16/01/2026
A story I wrote about healing for Module 5 Clinical Hypnosis homework.
I wonder how many people this would resonate with? ❤️🩹
The prickly, dry cactus had sat on the kitchen windowsill for years without changing. Same dull green, same rigid spines, same stubborn refusal to grow, bloom or evolve. Daisy saw it there every morning when she opened the blind and every evening when she closed it again. Daisy refused to remove or ignore the cactus and watered it from the tap that stood beside it every Sunday morning without fail. Carefully measured water that was just enough to keep it alive. Her boyfriend teased her about it. “It’s not quite dead,” he said, “But it’s not exactly living either. Why don’t we just throw it out?” Daisy knew that a flowering plant would be easier, but she persisted and the cactus stayed. Solid. Quiet. Unchanging and unimpressed by Daisy’s efforts.
The books and apps said it was healthy enough and not lacking in anything. Firm flesh and no sign of rot it, simply existed and endured. Seasons passed outside the window: rain, heat, light shifting across the glass. Inside, the cactus absorbed what it could and gave nothing back.
Some days, Daisy wondered if she was wasting her time in persisting and yet her instinct was to remain consistent and not give up even when watering something that never responded felt like pouring hope into a container full of holes. The Sunday ritual continued for what felt like more years, not because she expected there to be a change, but because stopping felt like a greater loss.
One spring, she noticed a slight swelling near the base. So small, she thought perhaps it might be damage. When she looked closer, her heart beating just a little harder, afraid to want anything from it, she noticed it was sharpening into a new bud of growth, timid and unassuming, like it was nervous to exist.
Daisy didn’t celebrate; she did not draw any attention of it to her boyfriend either. She just kept watering every Sunday as she always had, resisting the urge to do more. She had learned that rushing, forcing, and trying to control, even with the best intentions, rarely did good and could actually harm fragile things.
The bud lengthened and relaxed until one morning a flower emerged, beautiful, pink edged and impossibly delicate to be born from something armoured in spines. When the flower opened, it did so without announcement. A soft bloom, petals unfolding like a quiet confession. Daisy was transfixed by it, something loosening inside her, it wasn’t dramatic and it didn’t erase the years of stillness. But it was real.
More flowers followed. Not all at once, one here, one there. The cactus didn’t transform into something else; it remained what it was, resilient, steady and adapting to the scarcity. The blooms didn’t mean the past years had been wasted, they meant that the waiting had mattered and was worth it.
Daisy touched the pot, warm from the sun. She realised that the cactus hadn’t been refusing to grow. It had been preparing, gathering what it needed at its own pace, beneath a surface that revealed nothing.
Healing, she understood, didn’t always look like progress. Sometimes it looked like patience and stillness practiced again and again, until one day, the living thing that you kept tending to, offering care and love, and refusing to give up on it decided that it was ready to bloom.
