Notes From A Cacao Gathering

A few weeks ago, sixteen people gathered together in a room to share Cacao. Every session I facilitate teaches me something new, even after all this time. I never leave quite the same person who walked in, and I don’t think anybody else does either. I’m constantly learning and forever growing.

Our theme for the evening was ‘heat’. Not the heat we feel from the sun (which is a lot at the moment!), but the heat we carry within ourselves. The heat of anxiety. The heat of fear. The heat of anger. The heat that builds quietly in our chest, tightens our jaw, races through our thoughts or settles heavily in our stomach. We explored what this heat feels like, where it lives in our bodies, what it is trying to tell us and, perhaps most importantly, how we can begin to find balance instead of simply reacting to it.

One of the most beautiful parts of every Cacao Gathering is the sharing. We take our time to move around the room, listening without interruption or judgement as each person explains how these feelings show up in their own life. It never ceases to amaze me how differently we all experience the same emotions. For one person, anxiety feels like complete overwhelm. For another, it becomes silence and withdrawal. Anger might show up as frustration, tears, perfectionism or the need to always stay busy.

It is one of the greatest privileges of my work to watch people show up for the parts of themselves that have simply been waiting to be acknowledged. The frightened part. The exhausted part. The angry part. The hopeful part. None of these parts are wrong; they simply want to be seen.

Yes, there are almost always tears. Sometimes quiet ones that roll gently down a cheek, sometimes the kind that have been waiting months or even years to be released. But alongside the tears, there is always laughter too. We laugh at ourselves, with one another and at the beautiful messiness of being human. We realise that none of us have it all figured out, and somehow that becomes incredibly comforting.

Holding Cacao gatherings is something I will never, ever get bored of. I truly love it. Every time, a little more, that’s a promise. Not because it fixes us, but because it reminds us that we never needed fixing in the first place. We simply needed somewhere safe enough to put down what we’ve been carrying, and we need each other to do that.

By the end of the evening, the room feels different. Shoulders soften. Faces brighten. Smiles arrive a little more easily. The weight isn’t necessarily gone, but it feels lighter because it has been witnessed. There is something incredibly soothing about recognising that the thoughts you’ve been carrying in silence are often shared by the person sitting beside you.

We leave reminded that every single one of us is navigating something unseen. We are all trying our best with the tools we have today, and perhaps that is enough. Sometimes it simply looks like sitting together, drinking cacao, telling the truth and realising that we were never alone.

By the end of the session, the ‘heat’ we had explored hadn’t disappeared, but it had become more understood. And when that happens, our perspective begins to shift. From that place of understanding, we can make better decisions, respond rather than react, and give ourselves the chance to truly thrive.

Love Gizelle