I have a beautiful ceremonial cup from Japan. I only ever drink one thing from it.

Every morning, I shave cacao into warm milk, stir in a few things that have nothing to do with flavour and everything to do with my longevity and wellness intentions, and drink it slowly, preferably in the sun, on my own. This is not hot chocolate. This is my daily ritual of cacao ceremony, and I have been doing some version of it for most of my life, long before I knew what it was.

Cacao is a thread that has run through my whole life

I cannot remember a time cacao wasn't part of my world. It has always been there, I used to feel guilty about it, I'd jokingly call myself a chocoholic.

Many years ago, I was living in Italy when the chocolate festival came to Perugia. Enormous cacao statues, the whole town centre smelling like cacao. We took home chunks of it, we gathered them from the ground as the statues were smashed as part of the event. and I ended up hand beating chocolate mousse in someone's kitchen for all my friends. No recipe. No electric beaters. No plan. Just cacao, and the new friends I had made at uni and me cooking for them, which was how I often made friends in my early 20's, as an introvert.

I didn't know then that I was already working with the medicine of cacao. I just knew it felt like I had always done it and always would.

Why am I studying cacao ceremony, why now

I have studied cacao ceremony before. Read about it, practised it, held circles and ceremonies with it for others in my own way for years.

So when I tell you I am currently deepening that practice with a teacher named Jem, in her Wilka Samay program, it isn't because I didn't already know how to brew a cup of ceremonial cacao. It's because something in the way she presents it spoke to my soul in a way that I can only describe like this: it's like being at home and getting goosebumps at the same time.

You know that feeling. Recognition, before you've even worked out what you're feeling all the feels for.

I didn't go looking for a teacher. I went looking for further depth, and then my innate curiosity found me delving into her lineage instead.

What cacao does

I drink cacao most mornings and also in ceremony, there was a time when I had some trouble with histamines and couldn't stomach it, thank goodness those days are over!

I make it, almost the same way each day. It grounds me, and is known as a heart opening medicine.

I love the bitterness of it. Since going through menopause, coffee disrupts my sleep, so cacao has become one of the rare ways to get that delicious bitter flavour. It's not a substitute for coffee, I still have it sometimes, but cacao is better for me more and doesn't mess with my sleep.

Many women aren't ready for deeper plant medicine work, and that's completely fine. Cacao doesn't ask you to surrender to a medicine that you need to prepare for or take time off afterwards. It is gentle and powerful at the same time, a gorgeous gift from Mother Earth, and it meets you exactly where you are. And for me - everyday.

It's a gateway. Not to some other realm. A gateway into yourself, in your real, probably imperfect everyday life, in the ten minutes before your day starts asking ALL of the things of you. So many of us are juggling wayy too many plates right now!

That's what I'm bringing more of into this next chapter of my work. The first event In have coming up is ceremonial cacao at Waverley on October 18th, combined with another of my accessible favourite plant medicines - essential oils. If you haven't used them yet, you do not know what a powerful support you're missing. I had used many brands before I found the right ones, the ones with a vibration that makes my hairs stand up on my spine.

After that we'll be sitting with Cacao again at the very first Radiance Activation on October 25th. If either of these give you that spark of recognition, I'd love to see you there.

And if you want to start simpler, at home, on your own, before anything else, I made something for exactly that.

Your at home guide here.