27/06/2026
As I was reading the amazing description by the book therapist for this book, I was struck by all the details she talked about and how they relate to our journey in therapy.
All the things I read here are what I ask my clients to work on, the breath, the moment, their perspective of their life and their experiences, how vulnerability is actually a superpower are all lessons in our inner world which are invaluable to our mental health and wellbeing.
Can’t wait to read this book and I hope you do too.
Sally 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
I cried before I realized I was crying. Jeremy caught me completely off guard.
One minute, I was listening like I always do, making dinner, half paying attention to the medical details, thinking, How on earth did anyone survive this? Next, Jeremy was talking about his daughter, and I found myself standing perfectly still in my kitchen with tears running down my face and absolutely no memory of the moment they started.
And it wasn't even the accident that undid me. It was the way he told it.
On New Year’s Day 2023, Jeremy Renner was crushed by a 14,000-pound snowplow while trying to save his nephew, an accident so sudden and violent that surviving it seemed almost impossible. Bones shattered. Organs damaged. Muscles torn. His body, the thing that had carried him through decades of life and work, suddenly felt like a battlefield.
I remember pausing the audio right there too. I genuinely needed a moment before I could let him keep going.
He survived it and wrote My Next Breath to show us what happens after your life splits in two, before and after, and you have to figure out how to live inside the new version of yourself.
I kept imagining him sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, the room quiet except for the uneven rhythm of his breathing. Outside, life continues as usual: cars passing, people laughing somewhere, the ordinary noise of a world that has no idea what is happening inside that room.
I think that contrast is what got under my skin most. How normal everything else still sounds while someone is fighting that hard just to keep existing inside it.
Inside, he’s carrying the full weight of it. The fear. The grief. The humiliation of needing help. The terrifying uncertainty of whether his body will ever feel like his again. And still, he breathes. One breath. Then another. Just one more, he tells himself. Then the next.
And oh, I caught myself holding my own breath while he described it, like my body was trying, in some small useless way, to do the work alongside him.
1. The Breath Holds the Weight of Existence
A single inhale, a single exhale, you don't think about those as anything special, right? They're just things your body does. But in Jeremy's world, every single breath is a small win. It's proof he's still here, even on the days his own body felt like it had given up on him before he had the chance to give up on it. There's no big dramatic moment of heroism in this book the way you'd expect from someone famous telling their survival story. It's just him, choosing, over and over, not to stop. One breath. Then the next one. That's it. That's the whole heroic act
2. Vulnerability is Courage Dressed as Fragility
Showing someone your shaking hands, your bad days, the doubt you're carrying around, none of that is weakness. Jeremy makes that so obvious it's almost embarrassing how long we have believed the opposite. It's actually one of the bravest things a person can do, letting people see you when you're not okay. I sat with this one for a while honestly, because I don't think we ever let ourselves be seen that completely by anyone. Not even the people closest to us. And here's a guy I've never met doing it for strangers listening in their kitchens.
4. Small Movements Hold Infinite Weight
Every tiny step in his recovery, gripping a cup, walking across a room, just lifting his hand on his own, gets treated in this book like it actually matters, because it does. Survival isn't some big leap forward. It's all these small, stubborn little wins stacked on top of each other until one day you look back and realize you've actually come somewhere.
Jeremy made me think about all the small stuff I do every day without even noticing, grabbing my coffee, walking to my car, just existing normally, and honestly, I felt a little ashamed of how little attention I pay to any of it.
If you can, listen to it rather than read it. The way he speaks, the dry humour that catches you off guard, the small pauses where the memory is clearly too close, the places where he pushes through anyway because it's his story and he is going to finish it, adds a layer of intimacy that the page alone cannot give you. You can hear where it costs him. That matters.
I don't think I would have cried over a printed page the way I cried over his actual voice cracking, almost imperceptibly, in places he probably hoped nobody would catch.
This book does something I did not expect and cannot fully explain: it leaves you shattered and full at the same time. Exhausted and somehow lighter. It is a story about what it means to keep choosing life not because it is easy or because the future is guaranteed but because the alternative, giving up on the breath in front of you, is the only thing worse than the pain.
I sat alone in the dark for seven hours and let a stranger's survival story move through me like it was my own. It is not a comfortable experience. It is one of the best things I have listened to in years.
Put the headphones on. Let him tell it. Stay until the end.
BOOK: https://amzn.to/3QrLe8G
