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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Beautifully written and inspirational! This memoir is a sharp reminder that healing yourself is not always a journey in solitude, but others along the way in small or large doses can guide you to heal what is broken within yourself.
“Speak these truths aloud, for it is in silence that horror can persist...if it is destructive in ones path, it will be deliberately dismantled over time.”
“...all of us in helping fields: We all nurse that same Achilles’ heel of cleaving to the damaged. What a critical life lesson: to learn to distinguish enabling from helping, codependency from love, attachment to re-enacting the grief of childhood loss from allowing for the sweetness of self-determination.”
I would recommend this book to fellow readers in book clubs and fans of memoirs.
“Speak these truths aloud, for it is in silence that horror can persist...if it is destructive in ones path, it will be deliberately dismantled over time.”
“...all of us in helping fields: We all nurse that same Achilles’ heel of cleaving to the damaged. What a critical life lesson: to learn to distinguish enabling from helping, codependency from love, attachment to re-enacting the grief of childhood loss from allowing for the sweetness of self-determination.”
I would recommend this book to fellow readers in book clubs and fans of memoirs.
The wasn't the medical career memoir told from a Black woman's perspective that I was stoked to read...instead, like many other 2 & 3 star reviews, I found this book hard to get through. It was too heady for me (the phrase "soul connection" and naming the children she didn't have...the names were something like Melavita and August?). The storytelling suffered from Harper's habit of keeping the reader at arm's length regarding to her personal life, telling instead of showing (for example saying she's bummed her marriage ended, but then also saying "I wasn't someone who wanted or cared about getting married").
Her interactions with patients are interesting, but that's where the preachiness comes in -- Harper does a lot of psychiatric stuff/diagnosing considering she's not a psychiatrist, just about every patient she sees benefits from her intuitive doctoring, and then she also constantly dips into how important it is to eat well/meditate/do yoga/etc. There's very little actual self awareness; when it comes to her profession she seems to have no failures and therefore no experiences that she learned from.
I did appreciate Harper's approach and handling of race and privilege and I think a shorter non-fic book focusing on her cases (successful and not) would be compelling.
Her interactions with patients are interesting, but that's where the preachiness comes in -- Harper does a lot of psychiatric stuff/diagnosing considering she's not a psychiatrist, just about every patient she sees benefits from her intuitive doctoring, and then she also constantly dips into how important it is to eat well/meditate/do yoga/etc. There's very little actual self awareness; when it comes to her profession she seems to have no failures and therefore no experiences that she learned from.
I did appreciate Harper's approach and handling of race and privilege and I think a shorter non-fic book focusing on her cases (successful and not) would be compelling.
inspiring
medium-paced
The Beauty in Breaking offers a glimpse into the emergency room and the life-altering decisions that happen at every moment. Through her own personal stories and those of her patients, Dr. Harper seeks to remove the stigma of pain and instead reclaims it as the very space where beauty is found.
Appreciated the memoir. Her all-knowing very self aware and self-actualized narrative does come across a bit pretentious at times. I do appreciate her thoughts though. Might have also liked trigger warnings to start the book or chapters.
This career memoir written by an ER doctor is very engaging. I felt like I really trusted her and enjoyed her wisdom. There were definitely some narrative things that could have been improved upon in that the memoir didn’t have a super strong narrative arc, but in a weird way, I kind of liked that about it. Sometimes I feel like there is an artificial sense of story arc where life is so often and progressive like Dr. Harper expresses here. I appreciate her insights on emergency and the many things that can go wrong with the body. I also appreciate her insight on what it is like to be a black professional. She relays the everyday struggles that folks go through in a lot of places that she has practiced, and I feel like those things are important to witness too.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced