What holds the healer together?

In this month's archetype episode, Julia Carmen sits with the Healer — the curandera, the servant, the teacher — and follows the teaching back to where it has always begun: with yourself.

The Healer's energy flows like an atom, putting the stardust back together wherever it needs to be. Their medicine bag holds all the elements — water, fire, earth — because the path of healing draws from all of life. And the first thing Julia names is what this archetype is not: the one who goes out there and fixes everyone else first. The medicine has to live in you before it can move through you. You cannot give from an empty vessel.

Three movements shape the teaching: how the Healer heals others, how the Healer heals themselves, and how the Healer connects with the world. Julia holds space for the Healers who give and give and forget to receive. Boundaries here are clarity, not withholding. Resentment is a signal. The invitation is always to come home to yourself first.

The Jade Dragonfly is the companion: *Health is yours today. Let the healing begin. Healing from the inside out. Take your time to heal. Wear jade. Be the jade.*

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Explore The School Without Walls

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.

What changes the day you stop asking someone else for the answer and finally ask yourself?

In the second of a two-part conversation, Julia Carmen sits back down with her granddaughter, Juliana Guerrero, and follows the thread back to ancestors, heritage, and what Julia calls the female frequency of being — the creative force that makes and remakes the world, squashed for a long time and now waking back up.

At the heart of the episode is a story Juliana has carried for years: leading a group to a ceremony site in Montana, losing the way, and finding it again only when she stopped, breathed, and followed a little girl down a lavender trail — running like she had run her whole life. Watching from a distance, Julia's sister saw a white-tailed deer where Juliana stood. Julia names what that is: a witness, so we can trust that what we felt was real.

They close in the practice of it — soul listening, stillness, community, and Juliana's turn toward asking herself instead of always asking her grandmother. You are the genius of you. Be still, and listen.

This completes the two-part conversation that began in Episode 172.

Links & Resources mentioned:

• Soul Listening
• Episode 172 — Walking Both Worlds and the Now of Life with Juliana Guerrero" (Part One)
• Dragonfly Chisme Community

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Explore The School Without Walls

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.

What did the word "woke" mean before the over culture got hold of it?

In this conversation, Julia Carmen sits down with her granddaughter, Juliana Guerrero — high school English teacher, writer, and curandera in her own right — for one of the talks they share a few times a year.

They begin with that one loaded word and the difference between its political version and the older one: the meaning that lived in us first. Not awakening for the first time, but remembering what we already are in the soul self of being.

From there: what it takes to stay awake when the world keeps pulling us back to sleep. Juliana, three years into teaching high school English, talks about the "iPad generation," the decline in critical thinking, and children who only know how to communicate through a screen. Together they name what that costs — and the medicine that answers it: Chi Chi soul time, kindness to yourself, boundaries, and community, because we cannot do this alone.

This is Part One of a two-part conversation. Next time, Julia and Juliana sit with heritage and the female frequency of being.

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Explore The School Without Walls

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.

What does it mean to walk in both worlds when the outer culture keeps pulling you toward one? A listener sent that question in. Julia Carmen answered it live — by pulling a card.

In this episode, Julia traces the full origin of the Dragonfly Card Deck: a vision that arrived in Hawaii nearly twenty years ago, fifty-two channeled texts, and a long journey to physical form. She walks through how she works with the cards in daily practice — not looking for answers, but for orientation — and pulls Grandmother Dragonfly live to address the listener's question. The deck pairs with the archetype series but stands completely on its own.

Julia also shares details about a June 24th gathering — an intimate card deck session open to anyone who feels the call to experience this work in community. The Dragonfly Card Deck is available at theschoolwithoutwalls.net.

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Explore The School Without Walls

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.

What do people sense in a Wizard — before they can name it?

In this episode, Julia Carmen continues the 2026 Archetype Series with the Wizard: an archetype that lives at the intersection of the seen and unseen, moving between worlds with a subtlety that is easy to miss and impossible to forget once you feel it.

