Sown

The candle brand that wasn't meant to be.

Before Let It Smoke, there was another project.

I called it Sown and in hindsight, it was the very first spark of what this journal would become.

Let’s rewind to May 2025.

I’d been unemployed for seven months, restless and questioning everything - my career, my purpose, my place in the world.

Nothing was landing, and I started to wonder if maybe I was the problem.

That same week, I had just signed up for the Opening the Creative Field retreat in Sweden. My teachers say the work begins the moment you say yes.

Before the flight, before the retreat, before I had even built up the courage to write here, the work had already begun.

One late night, bored and fidgety, I typed to ChatGPT: I’m bored.

It replied: Let’s play a game. What if?

And one of the questions hit something deep:

What if you had never moved to New York or worked in marketing?

What would you be doing instead?

Immediately, I saw her - the version of me who’d chose a slower life.

She lives in a small cottage with a garden and a few chickens.

She runs a scent and ritual studio, selling herbs, smoke bundles, and of course, candles.

And just like that, Sown was born.

That night, I stayed up until dawn building it - the name, the voice, the scent stories.

I decided the candles would be released in collections, like seasonal short stories told through fragrance.

At the time, I was deep in my Sinner era (I’d seen it four times in theaters) and communing nightly with my ancestors, lighting their candle and whispering prayers for help and guidance.

My grief was heavy, but so was the pull to create something sacred.

So I poured it all into Sown: the storytelling, the ache, the beauty, the ritual.

And for the first time in months, I felt alive again.

I shared it the next morning with a few friends, proud and buzzing.

The response? Whomp, whomp.

Not because they disliked it.

They just didn’t get it.

They saw a business idea where I had felt a heartbeat.

They offered advice about branding, partnerships, and production - all things I normally love talking about.

But this time, it landed flat.

Because Sown wasn’t about business.

It was about storytelling.

It was about me finding my way back to my voice.

At the time, I didn’t realize that; I just felt deflated.

But now I see what was really happening: I was answering the call to write.

I just didn’t yet know how to separate my marketing muscle from my creative one.

So I cloaked my truth in the only language I knew - branding, messaging, and strategy.

But what I was really doing was something more ancient: remembering.

---

🕯 Red Stained Hands

The sweetness of what we carry. A garden after rain. Memory bruised and blooming.

Top Note: green vine, crushed ozone

Middle Note: wild strawberry, rose petal

Base Note: damp earth, cedar, petrichor

It smells like picking strawberries barefoot in a garden that hasn’t been tended in years but still grows. The ground is wet, the fruit is warm, your hands stained red. Alone, but not lonely.

Instructions: A reminder that what we gather stays with us.

---

🕯 A Field Hymn

A hymn for those who labored and loved. Hands in soil. Salt on skin.

Top Note: crisp cotton, sea salt

Middle Note: fresh hay, lavender

Base Note: vetiver, sun-warmed musk

The scent of lineage and land. Long drives down winding roads, tall grass brushing your palms. A prayer in scent form for ancestors, for labor, for rest.

Instructions: To remember what was planted. To bless what blooms.

---

🕯 The Sun Remembers

The glow of joy held in the bones. A field lit with memory.

Top Note: lemon zest, neroli

Middle Note: sunflower, chamomile

Base Note: amber resin, hay, warm earth

It smells like a sunflower field at golden hour - bees humming, heat of the earth rising through your soles. Bright, tender, and fleeting. The memory of a summer that changed you.

Instructions: Light this where you last felt free.

---

🕯 Greenhouse of Ghosts

The air in a room that remembers your touch. Still growing. Still waiting.

Top Note: tomato leaf, cucumber water

Middle Note: basil stem, geranium

Base Note: cracked slate, greenhouse moss

It smells like morning in a fogged garden - basil bolting, plants glistening, a forgotten basket near the door. Untamed, unrushed, reverent.

Instructions: Light to remember what your hands once knew.

---

🕯 Limited Release: Smoke Break With God

Tobacco for the elders. Hibiscus for blood memory. Frankincense for the sacred. A hush outside the sacred.

Top Note: tobacco leaf, hibiscus

Middle Note: dried rose, frankincense

Base Note: sandalwood, ash, petrichor

It smells like stepping out the back of a wooden church at the edge of a cotton field. Smoke curling from your fingers. Not quite praying. Not quite cursing. Just… breathing.

Instructions: For when you need to sit with God in that space between reverence and rebellion. Smoke rising. Spirit listening.

---

I thought I was making candles.

What I was really doing was lighting a match inside myself.

Sown was the soil.

Let It Smoke is the harvest.

And funny enough, Smoke Break was the original name for this journal but it was taken.

So Let It Smoke became the next evolution - the breath that followed the spark.

Now, I want to turn the wick toward you:

✨ Would you light these candles in your own home?

✨ If you could create one — a candle of your own memories, the ones you hold closest — what would it smell like?