The Sanctuary I Became

Notes from the Hollow Bone, Entry Four

Beneath my feet, the Earth drums.
Through my ribs, the sky hums.
I am neither the sound nor the silence—
I am the hollow where they meet.

What does it mean to be a sanctuary?

For a long time, I thought it was something I needed to build—a space to create, a refuge to design. I searched for rooms where I could be wholly myself, where judgment would not clip my wings, where collaboration could rise untrampled by competition. I searched for spaces where acceptance was not conditional, where belonging did not come at the cost of silencing parts of myself.

I could not find it.

So I began to carve it out. At first, by force. By need. By a silent desperation to survive the noise and scarcity of the world around me.

But over time, something softer emerged. I began to realize: the sanctuary was not a place. It was a becoming.

The sanctuary lives in my rootedness, like earth deep underfoot—steady, unseen, vital. It stretches above me too, wide and open like the endless blue sky, offering shelter not by walls but by boundless invitation.

It pulses not like a frantic heartbeat but like the low, rhythmic drum of ceremony—a vibration moving through my bones, each reverberation opening me wider, deeper, further beyond the borders of my own small self.

I became the sanctuary the moment I surrendered to the call that had been whispering to me all my life—the pull toward something vaster than knowledge, greater than achievement. A thirst not to possess wisdom, but to become it. To feel it move through me, not just to see it from a distance.

The awakening was not a single event. It was a long migration out of comfort, out of the known, out of the tidy rooms others built for me and I once willingly inhabited. It was the choice to step out into the wilderness of not knowing—to let the search be endless, and to find peace in the endlessness.

Now, I no longer seek sanctuary elsewhere.

I embody it.

Not perfectly. Not completely. But sincerely.

A hollow bone is not a structure. It is an offering. It does not hoard wisdom. It carries it. It does not create power. It conducts it.

This is the sanctuary I offer: rootedness without walls, expansiveness without conditions, and a drumbeat that reminds us—you belong, exactly as you are.

You have always belonged. 

With Grace & Ink,
Mai

Frank, the Bird, and the Burnt Map

Notes from the Hollow Bone, entry three

I held a bird today.

Frank.

He didn’t struggle. Just let himself be held. His body—feathered and fragile—settled into the cup of my hand like it was always meant to rest there. And then I felt it.

His heartbeat.
Steady. Small. Sacred.
Warmth, alive in my palm.

There’s a quiet power in holding something that trusts you back. Something that doesn’t speak your language but understands your presence. We didn’t need words. That was the strangest part—how connected it felt without a sound.

Frank had one eye stuck shut.
He came to me that way.
As if we were meant to meet right there, in the stretch of sunlit grass, where I had just begun to let go.

I was mid-movement, mid-breath, mid-release.
Not surrendering to anything grand. Not praying for guidance. Just…being.
The kind of being that isn’t about effort. The kind that happens when you finally drop the reins.

And there he was.
Broken in some way. Open in another.

I unsealed his eye with a gentle touch and a silent prayer—something not said, but known. And in that shared stillness, something else happened. He opened. And so did I.

This wasn’t a rescue story.
It wasn’t divine intervention.
It was a moment.
Sacred because it was ordinary and fleeting. Sacred because I was paying attention.

I used to chase clarity. Wait for signs. Hunt the roadmap.
Now, the map is burnt, and I’ve kicked the conductor off the train.
He tries to sneak back, whispering old orders—but I’m not listening anymore.

This journey, this hollowing—it’s not a straight line or a checklist. It’s a practice.
Of letting go. Of releasing the illusion of control.
Of being empty enough to be filled.
Of being still enough to be moved.

Being a hollow bone means I’m not the source, not the speaker, not the one deciding.
I am just the space.
The channel.
The soft place life can move through.

Frank reminded me that the universe doesn’t shout.
It arrives in small bodies and quiet pulses.
It lands in your lap when you stop looking for it.
And it speaks in ways we’ve forgotten how to hear.

So I listened.

Even if just for a moment.
Even if it was only a bird.
Even if it was everything.

With Grace & Ink,
~Mai

The Hallway of the Mind and the Child Who Waits

Notes from the Hollow Bone, Entry Two

There are moments that don’t arrive as thoughts, but as sensations—sun-warm skin, the weightless breath of play, the sound of a world before expectations. This was one of them.

