Thank you Riverhead Books, #partner for the paperback copy of The Beauty in Breaking in exchange for my honest review. I borrowed the audiobook from the library.
Publisher: Riverhead Books / Penguin Audio
Published: Print – June 29, 2021 (First published July 2020) / Audio – July 7 2020
Summary:
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 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.
My thoughts:
I truly believe we pick up books at just the right time and that is certainly the case with this memoir. I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf for quite some time – I first became aware of it when I ordered it in one of my Book of the Month boxes shortly after it was first published. And then I was offered a review copy when it came out in paperback. But it wasn’t until now that I felt drawn to pick it up…and it was just what I needed.
This memoir of an emergency room doctor is about not only how she heals and serves others, but also about how she has healed herself. And what struck me most is how she believes very strongly in the whole mind/body connection. She practices this herself and looks to dole out this advice with her patients whenever it is practical.
I am having surgery this week and my anxiety is starting to get the best of me. I have started receiving all the pre-op notifications, but one of the notifications did mention trying to practice meditation/relaxation techniques in the days leading up to the surgery and even as a way of pain management and it made me think of how Michele treated the one patient, Mrs. Hernandez. That interaction with this patient was probably the most meaningful for me as I get ready this week.
There is so much vulnerability within this book as Michele writes not only about the healing she does with her patients, but also about herself. She shares the injustices that she experiences in the workplace as a Black woman and she shares what she sees happening around her – and she does so with the hope that it will get better. That it won’t always be this way.
We all bring our own experiences into a book and reading someone’s memoir is such an eye-opening experience in itself, but this is one that I know will stay with me for a long time, not only because of the timing for me, but because of what Michele has shared of herself and her world. If you like reading memoirs, I highly recommend picking this one up!
Audio thoughts:
I love listening to memoirs on audio and while Michele herself does not narrate this one, I still thought it was a good listen. The narrator, Nicole Lewis, did a great job bringing this story to life, using just the right amount of tension and emotion in her voice as needed.
