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In a recent interview with NPR, Dr. Michele Harper discussed her impetus for becoming an emergency room doctor: “…Because of the pain I saw and felt in my home, it was also important for me to be of service and help to other people so that they could find their own liberation as well.” In her memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, Dr. Harper traces from her childhood—she grew up in an outwardly successful family with a physically abusive father—to her career in college and then medical school, as a black woman in elitist white spaces, and the dissolution of her marriage after completing her residency. Dr. Harper begins at this crossroads, after her husband asks for a divorce (he is not comfortable with her success), when she is about to move to a new city and start a new job.
When Dr. Harper begins working at Andrew Johnson Hospital in Philadelphia, she is not only grappling with the everyday traumas she witnesses as an Emergency Room physician, but with the loss of her marriage and the future she had once imagined for herself. She is forced to confront herself in new ways, to get on a path to healing that often intersects with the healing of her patients. Harper traces her career, beginning with her residency at Mercy Hospital in the South Bronx, to Andrew Johnson Hospital in Philadelphia, to Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, and then the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Philadelphia. Each transition in her career marking an effort to be closer to patients, to have a greater role in their healing.
In each chapter, Harper discusses a significant patient interaction she had, and the lessons she learned from those interactions. The memoir is bookended by devastating infant E.R. stories, the first of which being the sudden death of a previously healthy baby, Baby Tally, and the second of which being a child whose seizures turn out to have been caused by significant physical abuse. Dr. Harper describes the feeling after her shift ends following the sudden death of Baby Tally, writing, “And when I had become a desperate girl, a child without a childhood, praying to the crescent moon at midnight that my family might survive, I didn’t cry…My divorce only months before had shattered me in ways I had never imagined, but even then, I hadn’t fully allowed myself the luxury of a stream of tears. There wasn’t time, I had to get through it; I had to push past it to survive and excel. Now here, after graduations, after my divorce, between night shifts, between the cracks in the crumbling stories I had told myself of what my life should look like by now, there was an opening for reflection.”
The memoir is populated with both devastating and uplifting patients—a female service member raped twice during a tour in Afghanistan, multiple gunshot victims who had not yet reached adulthood, a cancer patient who rejects treatment in favor of a holistic lifestyle, and an older woman carrying the burdens of a sick husband and differently abled grandchild. The constant in Dr. Harper’s reflection on these patients is the importance of connection, the importance of asking the hard questions and opening oneself to participate in the lives of those who are struggling. Dr. Harper sees this as the bedrock of true healing, and her commitment to go above and beyond in connecting with her patients is a deeply moving thread in this trauma-filled story.
Dr. Harper also grounds her tales of healing and medicine in a very deep spiritual practice, connecting the teachings of yoga to the ways in which she approaches her life and career. Despite the many challenges dealt to her, or the loneliness that her demanding career provokes, she has this amazing ability to hold onto only what is serving her higher calling, and let go of what is not. This memoir is not only an important read for those interested in the field of medicine, but also those who (and this includes everyone) ought to learn about the ways to move past their trauma onto a journey of healing and higher purpose. This is a beautifully rendered and moving memoir about what it means to be a black female physician in a white male-dominated field, and the real world experiences and wisdom that Dr. Harper brings to her profession. A testament to the importance of having women of color in every space.
Further Reading: If you’re interested in the intersections between the troubled history of black women and the medicine field, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is excellent. When Breath Becomes Air is also a classic medical memoir that has much to do with spirituality as well.