😍)

What we can do is decrease dependence and increase agency. Pivot. Reiterate. Choose where we place value.

So yes, I’m still offering a 90‑minute clarity and strategy session. Sometimes that looks like resume design. Sometimes it looks like reframing your entire relationship to work. Because we still need to get paid.

But I’m taking a big step back from “repurposing the corporate ladder” as a central offering. The ladder has been broken for decades. We’re just now feeling it.

I’m still in business. Just not in the same way. I’m prioritizing play, experimentation, design, and writing. There’s another branch coming. I’ll share when it’s ready.

What isn’t going away is this series. Or the essays. Or the long conversations about capacity—mental, emotional, spiritual, economic, ecological—with Sarah on the podcast. I just spent time with her in Washington, from Spokane to Seattle, where we recorded an episode together in person. Those relationships—those connections—feel like the real light right now.

As capitalism continues to fracture, what remains are people. Community. The ways we hold each other as we’re all, in different ways, being remade.

Thank you for being here. For listening. For staying. 🌱🌱

If you want to support this work, you can work with me and/or share this newsletter. I’m grateful for it. Truly.

Please take care of yourself. Rest. Drink water. Get sunlight. Eat well. Cry. Yell. Hug yourself and the people you love. All of it is medicine.

Whatever is meant for you—whatever is coming from you—deserves gentleness as it grows.

I’ll talk to you in the next one.

Thanks for reading The Clarity Shift ! This post is public so feel free to share it.

In this episode, Raquel and Sarah dive into one of the most emotionally charged and culturally complex topics of our time: political correctness — not as a culture‑war talking point, but as a lived, embodied experience that shapes our emotional capacity, our relationships, and our sense of sovereignty.

Together, they explore:

What political correctness actually is and why it hits the nervous system

The paradox of being hyper‑aware but under‑equipped

How pronouns, language shifts, and cultural expectations affect identity and belonging

The tension between evolution and sovereignty

Identity fragmentation vs. identity wholeness

The emotional labor of navigating DEI, boundaries, and representation

How subcultures shape language, and how language reshapes the brain

The difference between honoring someone’s identity and policing others

Why millennials feel overwhelmed by constant linguistic and cultural shifts

How to hold nuance without collapsing your capacity

This episode is a grounded, honest, and deeply human exploration of how language, identity, and cultural expectations intersect — and how to stay sovereign, compassionate, and whole in the process.

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In this episode, Raquel and Sarah explore the quiet, powerful season of shedding — the moment when old identities, inherited expectations, and survival‑based versions of ourselves begin to fall away. What emerges is a deeper conversation about capacity, clarity, and the emotional, spiritual, and cultural shifts shaping millennial life today.

Together, they unpack:

Why everything feels like it’s collapsing — personally and collectively

The identity unraveling that happens when the old self stops working

How the nervous system signals truth long before the mind catches up

Rewilding vs. becoming feral — and why instinct matters more than performance

The emotional cost of being first‑gen, high‑capacity, and endlessly adaptable

The grief and liberation of shedding roles, expectations, and survival patterns

What it means to build capacity from humanity, not productivity

How to trust your pace, your body, and your inner timing

Why this moment is less about reinvention and more about remembering

This episode is a grounded, nonlinear exploration of what it means to stay human in a world that keeps demanding more than we can give — and how shedding becomes a path back to clarity, instinct, and self‑trust.

In this episode, Raquel and Sarah explore the surprising connection between zombification, burnout, balance, and the millennial search for meaning. Starting with the Haitian origins of the word zombie, they trace how a concept rooted in soul‑loss and forced servitude evolved into a modern metaphor for exhaustion, numbness, and the extraction economy we’re all navigating.

Together, they unpack:

The erasure of humanity in modern work and culture

Why millennials feel like they’re “alive but not living”

How environment shapes mindset more than mindset shapes environment

COVID as a portal that revealed how disconnected we were from ourselves

The difference between humans and humanity

Political polarization, propaganda fatigue, and the grief of losing nuance

Vampires vs. zombies — and why some archetypes feel safer than others

The Five Survival Skills for staying human in a draining world

Rewilding vs. becoming feral

Boundaries as the antidote to numbness and soul‑loss

This episode is a deep, nonlinear, emotionally intelligent exploration of what it means to stay human in a world designed to drain us — and how to reclaim capacity, clarity, and connection.

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

If you’ve been feeling chronically tired, stretched thin, or like you’re constantly “failing,” you aren’t alone.

In the third episode of Capacity Conversations, hosts Raquel Sands and Sarah Liljegren dive into the “polluted waters” of modern life to deconstruct the concept of deficiency and why our current systems are designed to make us feel perpetually “less than”.

Key Takeaways from the Episode

1. Deficiency is a “Falling Away,” Not a Personal Failure

Raquel explores the etymology of “deficiency,” which stems from the Latin deficere, meaning a failing or a “falling away from doing”.

* The Reframing: A deficiency isn’t an innate lack within you. It is often a natural part of balance—choosing not to do one thing so you can focus on another.

