We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniela Miranda. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniela below.

Daniela, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

I often talk about my first Cacao experience in 2013 during my ceremonies. I remember I had so many questions and knew intuitively it was exactly what I needed. At that time I was feeling lost and disconnected.

My heart was still closed after my divorce and I needed something to help me feel alive again. I couldn’t trust anyone, but when the aroma of cacao reached me it hit all of my senses. I started sobbing even before I had my first sip. I didn’t know then, but what I was weeping were all the times that I oppressed my roots.

When I arrived in the US as a young child, I remember missing Chile and its smells so much. I missed going to get pansito (bread) from the market up the street and my abuelita cooking up a storm. I missed the laughter and the ease that I felt being home.

I was feeling confused, isolated, and lonely. Through assimilation, I had to survive based on conformity to “American culture.” That meant speaking less Spanish, practicing American cultural traditions at a higher frequency, etc. Thus leaving access to my past in fragmented pieces.

I remember while growing up, my father once told me: “You have to know where you come from in order to know where you’re going.” At the time, I was in high school and discarded his words. Now, that phrase bears heavy sentiment.

After the passing of my abuelita (grandmother,) that quote was reprised. Those words evolved from just another saying my Indigenous father once said to a passageway of permission allowing me to begin my ancestral reconnection.

Then came my first sip of cacao. It tasted like home. Like something I needed to remind myself of where I came from.
At that first ceremony, I asked Ixcacao (the goddess of cacao) to guide me back to myself. Back to a place I was missing for so many years and didn’t even know.

My Abuelita came to me on that journey. She swooped in to show me Mi Tierra. She asked me to let go of all the ancestral hurts that have plagued the women in our family for generations. She said that it wasn’t mine to carry anymore.

And so I embarked on this beautiful journey with the Cacao plant medicine. I started to unlock and untangle all the ways that I held myself back and the way I hadn’t lived fully ever since I left Chile those many years ago. Cacao gave me clarity, but most importantly it led me back to myself.

I had never thought of this magical ceremony with cacao as being a tool to connect with others until life threw me (and all of us) the ultimate curveball. I spent years building a successful photography business that was decimated by Covid. As I sat in reflection of what life had in store for me next, the smells and sounds of cacao kept filling my vision. That direct connection to my homeland, my abuelita, and my heritage was now brightly lit in front of my eyes as the answer to how to move forward.

I learned from my teacher who been instructed directly by the elders. I sat with the importance of this fact and studied cacao for years before I started to share this medicine out in the world. I wanted to honor the Mayan culture and how they shared Cacao. It was important to me to honor the lineage and how the Mayan culture shared cacao. Being a Mapuche shaman, I knew how important it is to honor where the lineage comes from was honoring all those who guard the plant medicine and the elders and ancestors who shared their wisdom from generation to generation.

Cacao has brought me all over the world to share the medicine. Now help people reclaim their roots and connect them to their own medicine and magic through ceremonies, retreats, and photography.

I read this quote the other day from the book When the Drummers Were Women. And it all made sense to me why the Cacao plant was calling all those years ago.

“All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb, and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born, and this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother.” ― Layne Redmond

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

It all begins with the heart

Cacao takes you to the door but it does not push you through it. That choice is yours to make.

Mari Mari(hello)

My name is Daniela and I’m Chilena with Indigenous Mapuche blood. I come from a long line of medicine women who have in one way or another shut their medicine down for survival.

I am here in this lifetime to reclaim that medicine and empower all generations to live free and wild. I come from tribal warriors who love and honor Pachamama and whose medicine is imprinted in her DNA.

Years ago for survival, I also shut down her magic and medicine. But I have reclaimed it and connected other women to their own medicine and magic through ceremonies, retreats, and photography.

What is a ceremony with Cacao

A Ceremony with Cacao IS A TYPE OF SHAMANIC HEALING, ROOTED IN HELPING REBALANCE THE ENERGIES WITHIN US, OPEN OUR HEARTS, AND RESTORE GOOD HEALTH.

A cacao ceremony is perfect for someone wanting to experience and grow through shamanic rituals without the often intense experience associated with Ayahuasca.

It’s for those who want to heal your mind, body, and spirit.
Cacao gives you permission to love yourself with all of the possibilities that you can be.
It helps you to visualize your goals and reveals your passions and goals through awakening and inner healing.
The plant spirit of cacao is powerful but gentle and nurturing. It invites you to work with forgiveness and acceptance and opens your creativity – one of the reasons it is very popular with artists of all types.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

Yes, I would 100%.

It wasn’t my original plan (how many of us have said that after covid) to become a ceremonial leader. I can tell you that I was completely resistant to the idea. Especially because of the stigma I had about ceremonial leaders. And let me tell you it wasn’t the best.

In my photography business, I was able to give aha moments to women. It still had a spiritual component to it, but something always felt off. I wanted to go deeper. And, well the story goes, you get into a rhythm of something until it gets rocked to nothing. I had to figure out the next steps and become really honest about where I was holding back. This whole time while shooting, I felt disconnected and wanted something more simple. Less complicated, but when you’ve been doing something for a while you just keep plugging away.

And when the world got really quiet, I had to become quiet with her. My business crashed and I had to, for the first time in a long time, look at my career and ask, does this even make me happy anymore?

The answer was no. I wanted to spend more time with family, and I wanted to focus on having time to be creative again. And not push photography to be my source of income, but for it to become fun once again.

So that’s when cacao found me once again, it took me deep into my roots and I realized that this is what I was missing. Now I lead Ceremonies with Cacao, Co-lead retreats and every once in a while you will find me doing some cacao with a client that I am photographing.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I feel like the most important lesson that I have learned is to let go of control. Even though I’m a creative, I wanted to control everything around me. It’s been one of the hardest lessons of my life to surrender and trust that everything is going to work out.

With cacao, it’s become easier to surrender to the ebb and flow of life and my career. And connecting back to my roots has been the biggest gift that I have gotten from surrendering into not having everything figured out. It was kind of my second spiritual awakening.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://conexionalcorazon.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamdaniela.miranda/

Image Credits
The more professional looking photos are @thewildawake https://www.instagram.com/thewildawake/