the beauty in breaking by michele harper

That said, a lot of the case studies offered (of which there are ten) end with a lesson-learned the author practiced Buddhism, as a religious philosophy, and it’s clear her acceptance of that is what allowed her to not only understand and reconcile her own pain, but deal with the injustices she’s faced as a medical professional.Įach anecdote offered speaks to a particular issue-poverty, profiling, sexism in the professional realm, racism, deficiencies in the way we view/treat mental health, how poorly we tend to our veteran’s, etc.-and Harper makes sure to spell out the cases in a detailed manner this allows the reader to understand for themself just how lacking things are within the medical profession, and how much of that is due to what we’ve chosen to value at the legislative level.Īt some points, the book was a bit too preachy, and that was a turnoff for me. I can see the value of a memoir like this-particularly if you’re currently in healthcare or are deeply interested in the way politics plagues medical decisions. In this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. How to understand that compassion isn't the same as justice. How to tell the truth when it's simpler to overlook it. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper's journey toward self-healing. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process. In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken-physically, emotionally, psychically. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Brought up in Washington, DC, in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband.

Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. An emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself.

The beauty in breaking by michele harper