I enjoy memoirs. The Beauty of Breaking by Michelle Harper is a gorgeous and insightful memoir of an emergency room doctor. I love how she views life from her traumatic childhood to the trauma she helps people through at the Veterans hospital she works at. I love she talks about her own wellness journey and what she does to take care of herself. She shows herself as human.
With my illnesses I have ended up in the emergency room. It is slow, because tests take time to run, and I have always felt like the doctors and nurses are like robots and have no emotions. I am happy to report that I am wrong. In the fourth chapter of her memoir she talks about witnessing the death of a baby. A 12-day year old baby and having no answers for the family as to why it happened. From the elegant words Harper uses in this book you feel the emotions and heartbreak for the family That gives me hope. That gives me a newer perspective of how to view doctors. That they do have feelings, emotions, and sometimes they do not have the answers we need for the medical issues we are having. I love have compassionate Harper is and I can tell that she is an excellent doctor because of it.
If you are sensitive or easily triggered by medical stories that are not happy then I do not suggest you read this memoir. Because Harper is authentic and some of these stories are not happy ending ones. It shows the painful experiences that an emergency room doctor goes through nightly. I have a deeper respect for ER doctors.
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I purchased this book through the Literari Book Club. The opinions I express are my own and I was not influenced.
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