Dollar Sized Miracles
Aug 17, 2026
I don’t even know how to tell this story.
I wasn’t going to send an email this week.
The kids and I are taking a much-needed week to ourselves, doing a long-awaited family trip, and I had every intention of disappearing for a few days.
But the most unexpected little miracle has been unfolding.
So instead of packing food and iceboxes and suitcases, I’m still sitting at my kitchen table, typing amidst the morning madness.
Since our very short presale window for Vessel last week (missed it? No worries. I’ll be reopening it for two days next week when I’m back) I’ve been contemplating how best to describe what Vessel actually is.
What it is you get by joining.
Who you become as a result.
I’m a technical thinker. I think in checkboxes and lists. It’s easy for me to rattle off everything I’ll give you in the course. The lectures. The exercises. The journaling. The Q&As. The tools. The curriculum.
But what you’ll actually get from Vessel?
I don’t think I fully understood that, until I became the recipient of it this week.
This year has arguably been one of the hardest years of my life.
My family has been going through enormous upheaval, much of it private, and much of it requiring me to find strength in places I didn’t know I had. Each of my kids has been growing through their own challenges alongside mine. In addition, two of my boys didn’t receive school placements, which meant having them home with me all year.
And through all of it, there was still a home to carry.
Mothering. A business to run. Commitments to honor. And values I had to keep choosing, even when those choices weren’t easy.
A few weeks ago, I sent an email about a dollar I received as a child from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The actual dollar disappeared. But the story is what actually stayed with me. Because it was never really about a dollar.
That email seems to have landed deeply for so many of you. The amount of feedback and engagement I received was stunning.
But then it went further.
Last Thursday, I received two little love notes in the mail.
These:
Inside one was a letter from a student telling me that she was praying for Deeds, my four-year-old, to receive a school placement, and that she was sending this dollar for me to give to tzedaka/charity in his merit.
Within thirty minutes of those little dollars arriving in my mailbox, I got an email.
Deeds had been accepted to school.
The placement we had been waiting and praying for.
I stood there a little stunned.
I was so touched by my students’ sweetness. By the timing. By the beautiful, very-not-random feeling of an acceptance arriving within the hour of those dollars.
I thought that was the story. In fact, I had intended to tell you all about it when I got back from my trip.
But I had no idea what was coming.
Because then I came home Sunday to this:
A flood of dollars.
Envelope after envelope after envelope.
Each one with a little note tucked inside.
People praying for us.
Sending love.
Giving tzedaka.
Cheering Deeds on.
Cheering me on.
After Deeds went to bed that night, I sat on the floor beside my bed and opened them one by one.
And I cried.
I’ve cried a lot this year.
More than I care to admit.
And also probably not nearly enough, because this year required a kind of iron will and strength that I didn’t know I had.
I’ve cried from brokenness. From loneliness. From overwhelm. From grief. And from the sheer exhaustion of holding so much for so long.
But last night was different.
I sat there on my bedroom floor surrounded by dollar bills and handwritten notes, completely overwhelmed by the realization that people cared.
Really cared.
That somewhere along the way, while I was so busy holding everything and everyone else, an entire community had formed around me.
And when I needed holding, they held me.
And that...
is Vessel.
Sure, Vessel is a course.
There are lectures and journaling and exercises and Q&As and ridiculous dance breaks.
But that’s not the thing I’m inviting you into.
Vessel is a community of seekers.
Men and women committed to becoming more truthful, more courageous, more alive, more capable of holding the enormousness of this life; and then using that capacity to make the world a kinder, richer, more beautiful place for everyone else.
I’ve spent years teaching people how to build a stronger Vessel.
I didn’t realize I was also building the one that would someday hold me.
Vessel is not the next stop on your "healing journey."
This world was already created for you.
Vessel is about the world we get to co-create with each other, for each other.
I didn’t know that when I first designed this course.
I thought I was building a really good program. I thought I was here to teach it.
I didn’t know I was building a place people could belong.
A place that would offer, when life became too much to carry alone, to help me hold it.
That’s Vessel.
It’s a place that can hold you when you’ve spent so long holding yourself that you forgot there was another way.
There is.
If you’ve never experienced what it feels like to be surrounded by people who are deeply committed to their own becoming and genuinely invested in yours...
I really hope someday you do.
We’d love for that place to be here in Vessel.
Now for real, it's time to sign off, close the laptop, pack the iceboxes, and go off-grid with my kids.
I’ll reopen Vessel’s presale for two days next week when I’m back.
Just know I’m going to take these little dollar bills with me.
Because I don’t think I’ll ever look at a dollar the same way again.
And I don’t think I’ll cease to be amazed at how much we humans can hold when other people are willing to help us through.
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Life happens in little bits. Learn to love the little bytes.
