What My Bones Know
Ratings40
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings40
Average rating4.5
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 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. 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 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. 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
Recommended by Rennie of Whats Nonfiction. I was riveted by this memoir of a survivor of relational trauma (which I think is a much better name than C-PTSD!) Her mother was a sick woman who should have been put in prison for what she did to Stephanie, and her father was a weak, emotionally incompetent man who essentially left her to live on her own when she was in high school. Stephanie became a “success” with a coveted job on This American Life, but inwardly she was a mess. She takes us through her process of healing, which includes a survey of the terrible conditions for anyone seeking mental health or medical help in the US, the horrors of bad therapy, the ineffectiveness of much well-meaning therapy, and the amazing potential of good (rare and expensive, sadly) therapy. It's a very individual journey, but through it Stephanie discovers the healing power of relationship, the importance of self-knowledge and self-trust, and even the way trauma responses can become “superpowers” when they are needed to react to extreme situations (like a pandemic). The wedding scene where she and her husband prepared letters for all their friends telling them why they loved them was incredibly moving and gave such an important message. Anyone who is looking for a single other person to save and complete them is in trouble, while those who build a vibrant community and celebrate love in all its forms are building the future we need to strive for. Great read.
Definitely a 4.5 and I'm rounding up.
CW: physical and emotional child abuse, trauma, ptsd, therapy sessions
I knew going in that this was a book about complex PTSD and childhood trauma, and the author's experiences of growing up with it and her process of healing. I decided to again pick up the audiobook because no way I was gonna be able to read it. And wow was this an experience.
Listening to the author telling the story of her abuse was harrowing, so I can't even imagine growing up like that. But the author also balances out her life story with moments of joy and friendships and times when she felt like she was able to get out of the shadow of her trauma. And the way she researched and tried to find all available/ working therapeutic options for her C-PTSD felt very similar to the experiences of author Meghan in her memoir about chronic illness The Invisible Kingdom.
But more than being just a book about trauma and therapy, the author also does a brilliant job explaining her findings about childhood abuse - specially in the Asian American community, the effects of generational trauma and how it can affect future genetics, how experiences with racism can alter brain chemistry, and so much more. The audiobook also features some of her sessions with her therapist, and it was very enlightening to see how both of them analyzed her thoughts and feelings and what it meant about her stage of healing.
I know my review may feel very bland but I really don't think I can write a review worthy of the book. This memoir is brilliantly written, with so much openness and vulnerability, and giving us immense knowledge about trauma and healing and how it affects communities across generations. It's definitely an important book and I would highly recommend it, especially the audiobook because the format adds so much more value to the narrative.
It feels odd to say I enjoyed this book, but I did. Nothing more fun than reading about parental abuse and complex PTSD! Foo starts the thing out with a warning to others who might have complex PTSD, that the first four chapters are mostly a memoir about the abuse she suffered from her parents, and I wonder now what it would have been like to skip those before reading the rest.
The rest weaves her process of recognizing her traumas and various ways she tries to get some healing, and those are a nice mix of memoir and explanations (mostly explanations of how *complex* PTSD comes to be, and how its treatments can differ from other mental health treatments). The first few chapters are difficult to get through, but she layers them in such a way that it was doable. But it's raw, for sure.
I liked the bits and pieces about San Jose, and Oakland.
The best part of the book, for me, is her analysis of how racism (and in particular the model minority bullshit) helps to cause, say, a kid to make it all the way through high school while being verbally and physically abused, with nobody, adult or kid, noticing. Or if noticing, looking the other way.
This book deserves every praise it has gotten. Exceptionally well written and did a really good job of discussing a variety of topics. I found the parts where she discussed the immigrant community and it's relation to C-PTSD and generational trauma incredibly engrossing.
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