The release date for the English version of 'What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma' by
Stephanie Foo is Feb 2023. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo explores the little-known science behind complicated PTSD and how it has affected her life in this wrenching narrative of reckoning and recovery.
"Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal."--Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone author and New York Times bestselling author
NPR, Publishers Weekly: "One of the Best Books of the Year"
Stephanie Foo was accomplished on paper by the time she was thirty years old. She had a loving partner and her ideal work as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life. But every morning, she was crying at her desk and experiencing panic attacks behind her office door. She spent years wondering what was wrong with her, and eventually a diagnosis of complex PTSD—a disorder that arises when trauma occurs repeatedly over an extended period of time—was made.
After years of physical and verbal abuse, as well as neglect, Foo's parents left her when she was a teenager. Though she had assumed she had moved on, her recent illness revealed the ways in which her past still posed a danger to her work, relationships, and health. Foo set out to heal herself and map her experiences onto the little literature regarding C-PTSD after finding few resources to assist her.
In this very intimate and well-researched narrative, Foo attempts a range of cutting-edge treatments and speaks with scientists and psychiatrists. She goes back to her birthplace of San Jose, California, to look at the impact of immigrant trauma on the area, and she unearths family secrets in her native Malaysia to see how trauma may be passed down through the generations. In the end, she finds out that trauma is something you can learn to move with, not something you can move on from.
What My Bones Know is a fearless story that explores the power of the past over the present and the mind over the body. It also looks at a woman's capacity to regain agency after her tragedy. It is strong, insightful, and uplifting.