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.Foo, radio journalist and former producer of This American Life, recounts her astounding story of living with complex PTSD (C-PTSD), a diagnosis that describes the psychological pain experienced by those who’ve suffered recurring traumas.

Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma-but you can learn to move with it. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, 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. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weeklyīy age 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. providing real hope for those who long to heal.”-Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

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

What my bones know