(Sourdough) Baby Fever
Sep 23, 2026
Before we get into today’s random yet profound insight, I have a small favor to ask.
Who do you know who would love these emails?
Someone who thinks deeply, feels deeply, is trying to do life a little more consciously, or simply appreciates stories about chickens pooping on my children and my ongoing attempts to turn ordinary domestic chaos into spiritual curriculum.
Forward this email to them or, better yet, send them to www.fallyklein.com to sign up. I’d love to have them here.
Moving on.
I was sitting on my front steps last week waiting for Deeds’ bus, talking to a work colleague on the phone, when a neighbor stopped to ask me how to make her first sourdough.
I asked my colleague to wait while I walked her through the process.
Twice.
By the second explanation, I could see her getting overwhelmed somewhere between feeding the starter, stretching and folding, shaping and figuring out when this living creature was actually ready for the oven.
So I offered to text her throughout the next day and tell her exactly what to do at each stage.
She thanked me profusely and ran off to catch her own kids’ bus.
I got back on my call.
My colleague, who mostly knows Professional Fally, was horrified.
“OMG. You’ve sold your soul. Who are you even? You make sourdough? Did I just hear you offer to check in on your neighbor’s sourdough baby all day tomorrow?”
First of all, excuse me.
I contain multitudes.
Yes, I cook, bake and do laundry. I also teach trainings and own power tools. I refuse to choose a personality.
But “sourdough baby” was actually perfect, because there are certain things in life that technically come with instructions and yet nobody knows what they’re doing the first time.
You can hand someone a recipe that says feed, mix, stretch, fold, shape, bake and technically you’ve told them everything.
Good luck with that, dude.
Or someone can stand beside you and say, “This is what it’s supposed to look like. No, you didn’t ruin it. Yes, it’s supposed to be that sticky. Wait another hour. You’re doing fine.”
The second experience is completely different.
So much of life is like that.
Parenting. Marriage. Divorce. Grief. Healing. Relationships. Business. Faith. Becoming yourself.
We get the broadest possible instructions and then are somehow expected to know what to do with the actual mess in our hands.
Twenty years into parenting, I still regularly wonder where the adult responsible for the situation is.
Apparently, it’s me.
This is one reason I surround myself with elders, mentors and teachers. There is an enormous difference between understanding something intellectually and having someone help you live it.
A lot of us became very good at figuring things out alone because we had to.
But being capable of doing things alone doesn’t mean we’re supposed to do everything alone forever.
A few weeks ago, I had the much more sobering opportunity to walk a woman through one of the most terrifying situations of her life.
At one point she asked why I was being so patient with her.
I told her the truth.
Someone had done the same for me.
Someone stayed when I was scared. Someone knew what to do when I didn’t. Someone helped break something terrifying and overwhelming into one doable next step, then another, then another.
There’s really only one way to repay that kind of generosity.
You become that person for someone else.
In many ways, that’s what I designed Vessel to be.
Every week, people write to me asking some version of:
How do I get through this?
Can I trust myself?
Why do I keep ending up in the same stuck places?
Can I feel my feelings without drowning in them?
Am I normal?
Will I be okay?
How do I make my life feel more like mine?
I wish I could sit on the front steps with every person who writes and say, “Okay. Here’s where we start.”
Vessel is my way of doing that.
It’s the closest thing I have to a recipe for life; everything I’ve learned, studied, practiced, taught, lived, messed up and learned again, broken into a framework you can actually use.
Because I have very little interest in giving you beautiful information that makes perfect sense in class and is then completely useless when your kid is screaming, your marriage is strained, you’re terrified of disappointing someone, you can’t make a decision, or your nervous system has decided that a running toilet is a life-threatening emergency.
I want to teach you how to work with your actual life.
In Vessel, we work with your body and nervous system, your emotions, your stories, your patterns, your relationships, your needs, your boundaries and your intuition.
You learn to recognize what’s happening inside of you in real time, understand why you respond the way you do, and know what to do next.
Because awareness is beautiful, but eventually somebody has to tell you what to do with the sticky dough.
Vessel doesn't promise that life will stop life-ing.
Because it absolutely won't.
Your kids will still occasionally lose their minds. People will disappoint you. You’ll disappoint yourself. There will be hard conversations and days when every spiritual practice you’ve ever learned mysteriously escapes you.
What changes is that you have somewhere to return to.
You have language. Tools. A way back to yourself. And a community of people walking the same path.
There’s a very specific feeling I want you to have:
Oh. This makes sense.
I make sense.
I know what to do here.
I got this.
When I made my first sourdough, I followed my friend Rivky’s recipe obsessively.
A few years later, I’ve changed the flour, the ratios, the timing and the method. I don’t think so hard about every step anymore because I know how the dough feels in my hands.
The recipe became mine.
That’s what I want Vessel to become for you.
At first, you may say, “Fally taught us this in Vessel.”
Eventually it'll simply become the way you parent, love, make decisions, speak to yourself, move through fear and understand the people around you.
It'll become yours.
And then, without even realizing it, you'll start passing it on.
That’s the whole point.
Registration for Vessel opens October 5.
Vessel is open to men and women, and spouses join for free.
One registration gives both of you access to the full Vessel experience.
Registration opens October 5, and Module 1 opens Motzei Shabbos, October 17.
Ready to rise with you*
* (sourdough notwithstanding)
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I’m in!
We’re getting a head start on printing the Vessel Heartwork Books and want yours mailed to your door in time for Module 1. (Continental U.S. only.)
No registration or payment yet. Just reply I’m in! so we can start planning for you.
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I know there are LOTS of new people here thanks to the Yonah article, and I’m so happy you found your way to this special little corner of the internet.
If you’re wondering who I am and why your inbox may now contain some strange mixture of nervous systems, G-d, parenting, Torah, chickens, sourdough and stories from my life, the easiest way to catch up is to read the archive here.
Excited to get to know you.
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