Or maybe I could start by telling him that I was finally figuring out that all bodies ache with a wisdom that wants to be appreciated. And that if I were still enough to listen, if I were brave enough to be vulnerable and courageous enough to have faith in the potential of this life, I would see that I was already healed.
Baby girl Jenny would, in all likelihood, wake up to be reborn. Ms. Giannetta had had her resurrection as well. I, too, felt as if I had lived and died and lived again in the span of this one shift.
What I managed to say was “Al, this has been a crazy day in a crazy, crazy decade.”
“You okay?” he asked with genuine concern.
“I’m good. And I will be better, too.”
“You’re gonna leave us, aren’t you?”
I smiled at him, both not wanting to disappoint and not wanting to lie. “No, Al, not right now. I mean, I hope to come up with other ways to serve, other ways to be a healer, but patient care is a part of that goal, too.”
“You know, Doc, folks here come and go. The good ones are pushed out, and the bad ones get promoted. I hope you stay. What you said about healing—that’s why we need you here. You care about healing.”
With that, I took the deepest, most warming breath of the day and then let it go, fully refreshed.
“Thank you, Al. You don’t even know.”
I gave his arm a squeeze before leaving to pack up my coffee cup, water bottle, and bag. I would figure it out. I’d finish out the rest of this night, this week, this month, and then this year strong, all the while listening for what I needed to hear. I remembered something I had read—truth is that which never changes—and it occurred to me that that eliminated most things. In my commitment to loving true things deeply, I had let everything else fall away in its own time and in its own way. I made a plan to wake up and practice yoga from this space of integrity tomorrow morning, whatever yoga or tomorrow might bring.
“Night, Al!”
“Good night, Doc!”
Epilogue
There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.
—HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
Brokenness can be a remarkable gift. If we allow it, it can expand our space to transform—this potential space that is slight, humble, and unassuming. It may seem counterintuitive to claim the benefits of having been broken, but it is precisely when cracks appear in the bedrock of what we thought we knew that the gravity of what has fallen away becomes evident. When that bedrock is blown up by illness, a death, a breakup, a breakdown of any kind, we get the chance to look beyond the rubble to see a whole new way of life. The landscape that had been previously obscured by the towers of what we thought we knew for sure is suddenly revealed, showing us the limitations of the way things used to be.
Of course, many of us choose to live and die with that very space uncharted. Like Mr. Spano, I, too, have been so fed up with what felt like indomitable desolation that I just sifted through the wreckage and then shouldered it, dragging it along behind me, bent over by the weight of sorrow. But this devastation is a crossroads with a choice: to remain in the ashes or to forge ahead unburdened. Here is the chance to molt into a new nakedness, strengthened by the legacy of resilience to climb over the debris toward a different life.
Jeremiah wept blood into my hands in the same way that Erik’s entrails wrenched him to truth. Days before baby Jenny lost her innocence to the brutality of her parents, Vicki reclaimed her freedom by rebirthing herself past cycles of abuse into a new, healthy world of her choosing. When the stories of my relationships, personal life, and career path were stripped away, I finally got to what was real: True happiness only and always comes from within. In these and countless other ways, there is no gain without loss. Then—there it is! First in the descent and then in the emergence from this dark night of the soul lies true integration. True caring, indeed, true living, comes from being able to hold peace and love for oneself, and from sharing that unwavering, unconditional love, knowing that all life depends on this.
This is why I choose to stand with Mary and Dominic at the threshold. Medicine, like yoga, like the entirety of this existence on earth, is a daily practice. It is the opportunity, should we choose it, to heal the human body and spirit. By healing ourselves, we heal each other. By healing each other, we heal ourselves.
This is my practice. These are my stories.
So, this is not a book about a romance or a chronicle of loss. It is a story of love rebuilt better; the story of a butterfly birthed from goo; the story of newly grown wings that beat to a higher vibration to soar in a place of unconditional love because the truest part of me has always known and just now understands that this is where healing happens and this is where healers abide.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Loving gratitude to Mom, Eileen, John, Eli (Button), Jax, Kim, and to other family—those by birth and those by selection. Thank you to those both named and unnamed in this manuscript for contributing to my evolution on the path. Thank you to my first editor, August, who helped light the fire. Thank you to Anne for being my editor, consultant, overall literary whisperer, and friend. Thank you to my literary agent, Elizabeth, who gave me the chance because she believed. Thank you to my Riverhead editor, Jake, who pushed me out of my comfort zone and into continued growth—by the way, even your dadly input was greatly appreciated. Thank you to the copy editors, for providing me with the final beatdown; after all, isn’t that how ninjas are made? Thank you to Riverhead, who made the wish come true. Thank you to every spiritual teacher who kept me sane when I was pretty sure that sanity was no longer an option. And, of course, thank you to the ground that relentlessly rises up to meet us as long as we’re willing to take the next step.
WORKS CITED
Bourne, H. “No Big Deal: On Metta and Forgiveness.” Lion’s Roar, July 6, 2015. https://www.lionsroar.com/no-big-deal-metta-forgiveness/.
CDC. “The Tuskegee Timeline.” U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Atlanta, GA, December 30, 2013.
Gacki-Smith, J., et al. “Violence Against Nurses Working in US Emergency Departments.” Journal of Nursing Administration 39, no. 7–8 (2009): 340–49.
Gindi, R., et al. “Emergency Room Use Among Adults Aged 18–64: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2011.” National Center for Health Statistics. Centers for Disease Control, May 2012. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/emergency_room_use_january-june_2011.pdf.
Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013.
Goodell, S., et al. “Emergency Department Utilization and Capacity.” The Synthesis Project. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. July 1, 2009. https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2009/07/emergency-department-utilization-and-capacity0.html.
Janocha, J., and R. Smith. “Workplace Safety and Health in the Health Care and Social Assistance Industry 2003–07.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, DC, August 30, 2010. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/workplace-safety-and-health-in-the-health-care-and-social-assistance-industry-2003-07.pdf.
National Public Radio. “Rosebush Inside.” Snap Judgment. NPR, December 1, 2014.
Reiter, Keramet. “Experimentation on Prisoners: Persistent Dilemmas in Rights and Regulations.” California Law Review 97, no. 2 (2009): 501–66.
Sack, K. “After 37 Years in Prison, Inmate Tastes Freedom.” New York Times, January 11, 1996.
Smith, M. “The Murder of Emmett Till.” American Experience. PBS, 2003.
Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth. Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York: Dutton/Penguin, 2005.
Washington, H. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Co
lonial Times to the Present. New York: Anchor Books, 2006.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including as chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. The Beauty in Breaking is her first book.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
The Beauty in Breaking Page 23