As you may know, I host Camino de Santiago Walking and Writing retreats, and I’m also part of the Wordweavers Writing Group here in the southwest of France. At our last meeting—held on the wonderfully ominous date of Friday the 13th of February 2026—I brought along this story.
This is part 3 of the story of a doctor who spent years teaching other people how to breathe… and only much later discovered that she herself had forgotten how. Dr. Anna Vermeer was a competent, respected, thoroughly overworked physician who could diagnose stress in her patients within minutes and prescribe sensible solutions with great confidence. Every day people arrived in her office with tight chests, racing thoughts, insomnia, and the quiet sense that life had become a little too much.
Anna listened carefully, reassured them, and encouraged them to slow down.
Meanwhile, she ran through her own life at a pace that suggested the building might catch fire at any moment. She believed this was normal. Responsible people carried heavy loads. Dedicated professionals stayed busy. Doctors, after all, were supposed to take care of everyone else.
Until the afternoon she discovered—quite unexpectedly—that when she told a patient to take a deep breath… she couldn’t.
Three weeks later, Dr. Anna Vermeer found herself driving down a narrow country road bordered by hedges that appeared to have been growing there since the Middle Ages. The road twisted gently through fields the colour of early-autumn honey, and sunlight spilt across the landscape in wide golden sheets. Somewhere nearby, a tractor hummed lazily, the agricultural equivalent of someone whistling while they worked. It was, objectively speaking, a very peaceful place. Anna noticed none of it. She was dictating notes into her phone.
“Yes, please schedule the follow-up with cardiology,” she said, steering down a narrow path in what she privately considered a triumph of modern multitasking. A small voice from the navigation system announced that she had arrived at her destination.
Anna slowed the car. Ahead stood an ancient French farmhouse with wide open shutters and a courtyard shaded by a large oak tree. Gravel crunched softly beneath the tyres as she pulled in. A big black horse lifted its head from a nearby field and regarded her with mild curiosity.
Anna stepped out of the car, phone still pressed to her ear. “Yes, I know I’m technically on leave,” she said to the clinic manager. “But if anything urgent comes up—” She stopped speaking for a moment to read a new email that had just arrived.
URGENT: Lab Results Question. Of course. “Just forward it to me,” she said.
A breeze moved through the courtyard, carrying the scent of a thousand grass daisies and something faintly herbal — perhaps rosemary, perhaps thyme. Somewhere behind the farmhouse, a rooster crowed with surely unnecessary enthusiasm. Anna glanced briefly around. It was all very rustic. Charming, certainly. But she had come here for a practical reason.
Her colleague had insisted. “You need a break,” he had said firmly, after observing her attempt to drink coffee and answer emails simultaneously while standing up. “You’re forever sending patients to Margaretha’s stress retreats in the southwest of France. Perhaps try one yourself.” Anna had rolled her eyes. But here she was. Technically resting. Her phone vibrated again.
Anna walked into the farmhouse while typing a reply. The interior was cool and quiet, with thick walls keeping the afternoon heat outside and wooden floors that creaked pleasantly underfoot. The retreat host greeted her with a warm smile. “Welcome,” she said. “You must be Anna.” Anna nodded, still finishing her message, her thumbs moving rapidly across the screen. The woman waited patiently.
Outside the open door, a breeze stirred the leaves of the walnut tree, and somewhere in the distance a bird sang a long, liquid note.
“Dinner is at seven,” the retreat host said kindly and wondered by herself why she bothered. “If you’d like to walk around before then, the paths start just next to the vineyard.” Anna nodded again without looking up. “Lovely,” she said. Then she sat down at the old wooden table in the kitchen and opened her laptop.
For the next two hours she worked — emails, messages, patient notes — her fingers moving across the keyboard with the quiet determination of someone who had absolutely no intention of being defeated by an inbox. Outside, the countryside continued behaving in an offensively relaxed manner. Birdsong persistently floated through the open windows. A breeze moved softly through the trees.
The late afternoon light turned the walls a warm shade of amber.
Anna did not notice.
She was busy answering an insurance query that required fourteen separate sentences and one mildly heroic effort of patience.
By the time dinner was served, the sky had begun its slow transformation into evening. Guests gathered around the table and spoke quietly, the way people do when they have spent a day outdoors and have rediscovered the ancient pleasure of just being. Someone mentioned the beautiful walk they had taken that afternoon; another guest described the sound of cranes flying overhead. Anna nodded politely while discreetly checking her phone beneath the table. Three new emails. One flagged urgent. Naturally.
Later that evening, she stepped outside briefly to take a call. The air had cooled, and crickets had begun their nightly orchestra. The sky above the fields was vast and darkening, sprinkled with early stars. Anna stood near the courtyard wall, illuminated by the small blue glow of her phone screen. “Yes, I can look at that tomorrow morning,” she said into the receiver. Behind her, somewhere in the orchard, an owl called once — low and resonant.
Anna didn’t hear it.
She was already opening another email.
The sunrise walks happened every morning at six. Anna knew this because someone had mentioned it at dinner, and several guests had seemed quite excited about the idea. “There’s a ridge just beyond the fields,” one woman had said. “You can see the entire valley when the sun comes up.”
Anna had smiled politely. Six o’clock, in her professional opinion, was an entirely unreasonable hour for recreational walking. Besides, she had work to do.
So the next morning she woke at seven thirty — not because she planned to, but because her alarm had been set for six and she had apparently turned it off without remembering. For a moment, she lay there in the unfamiliar quiet of the farmhouse bedroom. No traffic. No hospital machines humming. No phones ringing. Just silence. A soft golden light spilled across the terracotta floor. Anna sat up slowly. Something about the quality of the light felt unusual. She pulled on a sweater and walked to the window.
Outside, the countryside was glowing. The sun had just risen above the low hills, filling the valley with pale gold. A thin mist floated over the fields like a veil that hadn’t quite decided whether to stay or leave. The trees were perfectly still. Anna stood there for a moment, then glanced at the bedside table where her phone was waiting.
She picked it up automatically. Eight emails. Two messages from the clinic. One flagged urgent.
Anna felt the familiar tightening in her chest — the small electric pull of responsibility. Deadlines. Patients with problems. Questions needing answers. Her thumb hovered over the screen, and for a moment she felt something strange. Not exactly stress. Weight. The constant mental pressure she had been carrying for years — schedules, expectations, decisions, responsibilities — all of it pressing quietly on her thoughts like a stack of invisible books.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. The room was perfectly silent. She tried the breathing exercise again. A slow inhale. This time the breath travelled slightly deeper. Not deep enough, but deeper. She exhaled slowly. Another bird began singing outside, a cheerful cascading melody that sounded suspiciously like joy.
Anna looked again at the glowing phone screen. Then, with a small movement that felt both reckless and oddly brave, she turned it off. The sudden absence of notifications felt almost physical, like stepping out of a noisy room. She set the phone down and sat there for a moment doing absolutely nothing.
Then she stood, slipped on her shoes, and stepped outside.
The air was cool and fresh against her face. The scent of wild herbs rose from the ground, and somewhere in the distance a horse snorted softly. Anna began walking toward the fields — no agenda, no schedule, no urgent messages — just the quiet rhythm of her footsteps in the grass. For the first time in years, her mind began to slow.
And somewhere between one breath and the next, Dr. Anna Vermeer realised something both simple and extraordinary: freedom, it turned out, was not something you claimed.
It was something you received, by having the courage to let go.