Over the years you have made an enormous impact on my life. I have no idea how long I've been receiving the Kindness emails but it's been many, many years. One day someone forwarded a Kindness email and I signed up.
I was a member of a very warm Torah community and they were exemplary examples of how to live your life and your emails fit so well with what I was learning being around them.
I actively looked to thank other people for things they had done for me or for other people. I remember so many things that have happened to me that helped me out because I did some little thing or other.
On the way to Tsfat I bought something for a soldier at the half-way stop, I knew she had little money, and at the Tsfat bus stop she insisted on rolling my very heavy bag up the hill, that would have been exhausting for me.
So, after checking my sugar this morning, the first thing I did was to sit down and write you so that I would get that accomplished and not keep it on the to do list. Your work with Kindness does change lives, it keeps me aware to do things that are possible and I try to pass that on to others.
I am one of those people who get profound clinical depression and doing things for others pretty much keeps that at bay, at least out of the self-harm stuff.
I was at the deepest of the deepest one night knowing that I wasn't going to live and I was at the home of my best friends in the world and they had been two of the people who welcomed me the first time I came to their Torah community for Shabbos.
David heard everything I had to say and said, “Esther if you do this I can't stop you, but you will never be able to help anyone again.” He went on to lay out all the things that I had done for people since he met me and hoped that I could choose to survive.
For two weeks I laid there every morning trying to leave this world and each time I remembered what David had said about never being able to help someone again. Finally one morning I chose life.
I am the proverbial cat with nine lives, I've had several people in the most literal sense save my life and every day I try to repay their efforts. I look forward to your emails, they give me strength and I need that. I wanted you to know that the choice you made to do the Kindness project has a profound effect on the world, on my life and in the lives of people who act on your emails without letting you know.
They say that for every person who complains, there are ninety nine more that stop buying from that firm and never say anything. I believe the reverse is true, for every person who sends you a story there are a thousand that don't sit down and say what happened.
You do good, thank you so much, Esther.