Welcome to Nobody Told Me.

I'm Laura Owens and I'm Jan Black.

And on this episode, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Michelle Harper, who's an emergency room doctor and a New York

Times bestselling author. Michelle has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade

in the South Bronx and in Philadelphia. Michelle's book, The Beauty in Breaking,

weaves together the story of her life and her interactions with patients in the emergency room.

The New York Times named it one of the top 100 notable books of 2020 and called it a

riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring story.

Michelle, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be with you all here today.

Tell us more about the meaning behind the title of the book, the beauty in breaking.

A metaphor that I typically call upon.

And I apologize in advance, because no matter how I practice, I know I'm going to butcher the pronunciation.

But I hearken back to the ancient Japanese art of Kintakoroi.

And in that practice, if a piece of pottery, for example, is broken, then instead of just discarding it, it is repaired using an amalgam of precious metals,

whether it's platinum, silver, yellow gold.

And the thinking is that in the repair, we're not just ignoring what it's been through.

We're highlighting the cracks, and its repair process makes it that much more beautiful.

And I feel the same as true of humans.

I mean, this is not a practice of romanticizing trauma, but acknowledging that things will be difficult, that we will be changed for our experiences,

that we will not be the same for what we've been through. But we can, we can become more

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