An emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself. Michele Harper will appear to discuss her book, The Beauty in Breaking, in conversation with Lisa Peyton-Caire, Founding CEO & President of the Foundation for Black Women's Wellness.  Before the event begins, you will see a countdown and the event image.

Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., 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 book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

This series, featuring authors and books focused on health care issues faced by underserved communities, is made possible through a partnership with the Madison Public Library and the All of Us Research Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As part of the partnership, free copies of The Beauty in Breaking will be distributed for free to the first 100 attendees who sign up. During the event, there will be a link at the bottom of the screen, fill out the form, and a book will be sent to you.