The Wizard moves and balances. People are drawn to them without quite knowing why. Julia describes a childlike quality — a playfulness, a full arrival in the present moment. The magic is not grand. It is specific to you: your frequency, your fingerprint.

The companion guide for this archetype is the Magical Wizard Dragonfly, whose message is simple: "Just for today, and only today, make your magic. It is within you. You see, there is only today."

Your magic is not someday. It is now.

Discover your own Archetype in The Magical Papers Workshop, on demand at theschoolwithoutwalls.net.

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Explore The School Without Walls

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.

What do you do with the love that didn't always come in the form you needed?

Twenty years ago, Julia Carmen wrote an essay about being asked to care for her 80-year-old mother. She didn't want to do it. She called her sister. She briefly considered trading mothers with a friend.

What followed those four days — and the fifteen years after — became one of the most profound teachings of her life.

In this episode, Julia reads that essay in full, then reflects on everything that came next: how she and her mother slowly found each other, the soul work of walking two worlds at once, and the ceremony Julia performed to help her mother rebirth — and go back home. She shares the story of Las Mañanitas, the Mexican birthday song her mother sang to her every year at 5 AM, and what she finally understood it was saying.

Julia's mother passed in 2019 at the age of 95. This episode is a love letter to her — and to anyone still working out what to do with everything their mother gave them.

"Mothers give us life twice, if we are lucky. Once when we are born. Once when they leave us."

This episode was first released as Episode 109: My 80 Year Old Mother. We're bringing it back because these questions don't belong to any one season.

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Explore The School Without Walls

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.

Today, Julia revisits one of her most cherished stories: a memory from 1957 in the Mission District of San Francisco, when she was four or five years old and her Tía Francisca was living with the family.

This is a story about what happens when two people show up in a kitchen with a willingness to just be. No fixing, no pretending. Julia talks about soul care—not the Instagram version with bath bombs, but real tending. The kind that happens when you're known, your whole self, the grief and the giggles and the messy parts in between.

Julia also opens about belonging—what it means to really belong somewhere, not just show up and be tolerated. And she shares what the School Without Walls is building: a space where you can come as you are and be held.

Julia also shares this reflection which pairs with today's episode:

On the day we held the service for my Tia Francisca, it was a beautiful day but I was feeling very heavy in my heart. As we were going into the chapel, I saw what I first thought was a huge bird, but it was a Blue Dragonfly. So today, I want to share with you Blue Dragonfly's message that I heard on that day:

Hey Mija,

Do you really think we have left you behind? Do you really think we do not guard you?
Listen to me. You are loved beyond any love you could imagine.
Have faith in yourself and in us that all is working out for your good and happiness.

That sure sounds like something my Tia Francisca would say.

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Learn more about Master Alma Class (MAC) sessions
• Explore The School Without Walls
• Connect with us on Instagram and Facebook

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.

This month in our archetype series, Julia sits with Mother Earth.

Julia explores what it actually means to carry this energy—the gift of it, the weight of it—and how Grandmother Dragonfly shows up as a companion for this archetype. She talks about the difference between nurturing from fullness versus nurturing from depletion, the "spaghetti dinner" moment when you realize you're running on empty, and why soul care isn't selfish—it's essential.

If you're a Mother Earth archetype, you'll recognize yourself in these stories: how people trust you without knowing why, how your presence shifts a room without needing to announce yourself, and why you keep saying yes to everyone even after you've said yes to yourself.

Julia challenges those who lead with this archetype to ask themselves: What would it look like to let yourself be held the way you hold others?

Learn more about The School Without Walls and the Dragonfly Guides:

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• Enroll in The Magical Papers
• Schedule a free Cafecito y Chisme Call with Julia
• Learn more about the Alma Class
• Explore The School Without Walls
• Connect with us on Instagram and Facebook

Production assistance from Podlad.com and Daypack Digital. Artwork by Olivia Dancel. Dragonfly art by Soul Creative Design.