Stephanie Foo

"A searing memoir of reckoning and healing from an acclaimed journalist and former This American Life producer investigating the little-understood science behind Complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life. By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as a radio producer at This American Life and had won an Emmy. But behind her office door she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk. After years of questioning what was wrong with her, she was diagnosed with Complex PTSD-a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Stephanie's parents had abandoned her as a teenager after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd overcome her trauma, but her diagnosis illuminated the ways in which her past continued to threaten her health, her relationships, and her career. Finding few resources to help her heal, Stephanie set out to map her experience onto the scarce scientific research on C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Stephanie interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies with the determination and curiosity of an award-winning journalist. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on a community, she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, and learns 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, with grace and joy. Powerful, enlightening, and clarifying, 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 one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma"--

A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

What My Bones Know

Haritha R

No matter what I do, no matter where I try to find joy, I instead find my trauma. And it whispers to me: “You will always be this way. It’s never going to change. I will follow you. I will make you miserable forever. And then I will kill you.” The literature says this is normal for traumatized people. Experts say it’s all part of the three P’s: We think our sadness is personal, pervasive, and permanent. Personal, in that we have caused all the problems we face. Pervasive, in that our entire life is defined by our failings. And permanent, in that the sadness will last forever. But, as usual, knowing that I am textbook doesn’t help me rise off the page.

I kept stirring the porridge. Now I was angry at myself for being needy and upset about something so stupid. This was all my fault. And doesn’t Joey tell you he loves you every day? How much love do you need?

First: Just because the wound doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean it’s healed.

Being my parents’ caretaker imbued me with an illusion of control—a belief that I could prevent disaster if only I was vigilant enough. But these health outcomes proved I was wrong. If anything, it was vigilance itself that destroyed me

when we live through traumatic experiences, our brains take in the things around us that are causing the greatest threat, and they encode these things deep into our subconscious as sources of danger. Let’s say, for example, that you are hit by a car. Your brain registers the noise of the car screeching to a halt, the grille speeding toward you. It shoots out an onslaught of stress chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol that elevate your heart rate and blood pressure, narrowing your focus to the thump of the impact and the pain and the sound of an ambulance. But at the same time, your brain is subconsciously taking in thousands of other pieces of stimuli: the foggy weather, the Krispy Kreme at the intersection, the color and make and model of the car, the Midwestern accent of the guy who hit you, his blue Wolverines T-shirt. And your brain imprints deep inside itself the powerful connections between these stimuli and this pain. These associations are stored in your brain along with the corresponding emotions from that day. And they often do not come with full stories. Therefore, your brain might not encode the logical connection between the Krispy Kreme and the car crash. It might simply encode: KRISPY KREME. DANGER. The result is that when you see a glazed doughnut or a blue Wolverines T-shirt, you might become uneasy without understanding why. Your brain is recognizing a pattern that it has flagged with life-or-death importance, and it reflexively shoots out what it believes to be the appropriate emotional response. This reflex might manifest in a big way, like a panic attack. Or it might manifest in a smaller way, like suddenly feeling very grumpy. You might decide that you’re irritated at your girlfriend for a mildly stupid thing she said that morning and text her to say so. None of this, of course, is reasonable or rational. But your brain is not trying to be reasonable. It’s trying to save your life.

How could anyone be truly happy in a world filled with unrelenting suffering?

It’s okay to have some things you never get over. In the span of half an hour, this man whom I had known for less than a season did what nobody in my life ever had: He took all of my sins and simply forgave them. He didn’t demand relentless improvement. There were no ultimatums. He asserted that I was enough, as is. The gravity of it stunned me into silence

Laura Mei

Trauma isn't just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That's just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 have had. The childhood other kids around you had. The fact that you could have had a mom who hugged and kissed you when you skinned your knee. Or a dad who stayed and brought you a bouquet of flowers at your graduation. Trauma is mourning the fact that, as an adult, you have to parent yourself. You have to pull up your bootstraps and solve the painful puzzle of your life by yourself. What other choice do you have? Nobody else is going to solve it for you