* The Systemic Root: Often, the lack is in our environment or structures, not our character. We have inherited systems of capitalism and extraction that are designed to keep us in a state of “continuous hunger”.

2. The Trap of “Hustle Culture” and Identity

In the U.S., identity is often wrapped up in professional titles. Sarah and Raquel discuss how we are conditioned to believe we should “do it all,” which Sarah identifies as a logical fallacy.

* The Natural Law: You cannot give more than you have.

* The Reckoning: Many millennials reach their 30s and realize they’ve been following a “funnel” of societal expectations without ever truly knowing themselves.

3. Reclaiming Self-Mastery and Boundaries

To possess yourself is to reclaim agency over your time and energy.

* The Power of Practice: Modern culture lacks a “practice of practice”—the dedication to honing a skill or routine (like meditation or writing) over a long period.

* The Truce: Raquel highlights that the word “trust” is rooted in the same origin as “tree” and “truce”. Finding capacity requires making a truce with yourself—accepting what you can actually do right now without shame.

4. Finding Nourishment in Nature

Sarah, a naturalist and real estate professional, emphasizes the need to bridge the gap between our modern lives and natural cycles.

* Mother Nature’s Mirror: Just as we feel burnt out, the earth is attempting to find its own reciprocity and balance.

* True Self-Care: Sometimes self-care is a bubble bath; other times, it is the discomfort of a hard conversation or setting a firm boundary at work.

The “Capacity” Action List

* Audit Your “Inheritance”: Recognize which pressures are yours and which were inherited from previous generations or systemic structures.

* Practice Personal Inquiry: Ask yourself daily: “What do I need in this moment?” Be honest and “naked” with your answer.

* Embrace the “Freefall”: Like a baby bird leaving the nest, you don’t always need to know how to fly before you take the leap. Trust that your curiosity and self-discovery have prepared you for the edge.

🎧 Listen to the Full Series: Check out our Spotify Playlist for music that is uplifting, nurturing, and nourishing to accompany your journey through these challenging dialogues.

Raquel Sands

Clarity Strategist | Writer | Systems DecoderExploring the intersection of identity, clarity, and capacity in modern life.

Sarah Liljegren

Holistic Realtor® | Nature Connection FacilitatorMapping how global events and ancestral trauma shape the nervous system and sense of self.

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We move beyond self-blame and individual narratives to look at the global conditions that fractured our collective ability to thrive.

This is not about doom — it’s about context, and context creates compassion.

Why This Episode Matters

Because you cannot rebuild your personal capacity until you understand the collective wound around capacity.

This episode is designed to help listeners:

release shame around burnout

understand why they’re so tired

contextualize their emotional state

see their exhaustion as valid, not weak

reclaim agency by naming the forces shaping them

When you understand the world you inherited, you can make different choices about the world you want to build.

But the real story isn’t the travel. It’s the inner permission it takes to transition, to start over at any age, and to trust that a calling is worth following even when you don’t have the full map yet.

Capacity Conversations: A Podcast for the Millennial Soul

In our very first episode, we explore the question at the center of this entire series:

Where does our sense of capacity actually come from — and who taught us what we were allowed to want, need, or become?

This conversation begins with our origin stories:the identities we inherited, the roles we were shaped into, the cultural expectations we absorbed, and the silent rules of survival we learned before we ever understood the word “capacity.”

Together, Raquel and Sarah unpack:

🌱 What we inherit from our lineages

How our families, cultures, and early environments decide what we believe is “possible,” “too much,” or “not enough.”How immigrant stories, millennial pressures, and generational survival strategies shape our self-concept.

🌱 The gap between who we were told to be vs. who we actually are

The earliest moments where we learned to shrink, overperform, self-sacrifice, or hyper-independently cope.Why millennial identity feels fractured — and how to begin reclaiming the lost pieces.

🌱 The nervous system as storyteller

Why your capacity is not just emotional or mental — it’s physiological.How your body keeps track of your history even when your mind has moved on.

🌱 Identity as scaffolding

How our origin stories create the blueprint for how we show up in relationships, career, self-worth, money, creativity, and purpose.Why understanding your origin story is the first step toward expanding your capacity.

🌱 The myths we absorbed growing up

The “good girl,” the “responsible one,” the “fixer,” the “overachiever,” the “strong one,” the “first-gen achiever,” the “invisible one,” and more.How these identities protected us — and how they limit us now.

🌱 The real purpose of an origin story

Not to blame the past, but to understand why our present looks the way it does — and how to create a different future from a place of choice, not conditioning.

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Raquel Sands: Clarity Strategist & Digital Designer helping freedom-seekers create and sustain peace, purpose, and prosperity on their terms.Substack: raquelsands.substack.com

Sarah Liljegren: Holistic Realtor® and Nature Connection Facilitator exploring ancestral connection, nervous system capacity, and modern millennial survival.

Substack: rewildingrealestate.substack.com

They discuss immigrant and first-gen dynamics, the mother archetype, deconstructing identity (woman, mother, leader, entrepreneur), and how integration—not juggling—is the real goal. Faith explains how she started her first business to reclaim autonomy, competence, and meaningful relationships while caring for her autistic son.

