This paper explores the commonality of interest between experiences in the present moment - the ‘now-ness’ of the moment when meditating, and the ‘now-ness’ of therapeutic transitional experiences. In Winnicottian terms, the author refers to ideas around the patient's and the therapist's capacity for “being” or “living” and what is happening in this creative, transitional space for both of them, during therapy as well as outside it. The treatment of a late-adopted adolescent girl illustrates these resonances and shows how the patient became increasingly able to “dwell in the present moment” and finally, through the growth of her capacity to play, to move away from the traumas of the past.