Welcome to Sands & Semilla — I've been waiting to tell you this 🌱
Income Sovereignty, Ancestral Veneration, a New Business Path
I have been drinking cacao since before I knew it was ancestral.
Black pepper and turmeric are stirred in on rushed mornings. Honey on the slow ones. Banana cacao pancakes on Sundays when time felt like mine again. A warm cup held with two hands before the world needed anything from me.
I didn’t know then what I know now — that my body was remembering something my mind hadn’t been given language for yet.
For those who’ve just subscribed to this substack, for those who’ve been with me for some time, and for those just passing through, let me introduce myself in a way that doesn’t start with what I do (for others or for myself), just as I am:
My name is Miriam Raquel Sands. I am a Salvadoran American woman, first-generation, born into an immigrant family navigating a country that was built, in part, on the erasure of people who look like us. I am 50% Indigenous American and African. The other half of me is Iberian — the colonial lineage that crossed the Atlantic and changed everything it touched, including my ancestors.
My whole life has been in the United States. Some moments have been spent abroad, by choice or because of work, or family, but ultimately, I was born in an Imperialist-Capitalist- Consumer Country, unlike my entire family lineage before me.
I’m the first of my family born on this side of the border (literally and figuratively).
I’m the first person in my family who grew up with two languages: English and Spanish.
I’m the first in my family to have access, choice, and economy to go to Europe, Canada, and other parts of the world.
I’m the first to roller skate, longboard, and get out of a $100,000 car and student debt in under six years.
All of that lives in me.
As well as
The ones who cultivated this plant ceremonially. The ones whose labor grew it under extraction. The ones who carried it across the ocean in ships.
When my DNA confirmed what my body already knew — that I am a genetic descendant of the Mesoamerican peoples who first domesticated cacao 5,000 years ago — something settled in me that had been restless for a long time.
This new business is new in form, not ancestry, not in embodiment.
This is a reclamation.
Sands & Semilla is the name of what I make — small-batch drinking cacao blends and handmade candles, made by hand in Fairfax County, Virginia. Two blends for now. Kakawa, the ancestral blend — four ingredients, the original preparation, bitter and warming, and true. Morning Shift, the coffee drinker’s blend — for the ones ready to trade the crash for something gentler.
Every jar is reusable. Every purchase comes with a seed. You bring the jar back in Northern Virginia (for now, next year I’ll be shipping online), and I fill it again, at market, by hand. 👋🏼
I sell at Eat Local Farmers Markets in Northern Virginia this season — Met Park on Saturdays. I’ll tell you where I’ll be every month right here, in your inbox, before I go.
But this Substack is more than market dates.
This is a space for income and work sovereignty, repurposing the ladder, and now for embodiment and physical nourishment.
I plan to include topics such as:
The Plant (cacao) — the history, the etymology, the cultural and economic journey of cacao from the Amazon to your cup. I will tell you all of it. The beautiful parts and the violent parts and the parts that are still being reckoned with.
The Maker (me) — who I am, where I come from, what it means to build something rooted in your ancestry when you spent most of your life being asked to forget it. The first-generation unlearning. The healing. The slow, ongoing practice of ancestral veneration.
The Practice (embodiment) — how to drink this with intention. Journal prompts. Embodiment practices. Seasonal rituals. The quiet art of coming home to yourself, one slow cup at a time.
If you are here because you found me at a market — welcome. The jar you’re holding was made with care, and it carries a longer story than the label can hold. Now you know a little more about it.
If you are here because something in my story felt familiar — welcome. You are probably in the middle of something. Most people who find their way to this plant are.
If you are here because you just want to know how to make a good cup of cacao — welcome. I will tell you that too. It’s simpler than you think.
Plant yourself here 🌱
Where you can find me: Eat Loco MetPark Saturdays
Location: S Fern St, Arlington, VA 22202
Be sure to bring back your cacao tin jar for a $5 off discount on your next refill!
May
Saturday, May 23rd, 9 am - 1 pm EST
June
Saturday, June 6th, 9 am - 1 pm EST
July
Saturday, July 18th, 9 am - 1 pm EST
Saturday, July 25th, 9 am - 1 pm EST
August
Saturday, August 8th, 9 am - 1 pm EST
Shop candles and stickers online → website
Join the refill waitlist → Google Form