the story of the inn

Sweet Tea & Sage is a quiet, virtual inn created for gentle self-care, reflective journaling, and intentional living. It exists for people who feel overwhelmed, creatively tired, or in need of a place that moves at a slower, more thoughtful pace. Sweet Tea & Sage was created as a response to noise, urgency, and the constant feeling of being pulled in too many directions at once.

It exists to offer something slower. Something human. Something kind.

This is not a place for fixing yourself, chasing productivity, or becoming someone new. It’s a place for tending what’s already here — your energy, your thoughts, your sense of home within yourself.

The Mikasa of the Inn

Long before the Inn carried its name, before the porch light glowed against Carolina dusk, there was a woman simply known as Mika.

She was shaped by layered ancestry and lived experience. African, Indigenous American, and European traditions rooted in intuition, communal care, attentiveness to land and cycles, and the quiet rituals of hearth and home.

From these intertwined roots, Mika inherited a steady knowing. Care does not need to be loud. Presence can be restorative. Tending a space is also a way of tending people.

When Mika restored the old Carolina house that would become Sweet Tea & Sage, she carried that inheritance with her. Not as ornament, but as intention. The rooms felt steadier. Conversations softened. People arrived tired and left lighter, often without knowing why.

Those close to her noticed something essential.
Mika did not simply keep a house.
She held it.

At a gathering beneath the pecan trees one evening, an elder spoke what others had already come to feel.

“She isn’t just an innkeeper,” she said.
“She’s the one who keeps the house and the space around it in balance.”

It was then that the word Mikasa found its place.

Not a title of authority.
Not a role of power.
But a name for a caretaker entrusted with tending the threshold between rest and return, between the outer world and the inner one.

A Mikasa does not rule a house.
She listens to it.

Intuition, Quietly Practiced

That same attentiveness shapes how Sweet Tea & Sage is kept today.

Intuition here is not spectacle or promise. It is practiced as listening. Listening to people, to spaces, to what wants to unfold gently over time. It informs how words are chosen, how rooms are arranged, and how future offerings will be shared.

This approach also guides the slow study and thoughtful creation of sensory and aromatic work. It is held as stewardship rather than solution and offered with respect for personal agency and consent.

The Work Behind Sweet Tea & Sage

Sweet Tea & Sage is created by a lifelong maker, writer, and designer with a love for storytelling, handmade goods, and meaningful experiences.

With a background in creative work and an appreciation for both beauty and function, everything here is designed with intention. Imagination and practicality are held in balance.

This studio was created to share tools that feel personal, useful, and quietly supportive. They are meant to meet people where they are and support the tending they are already doing in their own lives.

A Living Place

Sweet Tea & Sage continues to unfold.

Some guests come only to read.
Others return for deeper rooms and gentler work.
All are welcomed the same.

If you ever wonder what Mikasa means, the answer is simple.

It is the one who keeps the house
and knows how to keep the people inside it just right.