Reparenting takes time, and concentration, and calmness. It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction. And even though that effort comes with joyous rewards, sometimes it also comes with sadness. Because expressing the kindness to yourself that you deserve often reminds you of the kindness you didn't get.

need to sit with all the Big Feelings this memoir gave me before i can attempt to actually form any coherent thoughts on it. just… wow. what an experience this was

i consider this to be one of the heaviest, yet compelling and insightful memoirs i've read to date. there are numerous books discussing personal trauma through memoir, and there are numerous books approaching the topic of mental health using a string of researched information weaved with a personal narrative. stephanie foo happens to utilize both these formats well in the telling of her own story, and it is a grounding, curious, and hopeful account of her life. 

the first parts of the book were difficult to get through because her portrayal of childhood abuse is potent in the way that she doesn't shy away from the memory she has of the pain. she dwells on the confusion of being a child exposed to such cruelty and wanting to measure up to what her parents demand of her, even if it's unreasonable and beyond her abilities. but i didn't anticipate how much more harrowing it could be to read the succeeding parts of the memoir, the ones focused on the trajectory of her healing once she was abandoned by her parents and trying to find a foot in the world alone. the way foo describes the non-linear path of recovery is something that stayed with me, not only because of how Real she was being in her description of the ups and downs of processing trauma. it left a mark because of her curiosity and willingness to go great lengths to understand the different factors in orbit of her trauma, which made for an insightful look into how collective experiences can shape a generation (even a population) of hurt, contributing to the cycle. i especially appreciated how foo was determined to trace historical events (the vietnam war, may 13 riots in malaysia, and other stinging events that contributed to the trauma of entire generations of people who migrated to the US hoping for a better life) as a way to avoid slipping down hasty generalizations of abuse being a cultural thing for most asians and people of color. 

foo's curiosity is what shines in the discussion of healing in her memoir, really. because yes, she has the determination to work on how her trauma affects her life, relationships, personhood, etc. but it's her penchant to look at things and ask: how can we work through this? what are the things affecting x mood or y feelings? where is this coming from? what other things beyond me are contributing to what i'm feeling? how can i be a person for others when my trauma burdens me with so much self-loathing i cannot see that people do not hate me as i have led myself to believe? how do i know this therapy thing works, and what can i do to find something that works for me? 

while she does honestly talk about the difficulties of finding the right therapist, methods to therapy, anxieties over her interpersonal relationships, and all the Bad Things caused by mental health struggles, she refuses to get bogged down. she asks what else can be done and it's not in a rationalizing way, but more in line with the idea that she wants to get somewhere better, safer, and more loving for someone in her situation. and that was really comforting to read because she didn't follow the whole, "oh, of course it gets better. i'm working on it constantly, so there's a definite end where i don't feel these negative emotions anymore." foo takes the time to detail how the negatives continue to exist, but that healing means there are more positives that offset the Bad. she does not deny the continued existence of her hurt, anger, and other remnants of her cruel childhood. instead, she remarks that "healing is never final" and that long with the losses, there are triumphs. and that really resonated with me, as it is more hopeful to be able to look at something dreadful and acknowledge it, but also have the knowledge that there can be something better laying beyond it. 

overall, this memoir made me ache in ways i didn't know was possible reading an account of someone else's life. but i am so grateful to have read this at this age and point of my life. i hope to one day find the same strength and love as foo did to accompany her in the passage of healing. 

gabi

need to sit with all the Big Feelings this memoir gave me before i can attempt to actually form any coherent thoughts on it. just… wow. what an experience this was

—  

i consider this to be one of the heaviest, yet compelling and insightful memoirs i've read to date. there are numerous books discussing personal trauma through memoir, and there are numerous books approaching the topic of mental health using a string of researched information weaved with a personal narrative. stephanie foo happens to utilize both these formats well in the telling of her own story, and it is a grounding, curious, and hopeful account of her life. 

