this is how you know is a debut poetry collection that illuminates ordinary life with stunning verse by award-winning poet Rachel Toalson. Blending the personal with the universal, Rachel explores parenting, friendship, love, anxiety, gender expectations, fear, struggle, hope, and more, capturing pieces of everyday life with humor, irony, and all the seriousness that turns poetry into a window to the world.

Divided into four chapters (how to be, how to parent, how to love, how to live), this is how you know explains what it means to love and be loved, to rise above the flawed messages we have heard all our lives, to take off our masks and be seen. Readers will find joy and candor and vulnerability in this collection that proves we find ourselves in each other.