Hi, I’m Sarah, and this is Cornet Bay Sanctuary.
This sanctuary was born from a simple but urgent truth: the people working to care for the world are often the most depleted. For years, my work has lived inside movements, strategy spaces, and communities committed to change. I kept witnessing the same pattern — extraordinary people running on empty. And I felt it in myself, too.
Cornet Bay Sanctuary began as a question:
What would it look like to design a place where restoration is not a reward, but the foundation?
This space is rooted in what we call the 3 Rs: Renewal, Reconnection, and Reciprocity.
Renewal is the process of reclaiming what’s been worn thin your energy, your spirit, your sense of wholeness. It’s about nourishing your body, replenishing your reserves, and remembering what it feels like to be whole.
Reconnection is the conscious rebuilding of relationship with yourself, with community, with the land, and with the deeper sources of meaning that sustain you. Healing and belonging arise through connection.
Reciprocity is the practice of mutual care and exchange. The balance of giving and receiving. The understanding that we are responsible to one another and to the places that hold us.
This sanctuary has also been a labor of love with my dad, Gary. What started as a shared dream became years of hands-on building, tending, refining. Every structure, every path, every detail carries that care. It holds our conversations, our disagreements, our laughter, and our shared belief that spaces shape people and people shape the world.
Cornet Bay Sanctuary is here for those in transition, for leaders and seekers, for anyone who knows they need to pause before their next chapter.
This is a place to restore your energy. To remember your belonging. To practice a different way of being.
Welcome to our Sanctuary.
Our Story
“At its core, Cornet Bay Sanctuary is a return to self, to place, to time itself. I dream of a world where sanctuaries are woven into the fabric of our lives, spaces that invite us to pause, reconnect, and remember what it means to simply be.”
— Sarah Henry, Steward.
Our Stewards + Partners
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Steward
Gary has called the San Juan Islands home for nearly 50 years. Nearly a decade ago, he stood on the edge of the Cornet Bay property and saw what it could become—a place of beauty, care, and deep connection to the land.
What you see today is the result of his quiet genius and relentless creativity: live-edge wood fences, repurposed metal decks, lovingly rebuilt cottages, and the kind of small details that make a place feel alive. Every corner holds his touch.
His favorite parts? The bird feeders scattered across the trees, and the Net Shed—that little building perched above the water, where the light hits just right.
If you stay, there’s a good chance you’ll meet Gary. He may show up with a bundle of firewood, a freshly caught crab, or an impromptu tour of the land—delivered with a twinkle in his eye and his signature dry wit.
Superpowers: Seeing what others don’t. Fixing what others can’t.
Known for: Vision, resourcefulness, and a perfectly dark sense of humor. -
Steward + Rest Facilitator
Sarah grew up exploring the forests and shores of the San Juan Islands biking dusty trails, hiking coastal paths, and learning early on that the land could hold you.
After years of building organizations at the intersection of gender justice, women’s rights, and health, she returned home with three kids, a dog, and two cats and, soon after, a life-changing cancer diagnosis. That pause cracked something open. It became clear: the world doesn’t just need more action. It needs places for rest, too.
Cornet Bay Sanctuary was born from that realization and from her deep desire to support the people working tirelessly to build a more just, joyful, and livable world.
Her favorite part of this journey? Creating it side-by-side with her dad. Watching the property evolve to become a place where others can finally exhale.
Superpowers: Big vision. Bigger laugh. Weaver of people and possibilities.
Known for: Asking the deeper questions, starting the needed conversations, and making things real.
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For Purpose Partner
Tandem is our nonprofit partner, offering paid “Sanctuary Fellowships” that support social change-makers in rest, reflection, and reconnection with self, community, and purpose.
Together, we create pathways for return so that those shaping a better world can move forward more rooted, aligned, and whole.