I was looking out at a field of wishing flowers, tucked beneath the old honeysuckle tree, when something shifted. Something soft. Something real. A peace I hadn’t touched in a long while.

No task. No proving. No becoming.
Just presence. And in that stillness—I remembered.

I remembered being nine years old, barefoot in the dirt, wearing whatever could be ruined with joy. Back then, no one cared what you wore. No one asked for polish or performance. Your hair could be wild. Your spirit too.

No masks. No makeup. No performance of adulthood.
Just the holy thrill of being alive.

But time has its own weathering. We learn to present. We learn to perform. Slowly, almost gently, the layers form. Until the mask becomes familiar. Until we forget we’re wearing it.

And yet, the child is never gone. Just sleeping.
Sometimes, it only takes a field of flowers to stir her awake.

That moment brought me back to the basics—when touching the Earth felt sacred. When joy was natural. And presence wasn’t something I practiced—it was simply how I lived.

We cannot return completely. And we shouldn’t. But we can visit.
We can wander the hallway of the mind and knock softly on the door of our younger self.

Not to escape. But to remember.
To gather what we’ve left behind.

That little girl in the field—she wasn’t trying to create.
She wasn’t trying to heal.
She just was.

And that, I’m finding, is where creativity lives. Not in the force. Not in the fixing. But in the freedom.

In my own work, and in the lives I’m honored to witness, I see it again and again:
We forget to pause.
To breathe.
To be.

Not to accomplish. Not to improve. Just to feel.
It sounds simple. But it’s not easy.

It takes practice to let go.
It takes courage to feel the sun on your face with no other purpose than joy.
But when you do—it changes things.

You return to yourself.
You come back to center.
You remember who you were before you forgot.

So I ask myself often:
When did I last feel like a child?
When did I last let myself just be?

The answer? Yesterday.
When I wrote this.
When I stood in the field.
When I remembered.

That’s the practice now.
Not once a week. Not on special occasions.
Every single day, if I can help it.

Not because it’s indulgent.
But because it’s essential.
Because if we’re not making space for joy—
what are we making space for?

And maybe this is how we hollow, too.
Not just by letting go of what no longer fits,
but by remembering what still lives inside the softest parts of us.

And the child who is gently remembered… will bloom quietly in the soft soil of your presence.

With Grace & Ink,
~ Mai

Where the Bones Learned to Hollow

Notes from the Hollow Bone, Entry One

The wind is howling—through the air, through the window, through the house. It stirs something in me: moods of dim candlelight, a dark room, flickering light, and thoughts swirling in rhythm with the gusts.

I’m coming to understand the term hollow bones—not just intellectually, but in my body, in my breath. I’m beginning to feel the difference between becoming powerful and becoming full of power. There’s something deeply different in being unbothered, unattached, yet fully present. It’s not numbness. It’s aliveness without control.

This experience is hard to describe because it moves across a spectrum of emotions—grief, awe, discomfort, surrender. And every time I try to hold one, it turns and reveals a lesson. Each emotion unwraps another unveiling. Another doorway to awareness. It is the oddest, most beautiful process I’ve ever been allowed to live.

I’ve been trying to find the words to express this—because I know I’m not alone in it. And at the same time, I know this isn’t for everyone. That’s okay. I’m no longer asking for understanding. I’m not seeking permission.

I am releasing the roadmap. In fact, no—I’m burning it. And while I’m at it? I’ve kicked the conductor off the train. I’m not driving this anymore. I’m not pretending to know where I’m going. I am learning to walk forward with no script, no destination, no performance. Just presence.

And for someone who has lived her life fully immersed in the Type A, workaholic, Virgo perfectionist hustle—this unraveling is both terrifying and holy. Things are dissolving. Constructs. Roles. Illusions I clung to like armor. Some are melting slow. Others fall off in sharp, clean breaks.

I’ve had moments of clarity, sure. But not the kind that make you touch the sky. These are deeper. These are the kind that make you touch the ground—and then what lives beneath it. The kind that root you, but not to anything visible. Not to goals, or checklists, or even dreams. These roots are different. Inner-earth. Universe-connected. The kind that don’t anchor you in place, but anchor you in truth.

And I don’t fully know what this truth is yet.
But I do know: I’m learning to be a hollow bone.

That’s where I am today.

I’ll leave this here, like a stone on the path.

With Grace & Ink,
~ Mai