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  • The Beauty in Breaking

  • A Memoir
  • Written by: Michele Harper
  • Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
  • Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (32 ratings)

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The Beauty in Breaking

Written by: Michele Harper
Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
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Publisher's Summary

The New York Times best seller

"Riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring." (The New York Times Book Review)

“An incredibly moving memoir about what it means to be a doctor.”—Ellen Pompeo

As seen/heard on Fresh Air, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, Weekend Edition, and more

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, DC, 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 audiobook, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

©2020 Michele Harper (P)2020 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

“Riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring.”—The New York Times Book Review

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. But this powerful, poignant page-turner of a book also tells a much larger and universal story about how healing actually happens, not just for broken bodies but for broken hearts and souls. In sharing the stories of her patients and her own life, Harper shows us that that healing begins only after we are broken open ourselves. And she shows us with hopeful, heartbreaking clarity that it comes from healing each other.”—Kerry Egan, author of On Living

The Beauty in Breaking is a compelling page-turner about how Dr. Michele Harper took a broken childhood and wove herself into a strong, honest, compassionate doctor. A must read.”—Louann Brizendine, MD, author of The Female Brain

What listeners say about The Beauty in Breaking

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Amazing stories of medicine, life and spirituality

I came upon this audiobook by happenstance and it was just what I needed! the narrator/author has a very engaging way of speaking and it pulls you into the story. As a nurse and someone who has dealt with childhood violence as well, this book touched my soul. I hope Michelle Harper writes more volumes because I just want to keep hearing more and listening.

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Struggled to finish.

It's a memoir. Probably her diary, and her experiences are presented as superior to her colleagues. Somewhat aims to show our heritage affects our opportunities and circumstances. Sympathetic to supporting vulnerable members of society.

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Life changing for me

This book literacy changed my life. Chapter 13 helped me make a difficult choice with life altering consequences. Thank you for your stories and the lessons intertwined.

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