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What My Bones Know

By: Stephanie Foo
Narrated by: Stephanie Foo
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Publisher's Summary

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 30, 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.

©2022 Stephanie Foo (P)2022 W F Howes

Critic Reviews

“Achingly exquisite…providing real hope for those who long to heal.” (Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)

"A sharp, insightful and stirring memoir." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Foo's writing is shrewdly insightful. Highly recommended." (Library Journal, starred review)

What listeners say about What My Bones Know

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Best book on cPTSD I’ve consumed

Totally relatable despite the author being on the other side of the globe to me. I think cPTSD connects people after listening to this book, and listening to others stories can help to build a healing network. Stephanie is a wonderful narrator which really helped!

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2 people found this helpful

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Trauma Gold

This book was amazingly written. It shows so well the struggles with cPTSD. It gives hope to the reader and allows them to see that consistency and courage leads to change. And love heals

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Meaningful and powerful

This book is unique in its ability to be raw and honest whilst still informative and evidence based.

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Empowering, educational and a must read.

Stephanie Foo has written and shared a masterpiece with the world. Her story of survival of almost unimaginable abuse is gut-wrenching, heartbreaking and infuriating. Foo's healing journey is raw, ugly, hard, beautiful and empowering. Her words have true healing powers. This book is a must read for anyone and everyone wanting the world to be a place to be a better place.

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Excellent and honest

This is a beautiful rendering of awful suffering, i loved it, laughing and crying! Everyone should read it!!!

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An amazing read

I have learned so much in this book. I will recommend it to anyone who has or knows someone who has CPTSD.

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Thank you

Thanks for sharing your story Stephanie. I’ve been researching trauma, ptsd and cptsd for some time. Listening to your experience and learnings, about living with cptsd, has personalised it and helped me learn even more.

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Absolutely powerful

I’ve read so many books about trauma and CPTSD and I’ve never related, laughed and cried and felt so understood.

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A profoundly edifying listen

A profoundly edifying listen. Insightfully ironic in a way that makes its sincerity more credible and nuanced, this personal narrative leads through a fight for self love, offering relevant understandings of CPTSD as well as intergenerational trauma, as Foo arrived at them herself, also with a profound appreciation for what magnificence and grace is formed in those who have been abandoned and annihilated and been blessed enough to have recovered love inside themselves. An honest story of hope.

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Life-changing

Stephanie Foo writes beautifully and captures the agony and frustration of trauma recovery whilst demonstrating remarkable hope that inspires without coming across as trite.

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