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What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life

“Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly

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 of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that 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 and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

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What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

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13 reviews for What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

  1. Carolina

    Although C PTSD is a heavy topic I found this book was well written and a good read. It gives a lot of insight into how childhood trauma impacts us as adults and outlines the steps that the author took on her own healing journey.

  2. Dawn Burress

    If you or someone you love is dealing with trauma and you’re trying to understand the healing process, this book will resonate with you. It is beautifully written and best of all includes references to other resources. The writer is raw and open in telling her story and it’s perfect from beginning to end. I could not recommend it more highly.

  3. Marianne Coletta

    This book is an honest, truthful memoir which helps trauma. Read this. Your life will be changed in the most positive way. You will not realize it until you listen/read. Stephanie Foo will become your best friend from all of the gratitude. Thank goodness she wrote this.

  4. Marianne Coletta

    My therapist has always referred to my PTSD as “complex” but it never occurred to me that “C-PTSD” is an actual thing and much different than PTSD. This book has put into words the thoughts and feelings I’ve carried around for over 40 years. It’s very validating and especially relatable. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE that has either experienced first hand, loved someone, or worked closely with people diagnosed with C-PTSD. Stephanie Foo has given me a better appreciation for my struggles. As a bonus, she’s also educated me on what it must be like to emigrate from Asia to America and adapt to a constant barrage of racism and stereotyping. This book is BRILLIANT!

  5. JAM

    If you have cpstd or know someone who does read this book. It holds so much relatable truth. Beautifully written and healing to read.

  6. Amy Brennan

    Stephanie Foo describes perfectly what it’s like living with Complex PTSD. For the first time I fell like someone understands what I go through every day. Thank you for sharing your story.

  7. z

    The parts about the notes to her friends was very moving. I’ve found myself being authentic and genuine and wondering why. But to take a step back and see it like that it helped remind me why.

  8. Amazon Customer

    This book is amazing. It helps me understand C. Ptsd. It’s the kind of books that you have to read more than once

  9. Alyssa

    This is a beautifully written story of trauma, healing, and the power of love. This is a memoir, not a trauma manual or self-help book; the author is clear about that. It is the author’s personal story. She is not a mental health professional. I only mention this because some reviewers have complained about that. That being said, personal stories have always been an important way that humans share experiences, knowledge, and teachings. I have gained so much from reading Stephanie Foo’s story. As a someone pursuing a graduate degree in psychology and as someone with C-PTSD – I found this book so informative regarding trauma, C-PTSD, abuse, generational trauma, and healing. I also found it beautiful, inspiring, and it helped me in so many ways- too many for me to list here. Everyone will have different healing journeys and most will not follow a linear path. Even if the things that helped Stephanie don’t resonate with you, there is still much to gain from reading her story. For me, it was helpful that her experiences were so different from my own because I was less likely to become triggered and was better able to take in the things she was writing about. I still had to stop and take breaks (I normally can read a book this length in less than a day) and I took my time reading it. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in trauma, C-PTSD, human behavior as well as to anyone who is interested in humans, the human experience, and beautiful storytelling. I will be purchasing additional copies to give to friends and family.

    P.S. it is also a love story about self-love, romantic love, familial love, and the love found in friendships.

  10. MetroplexMom

    This is an incredible book – absolutely one of the best I’ve read in a long time. Foo writes in such a way that she is SO relatable and her memoir of working through her C-PTSD was helpful to me as I’m working through my own brain and trauma.

  11. Valerie

    Foo’s account of her childhood trauma and its effects on her life & self since then should be required reading for every student of psychology, therapist, and person. So easy to read. This book is full of insight into how we process threats and absorb them into perspectives and behaviors that can last a lifetime. So much detail on her recovery and what helps to heal and become a more self compassionate, confident, grounded person.

  12. Elizabeth L

    I read Stephanie Foo’s memoir obsessively over a 36-hour period after hearing her interviewed on a podcast. It is the best memoir and one of the best non-fiction works I have read.

    Foo walks the reader through her painful and brave journey of suffering and healing and shows what it is like to learn a new way of being in the world, how to be kind to yourself, and how to be in relationship with other people without leaving a path of destruction. We need more people in this world like her. The inner work that she has done matters so much more than the superficial striving that we like to celebrate.

    We also need to redefine resilience and success in terms of internal well-being and stop using professional achievement as a proxy for wholeness.

    She nails this: “When scientists and psychologists provide case studies of resilient individuals, they do not showcase a housekeeper who has overcome personal tragedy and now has impressive talents at self – regulation. They write about individuals who survived and became doctors, teachers, therapists , motivational speakers —sparkly members of society. Resilience, according to the establishment, is not a degree of some indeterminable measure of inner peace. Resilience is instead synonymous with success.”

    What she describes is the ultimate manifestation of materialism. Outward success and inner wholeness are not even related. Foo is absolutely right that mental health isn’t always sparkly, and her insight explains why there are so many deeply toxic and unhealed people in high places. This is why so many narcissistic jerks end up on “top.”

    I hope the people at This American Life either fired her a-hole boss or put him through some kind of long-term rehab to learn to be decent. What are the chances, though?

    Foo’s point about immigrant trauma being the legacy of our country’s colonial exploits was so important. This stuff doesn’t just happen.

    Wonderful, wonderful book.

  13. Nicole Herman

    Amazing book. Relatable for survivors of CPTSD and clinicians.

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