Warning: This book contains strong language.

Because when you wake up to yourself after 40 years “dear me” just isn’t going to cut it.

I wrote this to express everything I felt on waking up and as a manual for myself on how it feels to be free (just in case I ever forget). My practice, whatever it is on any given day, is to help people feel alive: to wake them up. The tragic part is that they often wake up for a moment, for one second, for a song, for an hour, for a day or a week to themselves, and then they disappear again. I don’t want to live like that any more.

So this book is for me, and it is for you, because I want you to wake up, too, and stay awake. Maybe you are my beloved, maybe you are my sister, my friend, or a stranger who I will never meet, but I want you to wake up. This world is too miraculous for you to miss it.