Description
By Adrian Michael
From Adrian Michael — poet, educator, speaker, diversity trainer, and founder of lovaste, a health and wellness company dedicated to helping people build better relationships with themselves and others. "Face Yourself. Look Within." is a definitive statement on self-examination as practice.
The title is the thesis. Not self-improvement as an aspiration. Not becoming a better version of yourself as a destination. But the harder, quieter, more demanding act of actually looking — at who you are right now, in this moment, without editing the image.
This is a collection of poems and prose organized around the daily practice of self-awareness: noticing what you avoid, what you carry, what you've told yourself for so long you've stopped questioning it, and what becomes possible when you stop looking away. The mirror is both metaphor and method.
Adrian Michael writes the way a trusted mentor speaks: directly, warmly, without flinching, and without judgment. His voice sits in the space between poetry and affirmation — lines short enough to hold in a single breath, weighted enough to stay with you through the day. Readers describe his work as feeling like "guided meditation led by a stranger who somehow knows me better than anyone else," like words arriving "at exactly the right moment," like being simultaneously seen and strengthened.
"Face Yourself. Look Within." is designed to be returned to — a dip-in companion for the morning, the hard afternoon, the moment before sleep when the noise of the day quiets enough to hear yourself think.
Perfect for readers who:
-Are drawn to poetry that functions as daily practice rather than literary performance — short, resonant, revisitable
-Are in a season of self-examination: after a significant loss, transition, or the slow accumulation of realizing something needs to change
-Give a great deal of themselves to others and are learning to turn that same attention inward
-Want a poetry collection grounded in the tradition of affirmation, witness, and collective healing
-Are looking for a gift that is both beautiful as an object (the mirror-effect cover) and meaningful in its content