Together, they unpack invisible labor, why people of color are overburdened by rigged systems, and how real change starts in tiny pockets—small teams and honest relationships—rather than just policies. Faith offers guidance for women of color navigating hostile or extractive work cultures, emphasizing self-care, body honesty, and building multigenerational, supportive relationships. The conversation closes with reflections on story, media, and recommendations like The Wild Robot and Outlander, along with how listeners can connect with Faith and her work.

l sat down with Tad Hargrave—longtime teacher, community-builder, and founder of Marketing for Hippies—for a deep and timely conversation about ethical marketing, finding your niche, and what it means to build a business with integrity in an unstable world.

🌀 Connect with Tad: marketingforhippies.com

✨ Raquel’s Offerings: Take the "What’s Your Clarity Style?" quiz: https://raquelsands.substack.com/
Subscribe to Inside the Shift on Substack: https://raquelsands.substack.com/

🌍 Share This Episode! If this episode helped you breathe deeper, think clearer, or feel less alone—send it to a friend.

Until next time—stay grounded, stay curious, and keep shifting. 💫

She explains how movement, time in nature, and spiritual practice (rooted in Quaker traditions of silence, waiting on the inner light, and communal discernment) keep her grounded while running a business in a capitalist culture that constantly pushes urgency and scarcity. Valerie also talks about the discomfort and necessity of speaking truth to power: challenging harmful systems in places like public schools, naming problems without being “the problem,” and using privilege to advocate for those with less time, capacity, or safety.

Together, Raquel and Valerie explore non-linear career paths, the tension between visibility and safety (including showing up authentically on platforms like LinkedIn), and how stories, including The Lord of the Rings, shape how we understand agency, community, and courage. Listeners will walk away with grounded reflections and practical invitations around embodiment, community, and creating a more honest relationship with career and self.

In this soul-deep episode, I sit down with my former coworker, mentor, and friend Vanessa Correa, currently VP of Marketing Strategy at JP Morgan Chase. Vanessa shares her unfiltered journey of becoming her anchor in life and work—growing up in NYC, surviving childhood abuse, and forging peace not as a feeling, but as a way of being.

We talk about:

• The difference between adaptability and code-switching

• How to stay rooted in your identity in corporate spaces

• The myth of "once you find clarity, you're set for life"

• Burnout in DEI, post-2020 backlash, and recommitting to purpose

• What the real pandemic is (hint: it’s not what you think)

• Why expansion is inevitable—even if the world is resisting it

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone trying to stay grounded in a world spinning fast. Whether you're in a 9–5, building your exit plan, or navigating an identity shift Vanessa’s lived wisdom will meet you where you are.

🎧 Listen in, and let this episode remind you that peace is power, clarity is movement, and you are more than one thing. Always.

------Vanessa has 20 years of career experience in marketing and communications. She is currently a Vice President of Marketing Strategy at JPMorganChase, and has been in the finance sector for seven years. Vanessa’s key to success is being herself in every setting and not allowing anyone to put her in a box.Find her on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phillynessa

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phillynessa

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/correavanessav/

We explore:

• Why unlearning is as important as learning

• Tracey’s nonlinear journey from international development to astrology

• The myth of meritocracy and the pressure to perform

• How to recognize when you’re operating from fear vs. truth

• The power of imagination, rest, and pleasure in building a liberated life

• What the current astrological transits can teach us about collective transformation

Whether you're stuck in a system that doesn't serve you, dreaming of a big pivot, or navigating the liminal space in between, this episode is a gentle but powerful reminder: you have permission to live your truth—boldly, unapologetically, and now.

🪞 Your next step? Follow what lifts the hairs on your arms and sets your heart on fire.
🌱 Tracey’s mantra: Chop wood, carry water—and let that be enough.

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Learn more about Tracey:

Websites: traceylrogers.com + babyastrologybooks.com

Instagram: @trae2u + @baby_astrology_and_books

Tracey L. Rogers is a professional Astrologer, certified Life Coach, and NAACP-award winning Activist who has been consulting clients throughout the Philadelphia region, nationally, and abroad for over a decade. Coming from a lineage of Astrologers on her father’s side, she has been studying the stars since she was a child with extensive knowledge of Western astrological thought and traditions.

Lea opens up about:
💸 Navigating the financial trauma of the 2008 crisis
🏛️ Leaving Wall Street to reclaim her worth and power
🔥 What it means to pivot with purpose during political and economic upheaval
🌱 Cultivating self-trust, rebirth, and radical boundaries in business
🛠️ Tangible money advice for both career folks and budding entrepreneurs

This isn’t just a conversation about finance—it’s about liberation, self-worth, and redefining what success looks like on your own terms.

📌 Mentioned in the episode:
– Riqueza Collective (coaching, media, nonprofit)
– Free masterclass: Planning Palante
– The Protect the Bag Guide (50+ pages of wealth-building tools)
– Resources for emergency funds, debt, and community wealth

Whether you're in corporate, building your own business, or somewhere in between—this episode is your reminder that you get to choose your path.

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