What if you could be busy living and still miss your life?
That question sits at the heart of space between breaths, the debut book by Cape Town-born writer Justin P Van Tonder.
Arriving in November, the book explores presence, loss and the moments that can disappear while we are busy chasing what comes next.
The next meeting.
The next achievement.
The next version of ourselves.
Through intimate storytelling, honest reflection and simple practices for everyday life, space between breaths invites readers to pause, listen and return.
A Story Born From Loss
The book grew from Van Tonder’s experience of walking beside his mother through a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
It is a story shaped by love, uncertainty and loss.
Yet Van Tonder says he did not set out to write a book about cancer or grief.
“I didn’t set out to write a book about cancer, or even about grief,” he says. “I set out to understand what happens when certainty disappears.”
That search became something broader.
It became an exploration of what happens when we become present enough to notice the life already unfolding around us.
For Van Tonder, that realisation sits at the centre of the book.
“The life-changing moment is not always the one that stops your world. It is the moment you finally become present enough to notice the world you are already in.”
A Companion For The Questions
space between breaths does not promise to provide every answer.
Instead, it creates space for the questions.
It offers a place to pause.
A place to breathe.
A place to listen.
A place to return.
The book reaches beyond one family’s experience, using Van Tonder’s lived journey to explore presence and awareness in everyday life.
Its central invitation is simple: sometimes life does not need to change.
Sometimes, we need to become present enough to notice it.
From Cape Town To A Career In Human Performance
Van Tonder is an only child who was raised by a single mother in Cape Town.
His professional journey has crossed media, radio, brand and event strategy, and human performance.
He currently holds a senior role at one of South Africa’s largest human performance organisations, where he designs programmes that connect people and inspire performance.
Writing, however, remained alongside that career.
Quietly.
Until space between breaths gave him a reason to return to it.
The book marks his first published work and, in his words, a return to the voice that was there all along.
Finding Presence In Everyday Life
Today, Van Tonder writes and speaks about presence, awareness and connection.
Those ideas sit at the centre of space between breaths.
Rather than presenting presence as an abstract idea, the book approaches it through lived experience, reflection and simple practices for everyday life.
It asks readers to consider the moments that can be overlooked while life moves quickly.
The conversations.
The pauses.
The uncertainty.
The people beside us.
The ordinary moments that can become extraordinary when we finally pay attention to them.
A Book About Coming Back To The Moment
There is no promise here of having everything figured out.
Instead, space between breaths offers companionship for the journey.
It is about noticing.
About listening.
About allowing space between one moment and the next.
And perhaps, in that space, recognising something that was there all along.
The life you are already living.
Publication Details
Title: space between breaths
Subtitle: A Lived Journey into Presence
Author: Justin P Van Tonder
ISBN: 978-1-0483-4737-1
Copyright: © 2026 JP van Tonder
Availability: November 2026
Platform: Amazon
