What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
Stephanie Foo
Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, ofmigration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bonesknow.
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door,she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years ofquestioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD - a conditionthat occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical andverbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated theway her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limitedresources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto thescarce literature about C-PTSD.
In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists andpsychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown inCalifornia to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncoversfamily secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inheritedthrough generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma - but youcan learn to move with it.
Powerful, enlightening and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckonswith the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body - and examines onewoman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door,she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years ofquestioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD - a conditionthat occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical andverbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated theway her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limitedresources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto thescarce literature about C-PTSD.
In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists andpsychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown inCalifornia to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncoversfamily secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inheritedthrough generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma - but youcan learn to move with it.
Powerful, enlightening and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckonswith the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body - and examines onewoman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.