Posted on October 22, 2025

A fictional story inspired by a hypnosis case study on awakening to life’s hidden miracles.

This is a fictional story inspired by a real case study, an illustration of how hypnosis can gently reveal and help you embrace the miracle woven quietly into your own life. Not the thunderclap kind, but the soft “yes” that shifted your direction long before you noticed. Through hypnosis, the mind’s hidden doorways open, inviting you to remember what your soul already knows.

Here’s the catch: you can’t find miracles if you don’t have wishes, if you don’t ask, and if you don’t keep your eyes open to notice them. A wish named becomes a door; asking is the hinge; awareness is the light in the hall; and alignment is the moment you finally step through. In the story below, that’s the work: name the wish, ask for the memory, align your mind and body with it, and let that deeper wisdom show you where the miracle has been waiting all along.

Now, step with me from fall into winter…

“Let’s start with a wish,” I said. “Miracles tend to answer questions we actually ask, and eyes that are willing to notice.”

The first cold snap arrived on a Tuesday, the kind that makes the air taste like metal and apples. I’d left the office window cracked for the last of the autumn light, and the room smelled faintly of eucalyptus and paper. My client, let’s call her Mara, came in with a wool scarf looped three times around her neck, as if she were preparing for weather no one else could see.

“I’m not sure I have a miracle,” she said, settling onto the chaise. “Not a real one.”

“Maybe not the kind that shouts,” I said, switching on the small salt lamp. “But sometimes miracles whisper. Sometimes they’re a nudge, a misdirected kindness, a yes that shows up wearing an ordinary coat.”

She laughed softly and looked toward the window, where a single cottonwood leaf skittered along the sill. The branches outside were already more sky than tree, autumn falling toward winter in the slow way seasons change when you’re not watching.

“Okay,” she said. “Show me how to find one.”

We agreed on the ground rules first, comfort over depth, stop anytime, and I asked her to rest her hands on her ribcage like she was listening for tide. We breathed together: four in, hold, six out. On each exhale, her shoulders lowered a notch.

“Let your eyes get heavy,” I said. “Pretend there’s a lighthouse beam moving across your mind. When it passes, each thought that doesn’t matter slips quietly back to sea.” I took her through the induction process to ease her into hypnosis. 

I watched the moment her jaw unhooked and her forehead smoothed, the subtle detents of letting go. Outside, the light changed again; the room moved from gold to pewter, like the day remembered it was November.

“Good,” I said. “Now picture a small staircase, leaf-littered and safe. Ten steps. Every step down is ease.” We counted together. At two, her breath was a slow bellows. At one, she exhaled and released a sound that wasn’t quite a sigh, more like permission.

“Find a true memory of a miracle,” I whispered, as though asking the subconscious to open a familiar drawer. “A moment when life turned softly in your favor, so subtle you might have missed it until now.” 

Silence. Then a tremor of expression crossed her face, surprise, almost offense, then relief, as if the memory had been hiding in plain sight and finally waved.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“A window,” she said softly. “The glass is fogged, and I can smell the rain.”

“Where are you?”

“Middle school,” she whispered. “It’s raining so hard the bus lane is flooding, and I’ve dropped every paper I was carrying. I’m kneeling there, trying to scoop them up before they dissolve, and someone’s hands join mine, a boy I barely know. He doesn’t say anything, just helps. We’re both laughing when the last page sticks to the window like it wants to stay.”

Her breath deepened. “It was so small,” she said. “But I can still feel that warmth spreading through my chest, like something gentle turned on inside me.”

“What changed?”

She smiled faintly. “I’d always believed I had to handle everything alone. That day, I learned that letting someone help isn’t weakness, it’s grace. The miracle wasn’t that the papers were saved. It was that I finally stopped thinking I had to carry the world by myself.”

She expanded on the scene of her miracle. The scent of wet paper and chalk dust, the metallic tang of rain on pavement, the faint hum of fluorescent lights warming the room. She found the color, soft gold, like afternoon light through glass, and felt where it lived now: behind her sternum, radiating outward in small, steady waves. As she described this, she also gave it a name without me asking.

“‘I am helped,’” she said, half-laughing, half in awe. 

“Perfect,” I said. “Touch your thumb to your forefinger while you feel that warmth and say it once.”

She did.

“Good,” I said quietly. “And now, keeping that feeling of warmth and support, begin to return to the present moment. I’ll count from one to five, and with each number you’ll feel lighter, clearer, more awake bringing back what serves you.”

“One… taking a breath.”

“Two… feeling energy returning to your hands and feet.”

“Three… your awareness moving gently up through the body.”

“Four… the room becoming real again around you.”

“And five… eyes open, fully here, bringing the miracle with you.”

When she opened her eyes, the air in the room felt changed, brighter, easier, as if something old had been rinsed clean. Outside, the rain stopped. Drops clung to the window like tiny lanterns catching the last of the light.

“I kept looking for the big miracle,” she said softly. “And all this time, it was just a handful of wet papers and someone willing to help me pick them up.”

“Miracles wear shoes more often than halos,” I said. “The important part is how your body remembers. That warmth? That’s your anchor. You can bring it to a future moment on purpose.”

She nodded, testing the gesture again, thumb and forefinger meeting, the way you test a key in a new lock. “I can use this before I pitch my idea next week,” she said. “I’ve been…avoiding it.”

“What’s the smallest warm step you can take in ten minutes?” I asked.

Her eyes flicked to the window. A handful of flakes held their shape now, staying long enough to be called snow. “Make the first slide,” she said. “Just the title and one image.”

“Good,” I said. “See yourself doing it. See your future self, use the anchor and feel that amber light spread. 

We ended the session with some homework, small steps to achieve her goal. She looked taller somehow, the way people do when they remember who they are. We traded a few ideas, water, a note to herself about the anchor phrase, and she wrapped the scarf back around her neck.

At the door she paused. Outside, the parking lot had turned into a pinprick snow globe, the kind you keep on a bookshelf and forget until someone shakes it. “I’ve been waiting for something enormous,” she said. “But maybe I just needed to remember I’ve been helped before.”

“It’s easier to say yes to the next miracle,” I said, “when you can feel the first one in your bones.”

She smiled and stepped into the weather. I stood by the window and watched the snow decide what it wanted to be. Not a storm, just a hush. Fall handing the keys to winter with a nod.

Later that night, I sat with my own tea and my own notebook and did what I ask others to do. I breathed the four-count breath. I imagined the staircase. I let the lighthouse beam sweep once, twice, three times. When the memory came, it wasn’t the one I expected, no thunderclap. It was a stranger at an airport who saw my panic when a gate change threatened to sink my plans and said, “I’ll walk you there.” We moved quickly, shoulder to shoulder, and at the new gate I said, “Thank you,” and he said, “We all miss flights sometimes,” as if that was permission to be human.

In my body the feeling was a low winter sun, pale, certain, incapable of pretending the day was anything other than what it was. I touched my thumb to my forefinger and wrote, I am carried. I thought of all the doors in my life that weren’t locked, only heavy; all the corners I could round if I let myself believe the opportunity would be there.

So, if you’re reading this now, in the last gold of fall or the first hush of snow, try it. Sit somewhere soft. Breathe in for four, hold, out for six. Ask to be shown a true memory of your first miracle, big or small. When it arrives, don’t interrogate it. Let it warm you. Give it a color and a name. Touch your thumb to your forefinger and say the phrase out loud.

Then tell me what you find. I’d love for you to share what you wrote, whether a few lines or a page, it could be inspiring to all of us. After all, we’re just people in a changing season, learning again and again to keep our eyes open for those miracles.