There is a woman many of us know well. She holds her home, her work and everyone else’s needs. She gives and gives. And underneath all that giving sits a quiet sentence she rarely says out loud: there is not enough. Not enough money, not enough time, not enough of me. I have to manage alone.

In the opening class of her Chiburim year, Chava Shmilovitch asked the women in the room to look at that sentence honestly, and then to look past it. Because the Torah’s picture of abundance, she taught, begins somewhere surprising: not with how much is coming in, but with how much the heart is able to receive. Learning to receive, it turns out, is a skill.

What If You Are Already Rich?

We usually measure abundance by the bank balance, the size of the apartment, what we can afford this month. Yet a woman can hold a great deal and still live in fear, and another can own very little and feel deeply held. Shefa, the flow of Hashem’s goodness, is not only about quantity. It is about the vessel.

Three times a day, in Shemoneh Esrei, we ask Hashem, “Sab’einu mituvecha,” satisfy us from Your goodness. Chava reads those words closely. We are not only asking for more. We are asking to become capable of feeling nourished by what He gives. A vessel with a crack in it can be filled a hundred times and still feel empty.

Chazal ask, “Who is rich?” and answer, “One who rejoices in her portion.” This is not a slogan for when the bills come. It is a map. Part of the treasure we keep searching for outside ourselves has already been placed inside us: the ability to listen, to persevere, to notice another person’s pain, to create something from nothing, to begin again after a hard week. These are not small things. They are living channels through which a neshama gives light to the world.

The Wound Around Receiving

If abundance is really about the heart, why do so many good women find it hard to receive?

Chava points to what she calls a wound around receiving. A child may have been fed and clothed but received too little warmth, attention or understanding. A grown woman may have lived through debt, rejection or a season of helplessness. Experiences like these leave an imprint, and the imprint speaks in sentences: my needs are too much; help is dangerous; I must depend only on myself.

Long after the original experience, we read the present through that old lens. A disappointment becomes proof that nothing works out. An offer of help feels uncomfortable, almost unsafe. A talent that was once mocked becomes a part of us we no longer dare to use.

The wound is real, and Torah-based emotional growth never asks a woman to pretend it isn’t. But the conclusion it taught us is not necessarily the truth about who we are, and it is certainly not the truth about Hashem.

From Survival to Safety

Chava describes the inner landscape with a simple picture. There is a red state, which is survival: the alarm, the tightening, the fight or freeze. When we feel threatened, attention narrows around protection, and creativity becomes hard to reach. There is a green state of felt safety and secure connection, a deeper awareness of Hashem’s love, presence and sustaining care. And from that green place, something else opens: the clear blue space of thought, creative action and the gifts we were meant to bring into the world.

The work is not to argue with the frightened part of ourselves or to shame it for being afraid. It is to gently surround it with compassion and to bring emunah down from the mind into the heart, so that the body itself begins to believe it is safe to open.

This is not a promise that every difficulty disappears. It is an invitation to meet reality with more of ourselves available.

An Ocean of Chesed, and the Courage to Need

In class, Chava asked the women to picture a waterfall. Water after water pours into streams and rivers and feeds the land. A single seed holds a whole tree. Breath arrives without our effort. These are not exercises in pretending that financial hardship is imaginary. They are a way of seeing a reality that is larger than the hardship, and of remembering that the One who sustains creation is the same One we turn to with our own needs.

Then she turned to a kind of shefa that is easy to overlook: human abundance. A woman may be endlessly giving and still be emotionally overdrawn. She can carry everyone and still struggle to accept a compliment, ask for a favor, or take an hour to rest. The old sentence “I can’t afford to” sometimes grows far beyond money. I can’t afford to need. I can’t afford to rely on someone. I can’t afford to be disappointed again.

A safe relationship, a listening friend, the ability to let someone help: these are real forms of shefa. Sometimes the first opening in the vessel is simply the willingness to say, “Yes, thank you, I would appreciate that.”

The Source Is Not Scarce

At the center of Chava’s teaching is a name we say every day: HaTov VeHaMeitiv, the Good One who does good. The work of a lifetime is to return to that truth again and again, especially in the exact places where fear has taught the heart a different story.

We cannot command an outcome by changing our thoughts. We can loosen a painful interpretation, bring Hashem into the place of constriction, and take one faithful next step. Chava’s class closed with a tefillah for an expanded vessel, and its last line is the one to carry: Sab’einu mituvecha. Satisfy us with Your goodness. Help me become a vessel for Your shefa.

The full class includes seven practical ways to widen the vessel and the tefillah itself. This article is only a taste.

A gentle word: if the feeling of “not enough” has become heavy, or you are struggling to cope, please reach out to a trusted professional. If you are in crisis, call your local emergency services.

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