Dr. Michele Harper on breaking and healing on the frontlines of medicine

Watch: Book Gild With Dr. Michele Harper

During our first virtual consequence of 2021, the ER doctor and acknowledged author shared what it means to break—and to heal—on the frontlines of medicine

February. 18, 2021

To say that the last year has been one of breaking, of brokenness—broken systems, cleaved lives, cleaved promises—would be an understatement.

The Beauty in Breaking by Michele Harper And so information technology felt specially timely that, for The Denizen's kickoff event of the new yr, our invitee was Dr. Michele Harper, an emergency room doctor and author of The New York Times-best selling memoir, The Beauty in Breaking (which y'all tin society through our bookstore partner for the event, Uncle Bobbie'southward Coffee & Books).

In conversation with WURD radio host and Citizen contributor Charles Ellison, Harper spoke candidly almost growing up in an abusive household, her heart wrenching divorce, the racism that plagues wellness care, and her journey to healing.

Along the way, the Philly resident—a superstitious yoga devotee, lover of horror films, reader of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and Isabel Wilkerson, among others—espoused some of the profound lessons she's learned in medicine, in life, in dear. Here are just six of them.

Challenges are opportunities to become more resilient: Dr. Harper said that she was motivated to write her book because she wanted to explore the journeys of healing and transformation. "In life, at that place volition always exist challenges. That's part of living," she said. "And I wanted to wait at, well, what happens, how do nosotros handle that, and how do we come through it?"

Harper was articulate that she never wants to romanticize challenges, but that she feels like "at that place's ever the possibility to get more resilient through them."

She certainly couldn't have predicted the global events that would exist taking identify when her book debuted terminal summer, but the timing, she said, was interesting. "We were open equally a society, I experience, to have these discussions, as we were all beingness brought to the brink in different means and in this infinite where we're thinking, ok, and then what do we do?"

Writing can exist cathartic: Harper shared that, inevitably, her most original writing would come to her in the middle of the night. She'd lite incense, put on ambient music, and go to work.

And specially while writing the near traumatic parts of her story, she found writing to be "quite cathartic," she said. "What I found equally I was exploring some hard experiences was that it was a moment of reliving it. And so any aspects of information technology that I didn't fully accost […] came flooding back and flooding through me," she said.

The beauty of the process was that in one case she was done writing a chapter, she was actually washed. "Information technology took the healing that much deeper, information technology was that much more expansive in that way."

We choose how to repair ourselves—and it can be beautiful: Harper is a fan of kintsugi, the Japanese art of fixing the cracks in broken pottery with an constructing of precious metals—platinum, silvery, gold.

"The thinking is that we desire to highlight, nosotros don't want to ignore what has happened to this vessel. Information technology has been changed past the mutability of life. And we are going to repair it—that's truthful—and it is that much more beautiful for what it has come through," she said. "And I see humans, myself and other people, in that same way. That we do have some choice in how we repair ourselves. And that nosotros tin can be that much more than beautiful subsequently."

She said that she also finds power in channeling our healing experiences into beingness a back up structure for others who want to heal. "If nosotros do that, we tin uplift society," she said.

Health intendance is not immune to bigotry: Harper shared many unsettling anecdotes about racism in health care—from white medical trainees undermining her authority and the autonomy of their Black patients, to her manager nonchalantly explaining that—despite being the only candidate, perfectly qualified and having aced her interview—she'd been denied a promotion considering Black people and women simply didn't advance in that workplace, to a backfire confronting health care workers who speak out against discrimination and inequality.

"If that is the culture, then what is the nature of the care you await to be given to patients? The culture needs to change," she said.

Every experience comes with a lesson: "That's mostly my philosophy on life, that every experience and interaction—again, even if it's unpleasant—has something to exist learned from it," she said. She recalled a patient with widely metastatic cancer whose response to his diagnosis blew her away: He told her how he had lived the fashion he wanted to, that he didn't know if he was going to pursue any aggressive treatments, and that no matter what happened next, he was at peace.

Video "I thought to myself in that moment, that is probably one of the well-nigh hard moments a person can take, when they have just received that kind of diagnosis. And if he could deal with it with such poise, then certainly I, while—to my knowledge—take my health and shelter and nutrient, have my basic needs met, that difficulties I'm facing, I could handle also. It's moments like those that are so powerful, even the repose ones like that, that can really direct towards grace," she said.

Divorce is not bad: "At the fourth dimension it was really difficult. I had to effigy out what does it hateful when life has other plans?" she said. "It was one of those moments of breaking where it was the loss of dreams, the loss of stories, and so having to figure out okay, well, what is intended for me and where exercise I go from there?" The process of healing from her divorce was, Harper said, excruciating—but she said, it immune her to ultimately live her authentic life, for which she is grateful.

"I feel there are times when as we learn, the lessons go deeper. Even when nosotros retrieve we've learned something, there are opportunities to larn that much more than. And I guess in that fashion life, in my opinion, doesn't get easier, merely I remember nosotros get a little quicker on the uptake. And so then it tin can be more than fulfilling."

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