TW: Discussion of abuse.

I’ll admit it, I’ve read a lot of trashy trauma memoirs. What often masquerades as a “life story of overcoming adversity” often turns out to be trauma porn. These stories can take subjects like drug use, abandonment and abuse and present a flippant narrative meant only to shock readers and keep them from looking away until the end. 

I’ll admit that’s what I was expecting when I picked up Stephanie Foo’s memoir, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma.

I was wrong.

As a child, Foo’s parents, especially her mother, were constantly physically and verbally abusive. After her mother leaves the family, Foo’s father gets a new girlfriend and leaves Foo, his teenage daughter, in the house alone to fend for herself. 

While Foo does spend time telling the story of her abusive childhood, the book’s true focus is on her quest to process her diagnosis of complex PTSD and heal. 

When she first receives her C-PTSD diagnosis, Foo wonders if she is too broken to ever function in the world. After all, she writes, “people with C-PTSD are drama queen self-saboteurs who are impossible to love.” 

Foo quits her job as a radio producer for This American Life. She tries therapy, meditation, yoga, EMDR, support groups, re-visiting her hometown, reconnecting with her abusers, and cutting ties. 

For each stop along the way, she provides the research and scientific backing for how each of these therapies work, especially for a person whose childhood brain was deprived of love. 

Foo goes to ten different therapists and often quits with a flounce. She examines how C-PTSD affects her physical health. She tries to get to the bottom of what was really going on with her “model minority” community in San Jose, California. 

Then, she finds a therapist who challenges her. An OBGYN who believes her. A partner who loves her, not in spite of her diagnosis, but with it. 

In the introduction to the book, Foo gives a different kind of trigger warning. Yes, she says, this story has parts that are hard to read. But also: this story has a happy ending. The most important thing that readers need to know, whether they have experienced trauma or not, is that healing is possible. And this is not a story to shock, re-traumatize, or trigger. This is a story of learning the difference between suffering and pain. Of learning how to create community. Of growing to love others, and the thing that can seem impossible: loving yourself. 

This book is written especially for survivors of C-PTSD, but I think is an important read for anyone curious about generational trauma, childhood trauma, or healing. 

If you have lived through trauma, or if someone close to you has experienced it, this is an illuminating look into how trauma can mold experience, personality, and the body itself. 

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