In February 2025, I placed two things into the world. One was a manuscript for my Certified Transactional Analyst (CTA) written exam, a dense constellation of theory and practice representing years of my work pressed between margins. I sent it away like a child stepping onto a school bus alone for the first time.

The other was a sunflower seed. Tiny and almost weightless, I slid it into the compost with my fingertips, leaving it in darkness with only the promise of light.

I did not yet know that these two acts, the planting of words and the planting of seeds, would wind themselves around each other, spiraling into a story of faith, doubt, grief, and growth.

For ten weeks, I waited. In those ten weeks, nothing seemed to happen, yet everything was happening beneath the surface. The examiners held my words in their hands; the soil held the seeds in its damp silence.

Then, there was movement. A letter arrived. I had passed. In April, shoots broke through the soil, green blades on the edge of becoming. I was exhilarated and terrified. Now, the real work began.

I transplanted the seedlings into bigger pots. Some sulked, refusing to grow. Others drooped in the sunlight I thought they would adore. Some simply died. I cried over them. I raged. I doubted myself. I carried my seedlings into therapy like broken offerings, grieving over leaves and stems.

My therapist listened. My supervisors listened. Still, I could not explain why this hurt so much, only that my chest was full of something raw and unnameable.

I tried following the rules: water from above, water from below, too much light, not enough light. But the rules betrayed us. Beneath the rules, I began to hear the whisper of a deeper script: If I get it wrong, they will die. If I am not enough, they will die.

Script beliefs live in the body as much as the mind. They are felt in the tightening of the chest, in the grief over wilting leaves, in the silent cry: Please, let me be enough.

Transactional Analysis (TA) theory lives in these moments. Ego states manifest as roots, stem, and flower. The Child, packed tight in the seed, yearns for light but is vulnerable to neglect. The Parent carries voices of “shoulds” and “musts” that pressed me to follow rules that didn’t fit. The Adult slowly learns that decontamination is messy and that no manual can teach you how to love a living thing.

Games were also present. There were transactions between me and “the gardening experts,” between me and myself, and between me and the sunflowers. Each role was a re-enactment of familiar patterns, and each moment was an invitation to awareness.

Summer came. I planted them in the ground, staking tall canes beside them like guardians. I fed them tomato food, watered their roots, and surrendered the rest to nature. Some grew impossibly tall - eight, ten feet - their heads heavy with possibility. Others were small and stunted, mysteries I could not solve. One, the strongest and the one I believed in most, snapped in the wind before it could bloom.

I wept for it. I wept for the strength undone in a single gust, for the bud that never became a flower, for the reminder that thriving carries risk, and that the tallest stem is also the most fragile. I cry now as I remember this. Rupture without repair, and trust broken without restoration, leaves behind not just an absence, but an ache.

By August, I stood in Montpellier, waiting for my oral exam. With months of preparation behind me, my heart pounded with the same fear: What if I am not enough?

Two days before the exam, I wandered into an art gallery with friends on a spontaneous outing. We turned a corner, and there it was: a sunflower, enormous, stretching across an entire wall. I froze.

The circle closed. The unfinished Gestalt met me in paint and canvas - a message without words. You are here. You have grown. You can stand tall.

TA speaks of scripts, of cycles, of unfinished business. Here was mine, blooming in a French gallery just hours before I would sit before my examiners. A sunflower on the wall, a sunflower in my garden, a sunflower in my heart.

I passed my CTA exam. I told them this story. Weeks later, in my kitchen, I held a harvested sunflower head, its seeds packed tight, the future curled inside each one. Next year, I will plant them again. The cycle will continue: life out of death, growth out of loss, and harvest out of risk.

Perhaps this is the heart of what I have learned. Therapy, training, and supervision are less about certainty and more about tending. They are less about rules and more about presence; less about controlling outcomes and more about trusting the heliotropic pull of life toward warmth, recognition, and hope.

Yet, even this metaphor has its shadow. Biology tells us that sunflowers do not only turn toward the sun. The wider truth is phototropism: growth in response to a light source, whether by bending toward or away from it.

From this experience, three thoughts emerged. First, Tropic Orientation: seeing script, ego states, and shame not only as ruptures but as movements of survival, bending toward or away from psychological light. Second, Non-human Transference: recognising that we may project script dynamics onto plants, animals, or objects, revealing hidden beliefs for reflection. Finally, Generative Autonomy: extending Berne’s concept of autonomy to include the capacity for us and our clients to seed growth in others, to become not only free but fertile, leaving behind traces of life that extend beyond ourselves.

Just as sunflowers do not always face the sun, clients do not always lean into contact. Sometimes, survival means bending away, shrinking back, and averting the gaze. If we learn to see these movements not as resistance but as a tropic orientation, we may discover a richer, more compassionate way of working with the dialectic of hope and protection.

I offer these thoughts as seeds. Some may stall. May some find soil in our community and grow into practices and research that honor both the fragility and resilience of human becoming. I began with seeds. I end with seeds.