Like a Wave We Break: A Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The courageous memoir of one woman’s globe-spanning journey of unraveling and awakening—breaking free of the narratives that once defined her and confronting the long-buried truths of a traumatic past—by the former CEO and co-founder of Embrace.

“A brilliant and gripping book about how resilience, keen intelligence, and sheer grit can transform cultural legacy and family adversity into hope and inspiration around the world.”—Bessel van der Kolk, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps the Score

On paper, Jane Chen was the embodiment of success. A Harvard and Stanford graduate, she was the CEO and co-founder of a company that developed a groundbreaking incubator helping to save hundreds of thousands of newborns in the world’s most vulnerable communities. Her work gave her purpose and earned her shoutouts from presidents and pop stars. Yet underneath it all, she was burning out—consumed by self-doubt and a relentless need to prove herself, shaped by wounds that had formed long before her career began. No matter how much she achieved, she never felt like she was enough.

Then, Embrace collapsed. Jane lost more than a dream—she lost the identity she had built her life around. Feeling utterly broken, she set off on a global quest for healing. Her search took her across oceans and into the uncharted terrain of her inner world. She sat in silence for days in the Indonesian jungle. She sought wisdom from world-renowned healers and therapists. She burned holes into her leg for a frog poisoning ceremony. She dove headfirst into every form of self-help, from the spiritual to the psychedelic, from the cultish to the comical, only to find herself face-to-face with the one thing she had spent a lifetime avoiding: the trauma of her upbringing as a first-generation Taiwanese American. Jane discovered a profound truth—that real healing doesn’t come from achievement, approval, or even the tools we think will save us.

A revelatory memoir brimming with candor, humor, and hard-won wisdom, Like a Wave We Break is more than a story of personal transformation—it’s an invitation to confront our deepest wounds and to embrace the messy, beautiful truth of who we are.

Jane Chen is a globally recognized entrepreneur, inventor, and speaker. She is a co-founder of Embrace Global, which developed a groundbreaking infant incubator that has helped to save nearly a million babies. Chen has been a TED Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow, and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Chen was recognized as a Forbes Impact 30 and Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum and was a recipient of The Economist’s Innovation Award. She received her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and her master’s in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.