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Rest Facilitator
Monica was raised in Flagstaff and Birdsprings, Arizona, and spent her summers by the San Juan River near Bluff, Utah. She is a member of the Navajo Nation born for the Deer Spring Clan and for the Cherokee, Scottish, and Bohemian peoples. Her roots run deep in land, water, and kinship.
Monica brings decades of experience as a DEIB consultant, facilitator, and nonprofit leader, but her truest compass is ancestral: joy, justice, creativity, and care. Her people are the jokesters, the helpers, the healers, the ones who brave rest as an act of resistance and resilience.
Whether guiding changemakers through reflective practice or simply holding space with grounded presence, Monica leads with dignity, belonging, and a fierce commitment to equity. Her favorite part of the Sanctuary is creating space for others to return to themselves with laughter, honesty, and deep compassion.
Superpowers: Bridge Builder | Creative | Cultivator
Known for: Leading with heart | Holding complexity with care | Walking between worlds
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Creative Partners
More Starch is a creative studio led by Luis Sosa and Alma Muñoz a multidisciplinary duo working at the intersection of branding, storytelling, narrative consulting, and spatial design. With backgrounds spanning film, architecture, editorial, and digital strategy, they bring a deeply integrated and human approach to projects rooted in culture, care, and resonance.
At Cornet Bay Sanctuary, More Starch serves as creative partner shaping the voice, visual identity, and narrative expression of the Cornet Bay Sanctuary Experience.
Superpowers: Narrative Alchemy, Strategic Empathy, Aesthetic Integrity, and Spatial Intuition.
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Creative Steward + Community Builder
Frannie grew up making art and playing piano, but it wasn’t until her twenties that she discovered the power of community and what happens when people gather with intention. That realization shaped everything that followed: teaching piano, hosting artisan markets, creating retreats, and eventually opening the Creative Hub & Coffeehouse in Anacortes — a chapter that showed her how creativity, rest, and connection can transform a space.
Returning to Creative Avenue allowed her to focus more deeply on meaningful experiences the kind that bring people together through shared meals, art-making, and time in nature. Her favorite moments are when she can connect people in ways that spark lifelong friendships and help them feel a little more rooted in themselves and each other.
Superpowers: Welcoming community, sparking creativity, turning ideas into reality
Known for: Warm presence, grounded joy, and creating spaces where people instantly feel they belong.
Honoring Our Community
The land holds stories. So do the people who pass through it. Each person who steps into Cornet Bay Sanctuary brings something sacred with them—a breath, a longing, a moment of stillness, a spark of becoming. Over time, these traces shape the spirit of this place.
Some arrive with full hearts.
Some arrive carrying grief, questions, or quiet hope.
Some come seeking nothing at all—just the space to be.
And in that stillness, something begins.
A soft remembering.
A loosening.
A return.
These are not stories of arrival or departure. They are the quiet in-between, the space where something shifts. Where presence takes root. Where healing becomes possible.
With consent and care, we share glimpses of these journeys, not as proof of transformation, but as windows into what it means to pause, to reconnect, to belong.
This is the living pulse of Cornet Bay:
the people.
the presence.
the possibility.
Partnerships
We have partnered with a non profit, Tandem to host the Sanctuary Fellowship.
Our first cohort of Sanctuary Fellows embodies the vision of Cornet Bay Sanctuary: to care for the people who care for the world.
These four extraordinary leaders are culture shapers, bridge-builders, and healers—each with a lifelong commitment to justice, liberation, and community care.
Our four fellows embody visionary, transformative leadership at the intersections of justice, healing, and liberation. They are nationally recognized advocates, organizers, scholars, and strategists whose work spans criminal justice reform, climate and environmental justice, racial and gender equity, philanthropy, and cultural transformation.
Rooted in community, they have mobilized resources, shaped policy, shifted narratives, and elevated the dignity and leadership of those most impacted by systemic oppression.
Together, this diverse group of women and nonbinary individuals models what it means to lead with courage, imagination, and care—demonstrating that lasting change is possible when we invest in those cultivating more just and liberated futures.
