* Kirkus Reviews *įoo's writing is shrewdly insightful. along with the losses are the triumphs' that can positively transform a traumatized life. A must-read for anyone healing from complex trauma - Jeanette McCurdy, bestselling author of I'M GLAD MY MOM DIEDĪn intimate, deeply engrossing story of psychological recovery * The Australian *Īs Foo sheds necessary light on the little-discussed topic of C-PTSD, she holds out the hope that while 'healing is never final. Publisher: Atlantic Books ISBN: 9781911630944 Number of pages: 352 Weight: 460 g Dimensions: 216 x 135 x 24 mm Edition: Main MEDIA REVIEWSĪ striking memoir. 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.

Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma - but you can learn to move with it. She returns to her hometown in 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. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. 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.

She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. 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.īoth of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. I want to have words for what my bones know.īy the age of 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. 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.

What my bones know book