Description
The New York Times Bestseller 'Riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring.' --The New York Times Book ReviewAs seen/heard on Fresh Air, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, Weekend Edition, and moreAn emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself. Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. 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. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman. 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. 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. The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper's journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky: How to tell the truth when it's simpler to overlook it. How to understand that compassion isn't the same as justice. 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. 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.
- The Beauty In Breaking By Michele Harper
- Michelle Harper
- The Beauty In Breaking Michele Harper
- Michele Harper Bio
- Michele Harper Book
- The Beauty In Breaking by Michele Harper Summary Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband.
- Michele Harper's book is the first I've read in a very long time in a single sitting. After hearing the author interviewed last week on NPR, I ordered 'The Beauty in Breaking' with curiosity, but I've been rewarded with hope, and with comfort in CovidTIme. The author, an ER doctor of obvious skill, dedication, and passion, is, as she says 'a.
- “The Beauty in Breaking takes us into the life in an emergency room—the drama, the adrenaline, the emotion—with such immediacy that I could not help but be completely enthralled by the individual stories of the patients that Michele Harper treats.
Product Details
Buy a cheap copy of The Beauty in Breaking book by Michele Harper. An emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself. Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room. Free Shipping on all orders over $10.
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliateThe Beauty In Breaking By Michele Harper
About the Author
Reviews
'Tackling such painful subjects as domestic abuse, trauma, and racism with grace and wisdom, this eloquent book probes the human condition as it chronicles a woman's ever evolving spiritual journey. A profoundly humane memoir from a thoughtful doctor.' --Kirkus
Conversation Starters from ReadingGroupChoices.com
Read MoreOn Recuperation, Recovery, and Downward Facing Dogs
Author: Michele Harper
I am so not a doctor—which is to say I dislike needles and the sight of blood, and hospitals make me feel lightheaded.
I wasn’t sure, then, if reading Michele Harper’s memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, would be a terrific idea.
Harper is a Harvard-educated emergency room physician who has worked in the South Bronx and Philadelphia, and in her gracious debut she invites readers to try on her white doctor coat. From page one, I was expecting wailing sirens, shouting nurses, and gory wounds—people piled on stretchers with their intestines spilling out, etc.—but instead, The Beauty in Breaking is a decidedly quiet meditation on empathy and healing.
It wasn’t what I expected—and I loved it.
Harper introduces readers to some of her most challenging patients from the last decade. Their stories—which touch upon drug addiction, mental health, and cancer—are shattering and hopeful in their own right, but Harper goes a step further by braiding her own personal life into the narrative. She writes with candor and vulnerability about being the daughter of an abusive father, a wife whose marriage has reached its end, and a Black woman striving to get ahead in a field dominated by white males.
The takeaway from The Beauty in Breaking is that we’re all spectacularly messed-up in one way or another, whether we’re the patient or the physician. It’s not a new theme, but Harper considers it through a lens that feels fresh. She focuses on resilience, which in her case springs directly from tender and unapologetic self-care. Think meditation sessions, flowers from the market, homemade soup, and hot tea. Little things, sure, but together they fashion a suit of armor to keep her safe when tragedies come hurtling through the doors of the ER.
Yoga becomes Harper’s greatest tool for seeking a state of calm. As she unfolds her body into Extended Side Angle, she wonders, “Then the choice to bind. Does it enhance the pose to twist deeper and farther? … Can you expand within and beyond this bind while twisting and holding opposite limbs? And … can you remember to breathe all the while?” Some days her practice comes easily; others, she trembles from overexertion. “That’s when my breath gets caught in my flank and squeezed in my chest. But force is never the way.”
It’s this fascinating concept of binding that ultimately leads to Harper’s empowerment. She chooses to bind—or not—with patients, romantic interests, and family members, but the most significant bind is the one she pursues with herself.
Michelle Harper
Aside from a few bits of contrived and clunky dialogue, The Beauty in Breaking is akin to a deep exhale. Imagine settling into a well-deserved Child’s Pose after a sweaty workout, and that’s what it’s like to read Michele Harper’s words.
More Memoirs
The Beauty In Breaking Michele Harper
When Breath Becomes Air ~ The Bright Hour
Michele Harper Bio
The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir (Hardcover)
|
Michele Harper Book
- 7 Book Recommendations from Author Juliet Grames - February 12, 2021
- 6 Book Recommendations from Author Christina Clancy - January 26, 2021
- Fresh from the Farm - December 2, 2020