The Breath-Keeper
Character Profile
Role: Former social worker. Trauma-holder. Gentle rebuild.
Plant Ally: Motherwort (and later, Eucalyptus)
Theme: Burnout, breath, and collective grief.
Who She Is:
Junie has spent years holding the stories of women and children in crisis. She was called strong. Reliable. Capable. No one asked if she was unraveling.
She moves quietly. Prefers structure. Finds safety in scent and ritual. The drying barn becomes her sanctuary.
Her Journey:
Junie learns that she does not have to be needed in order to be worthy. She discovers breath again, not as survival, but as belonging. Her path opens toward Australia, toward eucalyptus groves and climate grief work, where she will learn how to support breath without collapsing into it.
Symbolic Item
Junie’s symbolic item is a myrrh stone, wrapped in indigo cloth. She received this along with a linen notebook from Calla when she arrived at The Yarrow Field Retreat.
She treasures this stone, as if she has been waiting her whole life for something that steady.
She keeps it in her coat pocket. In the flute case. Sometimes beneath her pillow. When grief rises like weather, she presses it into her palm and remembers:
- I am here.
- I am rooted.
- I am not alone.
- I can rest.
The small notebook invites her to speak, and the stone invites her to stay. And Junie’s journey is about staying.
Favorite Quote
“There is no hurry in healing. Sit. I’ll make tea.”
Living Well, According to Junie
Living well is not absorbing every wound you witness.
For years, I believed strength meant holding everything, every story, every crisis, every ache handed to me in whispered offices and hospital corridors. I thought compassion meant carrying it home in my bones.
I was wrong.
Living well is learning the difference between holding space and holding pain. It is knowing when to sit beside someone in the dark, and when to let the dark belong to them.
It is breath before reaction.
Silence before solution.
Hands open, not clenched.
It is allowing beauty to enter after grief.
It is walking barefoot on the earth after a day spent in fluorescent rooms.
It is letting my own nervous system soften instead of staying on alert.
I still witness. I still listen. I still care. But now I root.
I return what is not mine to carry. I keep only what becomes wisdom.
And I trust that healing is not something I force, it is something I tend.
