Reflecting on a year of Stronger After the Storm
A year ago I sat at my desk with my finger hovering over a button. Do I press it or don’t I? This is what happened between that moment and now — the fear, the growth, the reach nobody could have predicted, and the year that changed everything.
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The Finger Over the Button
I sat at my desk with my finger hovering over a button. Do I press it or don’t I?
I’d spent weeks building this. Recording at home. Editing in Audacity, which back then felt like learning a whole new language. Playing around with a wee bit of music at the start and end, the way all my early podcasts had been. The way I thought it had to be.
I just wanted to tell my story, in the hope that in some way I hadn’t figured out yet, it might help others. That was it. That was my whole plan.
August 26th, 2025. I’d already made my mind up — this was going to be a success, and I was going to help as many men as I could, no matter what it took.
I was prepared, best I could be. I was committed. I felt it was needed. So I hit publish.
I was terrified. And I was excited. Because I knew that was it. No going back now.
Listening Back a Year On
I listened back to that first podcast this week, properly, for the first time in ages.
It’s rough. It’s raw. You can hear me reading it word for word off the script, nervous as anything. Total cringe.
A year on, 43 episodes later, talking like this feels so much more natural. I’m a lot more at ease with it, a lot more confident and comfortable than I definitely wasn’t back then. Still pretty cringy, I know.
Thing is, that didn’t happen overnight. It happened one day, one week, one episode at a time. The same way everything in recovery happens — not in leaps, but in small steady steps you hardly notice until you look back at it.
What the First Thirty Episodes Held
The first thirty episodes or so were mostly about that first year of recovery. The fear. Identity. Loneliness. Anger. And the gratitude at being given a second chance — where I know, and I’ve experienced firsthand this year, some loved ones don’t get that.
I poured all of it out. Things I hadn’t said to anyone, not even to myself properly. I had thoughts running around my head for years, but things didn’t really change until I sat down and had to find a way of putting my thought to paper, and then to a voice — my voice.
Sitting with those thoughts, writing them down, then speaking them out loud — that didn’t just help the men listening. It helped me understand my own year better by talking about it than I ever did living through it.
Still Listening to My Heart
Here’s the honest bit. I still do listen to my heart every single day. I’m so aware of it beating inside — the engine that pumps the oil around to keep things running. Not always smoothly. I don’t think that will ever leave me.
But it’s different now. I’ve faced my own mortality — properly faced it, not just survived it. And because of that, I’m so much more comfortable as a man, as me, than I’ve ever been.
The fear’s still in the back of my head somewhere. It just doesn’t rattle me the way it used to.
The British Heart Foundation and the NHS both recognise that this kind of ongoing awareness is completely normal well beyond the first year of recovery, and the American Heart Association offers similar reassurance for readers outside the UK — that a heightened relationship with your own heart isn’t something to fix, it’s simply part of living well after a cardiac event.
If you’re in that early stage right now, still hearing that head noise loud — the 7-Day Mind Reset Plan came out of exactly that period.
The Message That Changed Everything
Halfway through this year, an old friend reached out to me. He told me one of my episodes was exactly him. He saw himself in it completely.
That one message hit me harder than any download number ever could.
Because if that episode gave him the confidence to reach out, to say something out loud about his own trauma, about something that serious and that personal — well, that’s the whole reason I started. And that’s the moment I knew. There was no stopping this now.
Service Without a Room
I’ve always been a man in service of others. I’ve said that quite a few times, a long way before any of this. Cooking, hospitality, making sure people had a good time and a good night. I loved looking after people. I still do.
What this year has taught me is that service doesn’t need a room to stand in anymore. It doesn’t need me personally standing in front of someone.
In the past year, this podcast has reached 46 countries and 199 cities. Men I will never meet, never shake hands with, finding something that helped them on a night I wasn’t even awake for.
Same instinct I’ve always had. Just a bigger reach.
The Hardest Button of All
There’s one more moment I have to mention.
Back in October, on the 11th anniversary of my actual heart attack, I did something harder than publishing that first episode to strangers. I posted on my own personal Facebook page — to people who actually know me.
That was way more terrifying, in a completely different way. Strangers can’t see you again tomorrow. Relatives, friends, people in my own little town can.
It turned into the best day of connection I’ve had all year. The most downloads in a single day. The most messages.
So if you were one of the people who read that post, who shared it, who sent me a message — thank you. Genuinely. That day meant more to me than you’ll probably ever know.
Where We Are Now
So here’s where we are. 43 episodes. More downloads than I ever could have imagined or hoped for, right on the anniversary. A full website, a proper system now — I can run a whole week’s production in three or four hours if I really have to. That is crazy for me to think of, looking back to a year ago.
There’s a book coming. There’s talk of one-to-ones down the line. There’s even a wee corner of the site now called The Rhythm Room, where men can share the songs that got them through it. I put my first one on it. Take a look if you get a chance.
None of that existed a year ago. None of it. Just me with an idea, a few words into a microphone, my finger hovering over a button, terrified and excited at the same time.
If you’ve been here since episode one — thank you. If you found me somewhere along the way — thank you too. Every single one of you is the reason I kept going.
So here’s to year two. One small step at a time.
Listen and Watch
You can listen to this episode in the player above or watch on YouTube if you prefer.
If you found something in this reflection, you might also connect with:
👉 What I’d Tell My Younger Self
👉 A Different Kind of Strong
👉 Who Am I Now?
Final Thought
If someone came to mind while you were reading this — a mate, a brother, someone quietly going through it — please share it with them. You don’t need the right words yourself. Sometimes this says it for you.
If the head noise is still there in the background: