Overcomer Series Episode 7

Jeremy Renner, "My Next Breath"

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect when I picked up Jeremy Renner’s brand-new memoir book, “My Next Breath.” I was fairly sure he would recap his accident of January 1, 2023 when he was run over by a gigantic snow cat at his mountain home estate near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. I figured he would talk about his recovery and rehabilitation as well as his return to acting. What I didn’t expect was the profound life lessons that came before and after the accident and how now those lessons are the only thing he really wants to talk about. I actually bent pages and took notes because what Jeremy shares now is too meaningful to miss.

One of my favorite things to write are the stories of people who have overcome the hardest things in this life, beat the odds, scaled the mountain peaks and come down the other side. The lessons from those stories remind me that we all have the potential to go up against the dragons and slay them. Jeremy Renner slayed his dragon and continues to be the hero of his own story. Ironic for one who portrayed a superhero in the Marvel movie series. He doesn’t claim to be a hero at all. In fact, he is humble and grateful and realizes that his accident affected every single person who loves him and all who followed his recovery. He’s a different kind of hero now. He dedicates a large portion of his time and money to hosting camps for Nevada’s foster kids and rebuilding retired buses and fire trucks to help communities in providing services, especially in low-income areas.

Without going into great detail, being runover by a 7-ton snow cat should have killed him right there on his icy driveway on New Year’s Day. He set out to rescue his nephew who was in the path of the beast and it didn’t go well for Renner. He ended up under the giant six-wheel tracks that broke at least 38 bones in his body. The injuries were catastrophic, but his spine, brain and organs were mostly spared. However, among many other bones his ribs were destroyed which made it nearly impossible to keep breathing. At one point his body gave up and he technically died just before the first responders arrived. The story is more than compelling.

What made this overcomer story land so hard with me was how his early life prepared him for this exact moment and how he came out of it wanting to share everything he learned in the months that followed the accident. Since this is a blog and not a novel, I will just share a few quotes from the book and let the man speak for himself. Hopefully each of you will have the opportunity to read it or hear Jeremy share about what he knows now and how he approaches life every day. He believes this is what he is called to do for as long as he has breath.

• “On the ice, lying there newly as a man who had died, those choices and struggles I’d been through, those fears I’d faced and conquered, all of it came together to fuel my ability to not only return from death, but to also bring with me some cheat codes, some messages, some keys to life.”

• “To me death is a confirmation of life, something always connected and eternal. It is not dark, not the end, not a disaster – it is magnificent and exhilarating; it is your soul and your love, concentrated into their purest forms.”

• “This is the trick of life: how to feel…love, gratitude, fulfillment without having to die and resurrect, without having to go through incredible trauma and loss. We shouldn’t wait for the edge of the cliff before enjoying the mountainside that brought us there. I had been given the gift of looking at my life from 10,000 feet above the world, from that place of exhilarating peace where all the energy flowed together and everything made sense. And the sense it made was this: All I had left was an honest life filled with love, and where I could never again, ever, have a bad day.”

• “It’s imperative, too, that we love ourselves and be confident in ourselves. How do we find that confidence? Take one step, then take another step, and then guess what – you’re walking! On the ice I knew that I had to breathe out, then breathe in, then breathe out, then breathe in. This is the essence of living a purposeful life, whether you’re in extremis as I was after the accident or just some, dull-ass Tuesday. We have to be at all times purposeful with the things we do in our lives; otherwise nothing has value.”

• “I had overcome something; I wasn’t even sure what just yet. But that capacity to overcome had outperformed even what I hoped it could achieve….. How lucky am I to have gone beyond what I had previously thought capable of, and had not only survived, but had already begun to chart the blessings in it?”

• “Being in the public eye has given me one thing of real importance: I have the privilege to be able to provide opportunities and share positive experiences with kids. It’s a blessing to have an impact; I like to think that this alone is another one of my superpowers.”

• “The only thing I can control in my life is my perspective. What I’ve come to understand is that life is simply my next step, my next breath. So thank God for the glory moment. I now get to live a love-filled life, truly connected with people, trading handshakes for hugs. I’ve never been happier, never been more connected. Thank God I died and thank God I get to really live.”

Overcoming death is a heroic feat in itself, but true heroism is when you allow that experience to give you a new purpose to live each day intentionally and make the world a better place for as long as you have breath.

“My Next Breath” is available on Amazon and other book sellers in paper version as well as audiobook. He also has an album of his own original music he released after his accident titled “Love and Titanium”. You can find it in all your usual music sources.