Where did the word "overculture" come from — and why do we still need it?

In this J&J conversation, Julia Carmen and her granddaughter Juliana Guerrero trace the word back to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves) and Dr. Magda Permut's essay "On Overculture." Together they define it: whatever dominant force runs a family, a classroom, or a country — the hierarchy everyone quietly agrees to without questioning.

Juliana, a high school teacher, uses the word with her students to talk about colonization. Julia shares the overculture she grew up inside — one that dictated marrying young and starting a family early — and reads a poem she wrote, "The Me and the Others," about being a fair-skinned Mexicana whose own brown children have called her a "white Mexican."

They close on what it costs to keep explaining yourself so others feel comfortable, and where that explaining should end. The overculture didn't invent us, and it doesn't get the last word — underneath it is the Indigenous soul, older than any grid placed over it.

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 if the Lovers were never about who they see, but who they've forgotten to look at — themselves?

In this month's archetype episode, Julia Carmen sits with the Lovers, and the first thing she does is set down the assumption — this archetype isn't about romance. It's about unconditional love, for self and for others. A Lover is always balanced, made up of a divine heart and a soul — an alma. They know how to self-soothe, and they know what they want, always.

This love isn't something to obtain, Julia teaches — it's already inside. Archetypes come from the nonphysical realm of being, where there's no right or wrong, only frequency and vibration. Like fish that don't know they're in water, we often don't recognize we're already swimming in it. What stands in the way is judgment — the judgment we hold of ourselves. Soul work is remembrance, not reinvention.

The companion for this episode is the Kissing dragonfly, and their message is playful, a little cheeky: Yes is the answer. Kiss me once, kiss me twice, then kiss me once again. It's been a long, long time since you did that.

Kiss your own life again.

Resources to explore:

• Louis Armstrong — "It's Been a Long, Long Time" — https://youtu.be/rGsRUZD2yQM 
• Enroll in The Magical Papers

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

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• 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 take to trust a yes before the mind can explain it?

Julie Williams — scientist, healer, educator, and founder of Consciousness Medicine — returns to the show. Along with their conversation today, Julie tells us about her new book, Om La La: The Power of Positivity Guidebook, a collaboration with twenty-four authors and featuring a forward from Julia.

Julie and Julia talk about how Julie actually knows what's true for her — a kinesthetic yes that starts low in the belly — and about Gabe, Julie's dog of eighteen years, to whom the book is dedicated. Her chapter, "My Dog Is My Guru," traces a family constellation session where Gabe's presence, brought in as a resource, shifted the whole room.

From there, the conversation widens: what women build with each other that's hard to build elsewhere, why "why" keeps you circling a problem while "what if" opens a door, and the four principles Julie calls the power of positivity — presence, perception, possibility, and practice.

Connect with Julie:

Website: www.consciousness-medicine.com

Podcast: Healing Codes

Instagram: @juliewilliamshealing

Facebook: @consciousnessmedicine

Episode 88 — Seeing the Divine and the Potential in Everyone with Julie Williams

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 when someone we love doesn't come back right away — and no one panics?

Julia Carmen shares a fable from her mother's village in the mountains of Mexico, where messages traveled in the bodies of people — usually children — because there were no phones. When a child came home late from an errand, no one scolded her. The family just smiled and said, "she went for the tamales."

Julia traces the phrase through three generations, grandmother to mother to daughter, and asks the question this episode turns on: what are your tamales? What absorbs you so fully that time disappears — and is that a problem, or is that the medicine?

Find your tamales. Not to escape the task, but to stay alive to what's actually here.

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 feel everything?

In this month's archetype episode, Julia Carmen sits with the Sensitives — the ones with the big human hearts, who feel from the earth all the way to the universal source of the all. She opens by drawing a line many of us blur: a Sensitive isn't the same as an empath. Empathy is a human condition, tied to this planet. The Sensitive reaches further — earth to universe.

The teaching turns on stardust. We're all made of it, surrounded by it — and a Sensitive picks up more of other people's than they need to. Three things every Sensitive must establish: boundaries, center, and balance, and all three are deeply personal. Julia shares her own toolkit — a warm shower to release what isn't hers, burning sage, calling the wind for a "swipe," a hot bath, a good meal, dancing, a few minutes on a mini trampoline.

The companion for this episode is the Crying dragonfly, and her message flips crying on its head: the falling stars are not crying. Make your presence known. Stay in the awareness of you. Cry for joy.

For a being who feels everything, the feeling itself is never the problem.

Resources mentioned:

• Nat King Cole — "Stardust"
• Hokule'a Star of Gladness
• Crying Dragonfly
• The Magical Papers workshop (discover your own archetypes, on demand) 

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

• Get your free guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Soul Self
• 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 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.