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

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma follows Stephanie Foo as she searches for words to describe what her body has retained. By the age of thirty, she appears to have built the life she wanted, including her dream role as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend, yet she is living with panic attacks and finds herself crying at her desk each morning.

After years of uncertainty about what is happening, Foo is diagnosed with complex PTSD, described here as a condition that can develop when trauma occurs repeatedly over a long period. She connects this diagnosis to her teenage years, after prolonged physical and verbal abuse and neglect, when both parents abandoned her. With limited resources available, she compares her own experience with existing writing on C-PTSD while looking for ways to heal.

Key details

• Memoir by Stephanie Foo
• Focuses on healing from complex PTSD (C-PTSD)
• Author is an award-winning radio producer at This American Life
• Includes interviews with scientists and psychologists
• Considers a range of innovative therapies

Synopsis

In a personal account shaped by research, Foo examines how her past continues to influence her health, relationships and career after receiving a diagnosis of complex PTSD. She interviews scientists and psychologists, explores different therapies, and returns to her hometown in California to look at the effects of immigrant trauma within the community.

She also travels to Malaysia, the country of her birth, where she uncovers family secrets and reflects on how trauma may be passed down across generations. The narrative suggests that while trauma may not be something you simply leave behind, it is possible to learn how to live with it, as Foo works to reclaim agency in the present.