Isa Adney is a writer, dreamer, and storyteller, and one time she shook hands with Lin-Manuel Miranda on the Hamilton stage in New York City. (She just has to throw that in.) Meeting him and some of her other creative heroes, like Disney producer Don Hahn, Oscar-winning songwriter Kirsten Anderson Lopez (“Let It Go”), and fashion trailblazer Brandice Daniel, showed her that the whole “never meet your heroes” thing is wrong, especially if you’re a dreamer. She has interviewed over 170 creatives, artists, and dreamers to date and written 50 full-feature profiles and counting. You can read those stories on her blog, Creative Teacup, or in the creator stories she writes for ConvertKit. She’s also the host of the I Am A Creator podcast and producer of the I Am A Creator docuseries, which won four Telly Awards.

There is a lot of advice out there about how to pursue your goals, but sometimes all a dreamer needs to keep going on their journey is a story of a dream becoming reality. Proof that lows are normal and a part of the process, and that all that hard work might really still have a chance of paying off. A reminder that sometimes dreams do come true.

The Little Book of Big Dreams is filled with true stories of dreamers just like you who dared to reach for the stars and actually go for the things they wanted most in life—but the most important story in this book is yours. Each uplifting tale you find on these pages is meant to inspire you along your dream journey, not only helping you keep going when things get hard but also reminding you that such obstacles don’t mean that you’re doing this wrong—they mean you’re on your way.