What My Bones Know Audiobook By Stephanie Foo cover art

What My Bones Know

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What My Bones Know

By: Stephanie Foo
Narrated by: Stephanie Foo
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About this listen

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
Biographies & Memoirs Child Abuse Dysfunctional Families Personal Development Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders Mental Health Inspiring

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