In this vulnerable and enlightening book of life lessons, globally renowned performer Cynthia Erivo draws from her singular experience to show us how to embrace being “too much” and to live up to the fullest iteration of ourselves.

It is never too late to build the life you’re seeking.

Cynthia Erivo learned the music to Wicked a decade before she needed it, not knowing those same lyrics would change her life. Now she has performed those songs on the world stage, showing us there is always time to keep discovering ourselves. And to illustrate that it’s often the parts of ourselves we are told to bury that make us shine.

In a series of powerful, personal vignettes, Cynthia reflects on the ways she has grown as an actor and human and the practices she’s learned over years of performing and reminds us all we are capable of so much more than we think.

We all have hopes and dreams that we want to bring across the finish line. We all falter and take missteps. In this book, Cynthia draws from her experiences running marathons, both real and metaphorical, onstage and onscreen, to show how each challenge can help us. She urges readers to lean into the wisdom of their bodies, to understand and strive for a physical and mental balance. Because when we chase our deepest desires, each small step leads us closer to where we want to go.

From the Academy Award-winning actor and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Greenlights comes an inspiring, faith-filled, and often hilarious collection of personal poetry and prayers about navigating the rodeo of life and chasing down the original dream, belief.

My prayers are my poems are my prayers.

I've always relied on logic to make sense of myself and the world. A prescriptionist at heart, I've always looked to reason to find the rhyme, the practical to get to the mystical, the choreography to find the dance, the proof to get to the truth, and reality to get to the dream.

I've been finding that tougher to do lately. It's more than hard to know what to believe in; it's hard to believe. But I don't want to quit believing, and I don't want to stop believing in humanity, you, myself, our potential.

I think it's time for us to flip the script on what's historically been our means of making sense, and instead open our aperture to enchantment and look to faith, belief, and dreams for our reality.

Let's sing more than we might make sense, believe in more than the world can conclude, get more impressed with the wow instead of the how, let inspiration interrupt our appointments, dream our way to reality, serve some soul food to our hungry heads, put proof on the shelf for a season, and rhyme our way to reason.

Forget logic, certainty, owning, or making a start-up company of it; let's go beyond what we can merely imagine, and believe, in the poetry of life.