The Skies Never Disappoint Me

Notes from the Hollow Bone | entry forty-six

There are moments lately where I catch myself speaking gently to the younger versions of me.

Not out of sadness.
Not even regret.

More like recognition.

Small reminders whispered internally while I move through ordinary moments:

This is your house.
This is your life.
You can do what you want.

And every time I say it, I realize how long some part of me has been waiting for permission to exist fully inside my own life.

I did not understand for a very long time that shrinking becomes instinct when love feels conditional.

When you grow up being told you are too loud, too stubborn, too emotional, too much—
eventually you begin editing yourself before entering the room.

You learn how to soften your edges.
How to speak more quietly.
How to become digestible.

You learn how to perform belonging.

And perhaps the saddest part is how long you continue performing long after no one is actively asking you to.

I think something shifted in me recently while standing beneath another impossible sky.

Not because the sky changed.

Because I did.

I realized I was no longer looking upward asking:
Do I belong here?

I was simply there.

Breathing.
Present.
Alive inside the moment instead of trying to earn my place within it.

And suddenly all the skies that had carried me through my life felt connected somehow.

Vietnam before memory.
Illinois sunsets.
New York winters.
California lights.
Missouri moon rises.
Tennessee rainstorms.

Different roads.
Different versions of me.

And yet the same quiet feeling returning each time I remembered to look up.

Joy was never missing.

I was simply taught to look for it somewhere outside myself.

And maybe healing is not becoming someone new after all.

Maybe healing is slowly removing every voice that convinced you your existence needed approval before it deserved expression.

Because I have spent more than half my life learning all the ways not to abandon myself.

God willing, I will spend the rest of it living differently.

Not louder.
Not harder.
Not in rebellion.

Just honestly.

And perhaps that is what finally feeling at home inside yourself looks like.

Not certainty.
Not perfection.

Just the quiet realization that your life no longer needs permission to become your own.

With Grace & Ink,
— Mai