Yrsa Daley-Ward’s words have resonated with hundreds of thousands of readers—through her books of poetry and memoir, bone and The Terrible; through her writing for Beyoncé on Black Is King; and through her always illuminating Instagram posts.

Now, in The How, Yrsa encourages readers to begin, as she puts it, the great work of meeting ourselves. This isn’t the self we’ve built up in response to our surroundings, or the self we manufacture to please the people around us, but instead, our most intimate self, the one we visit in dreams, the one that calls to us from a glimmering future.