Layers of the Heart is a newly published memoir by Dr. Catherine O’Riordan about her mother, Dr. Anna Connor O’Riordan, a pioneering pediatric cardiologist.
At first glance, this book is the story of a daughter trying to better understand her mother and trying to fill in the absences, both physically and emotionally, that she remembers of her mother’s life. But the book becomes much more than that.
The title is perfect. It speaks not only to the heart as the subject that defined Dr. Anna O’Riordan’s life work but also to the many layers of the human heart, the memories we carry and the relationships that shape us.
Dr. Anna O’Riordan belonged to a generation of women physicians who entered medicine after being told they were taking a man’s place. But instead of accepting those limitations, she built an extraordinary career, helped shape an emerging specialty, and mentored generations of physicians who followed.
Professionally, she was deeply revered. Former trainees and patients describe a physician who transformed the field through her clinical expertise and extraordinary compassion. Dr. Marty O’Riordan, reflected, “She helped change the field, and she never needed a spotlight to do it.” A former trainee, Dr. Lee Vogel, wrote, “Your mom is why I became a cardiologist. She taught me how to see the child before the chart, how to practice medicine without pretense.”
And yet, at home, the story was more complicated.
The woman whose empathy was a lifeline to her patients could often seem emotionally distant to her own children. Catherine doesn’t shy away from that reality, nor does she try to rewrite the past. Instead, she views it with a perspective softened by time, recognizing the profound influence her mother had on her own life and accepting that people can embody many seemingly contradictory qualities all at once.
There is a quiet poetry throughout the book. Catherine writes about the “knots” that can develop in relationships over time. But rather than trying to untangle them, she offers a different image: widening the space around the knots, so there is room for “gratitude to sit beside longing.”
Perhaps that is the greatest gift of this memoir: it encourages us to see our own lives with the same generosity Catherine extends to her mother’s, making space for both the joys and the sacrifices, the accomplishments and the regrets, that together shape our journeys as women in medicine.
An annual lectureship established in Dr. Anna Connor O’Riordan’s honor is held ever year at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. This year, the memorial lecture was delivered by Dr. Nancy Spector, Senior Vice Dean of Faculty and Executive Director of ELAM and EHL, Drexel University College of Medicine.