the first parts of the book were difficult to get through because her portrayal of childhood abuse is potent in the way that she doesn't shy away from the memory she has of the pain. she dwells on the confusion of being a child exposed to such cruelty and wanting to measure up to what her parents demand of her, even if it's unreasonable and beyond her abilities. but i didn't anticipate how much more harrowing it could be to read the succeeding parts of the memoir, the ones focused on the trajectory of her healing once she was abandoned by her parents and trying to find a foot in the world alone. the way foo describes the non-linear path of recovery is something that stayed with me, not only because of how Real she was being in her description of the ups and downs of processing trauma. it left a mark because of her curiosity and willingness to go great lengths to understand the different factors in orbit of her trauma, which made for an insightful look into how collective experiences can shape a generation (even a population) of hurt, contributing to the cycle. i especially appreciated how foo was determined to trace historical events (the vietnam war, may 13 riots in malaysia, and other stinging events that contributed to the trauma of entire generations of people who migrated to the US hoping for a better life) as a way to avoid slipping down hasty generalizations of abuse being a cultural thing for most asians and people of color. 

foo's curiosity is what shines in the discussion of healing in her memoir, really. because yes, she has the determination to work on how her trauma affects her life, relationships, personhood, etc. but it's her penchant to look at things and ask: how can we work through this? what are the things affecting x mood or y feelings? where is this coming from? what other things beyond me are contributing to what i'm feeling? how can i be a person for others when my trauma burdens me with so much self-loathing i cannot see that people do not hate me as i have led myself to believe? how do i know this therapy thing works, and what can i do to find something that works for me? 

while she does honestly talk about the difficulties of finding the right therapist, methods to therapy, anxieties over her interpersonal relationships, and all the Bad Things caused by mental health struggles, she refuses to get bogged down. she asks what else can be done and it's not in a rationalizing way, but more in line with the idea that she wants to get somewhere better, safer, and more loving for someone in her situation. and that was really comforting to read because she didn't follow the whole, "oh, of course it gets better. i'm working on it constantly, so there's a definite end where i don't feel these negative emotions anymore." foo takes the time to detail how the negatives continue to exist, but that healing means there are more positives that offset the Bad. she does not deny the continued existence of her hurt, anger, and other remnants of her cruel childhood. instead, she remarks that "healing is never final" and that long with the losses, there are triumphs. and that really resonated with me, as it is more hopeful to be able to look at something dreadful and acknowledge it, but also have the knowledge that there can be something better laying beyond it. 

overall, this memoir made me ache in ways i didn't know was possible reading an account of someone else's life. but i am so grateful to have read this at this age and point of my life. i hope to one day find the same strength and love as foo did to accompany her in the passage of healing. 

Fantastic read that grabs you & brings you in quickly — then the entire book shifts into journalism mode with mixed results and a too-happy ending. Still, I enjoyed every moment. 

Leslie Campisi

Jeannette Ordas

A really fascinating look at one woman's life with Complex PTSD. There's lots of trauma and trigger warnings to be found in this memoir, but there's also so much to discover about the science (like trauma can be passed throughout generations in our genes, etc.) behind the diagnosis. It's a really impactful read. 4.5 stars.

Satya Nelms

I don’t have the words yet to describe what reading this memoir meant to me and how it made me feel, but if you are someone who struggles with or loves someone who struggles with complex PTSD read this book.

Stephanie Ridiculous

This is one of those books that will stay with you for a long, long time. 

Foo takes her experience with trauma and healing, both very nuanced & hard to articular things, and splays it out across the pages with grace, vulnerability, humor, and compassion. Sharing her journey with us like we're friends sitting together on a couch, late at night; I wanted to cry with her, rage with her, and hope with her. Most of all, this book does give hope. 

I am incredibly glad I stumbled across this book.
There are significant content warnings here, so please proceed carefully. Foo details her own childhood abuse in Part One, (physical, emotional, and mental) and touches on the abuse others have suffered later on in the book. This may be a book you take slowly & carefully, but it so so worth it.

Maureen Carter

Sarah Lim

Alli

Jerilynn Hallett 

osirene

Abby

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 “Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know.” 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.

What My Bones Know A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

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