What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo is a story of her journey through C-PTSD, also known as Complex PTSD. I listened to the audiobook, as I tend to do a bit nowadays, and found myself nodding along, wow-ing, gasping, saying ‘Oh no!’ and laughing as I listened to Stephanie narrate her book. By the end of it I wanted to be her friend. I wanted to ask her to teach me how, even if all I could learn from her was to have relationships that weren’t neglected, suffering or dead.
Stephanie spends a lot of time educating us in What My Bones Know. If you’ve never heard of Complex PTSD before, get ready to learn. As someone who is intimately familiar with this journey of learning everything about this diagnosis or potential related diagnoses and then needing to teach it as I learn, Stephanie is both relatable and charming.
I won’t be regurgitating the information here. Besides, it’s more interesting when Stephanie does it.
For those of you who have already read this, but don’t have any other source of information I would highly suggest reading Pete Walker’s From Surviving to Thriving. If something more technical is preferred I would also suggest The Body Keeps the Score (though be warned that he is sadly an alleged tyrant). Thankfully more books on C-PTSD and childhood trauma are coming out all the time. If you didn’t resonate with any of these, maybe there are some you would.
Premise
Our narrator starts her story with her learning about her diagnosis. She then goes into her origin story. Stephanie narrates the things she went through as a child in graphic detail. There is no way to tell this particular story without doing that and I admire her for it. At the same time, while reading it I worried that doing that affected her deeply, as well.
What Stephanie writes about her childhood is severe abuse. Perhaps I’m not quite educated in ‘severe abuse’ and this would just be run of the mill, regular child abuse. Regardless, it weighs heavy on you and there’s some resistance to getting through those early chapters because of it.
It is worth it, though. Tagging along with her journey was like sitting with a friend on the couch and having that friend talk about a reality I’ve been personally unaware of. As you progress through What My Bones Know, you also hear about her relationships, her Malaysian-Chinese family history, her therapists, her work. There’s even a part in the audiobook where she plays the tape from some of her therapy sessions, so you hear the difference between her performing voice and her speaking-in-therapy voice.
Review
What My Bones Know combines a personal narrative about vicious childhood trauma with scientific and psychological information, sometimes hard facts, and her journey through the diagnosis and healing. I’ve never read a book that starts and ends in such different ways, not just because the story changes.
I found myself deep in thought about the things she’s said, even though I knew a fair bit of it prior. There were a few new things I learned that I wish I wrote down, though. Overall I believe this is one of those experiences worth trying. If you’re sensitive to violence or “true stories”, consider carefully before diving in. However, if you are on your own healing journey, it can be worth it to accompany someone else go through something similar. The camaraderie, the interesting information, and the character of Stephanie all kept me hooked. By the end, I was sad to leave Stephanie behind.
Warning: Please be mindful of your triggers as you navigate this book. It can be too difficult for some. If it is, that’s okay. Step away, get a glass of water, breathe. If you need to stop reading, that’s also okay. It’ll be there when you’re ready.
Rating: 4.5/5
For some related reviews, I wrote about Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner and Girl in Need of a Tourniquet by Merri Lisa Johnson, which are both memoirs.
If you’d like to purchase What My Bones Know you can do so at Bookshop.org. If you’re in Canada you can head over to The Book Outlet.
