What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
NYT Bestseller

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

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: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
✍️ Deeply Personal Account
🧠 Research-Backed
❤️ Resonant & Healing
⚡ Instant Access
About the Book

Reclaiming Agency from Trauma

By 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. 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.

📖
A Brave Narrative
Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. Her new diagnosis illuminated how her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career.
🔬
Mapping the Science
Finding limited resources to help her, Foo set out to heal herself. She interviews scientists and psychologists, tries innovative therapies, and maps her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
🌱
Generational Healing
She returns to her hometown to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma and uncovers family secrets in Malaysia to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations, discovering that you can learn to move with it.

“Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”

— Lori Gottlieb
New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Verified Reviews

What Readers Are Saying

★★★★★ 5.0 out of 5 · Verified readers
★★★★★
A must read!!
Amazon Customer  ·  ✓ Verified Purchase
This book changed my life. For folks with complex mental health diagnoses searching for a story of genuine healing, I highly recommend.
👍 Helpful
★★★★★
Best Book About C PTSD I’ve Read!
Divamom  ·  ✓ Verified Purchase
Thank you Stephanie Foo for writing this gem of a book. You have helped me more than 20+ years of therapy ever did. The way you willingly shared the horror of your childhood made me willing to examine my childhood trauma again. By getting right to the point & not have me wade through a sanitized version I was able to quickly understand & feel your horrors.
👍 Helpful
★★★★★
Wonderful read!!
Alexis Ghee  ·  ✓ Verified Purchase
As someone who has C-PTSD, this book immediately stood out to me. Stephanie’s story is different from mine, but I felt so many emotions reading her words. It’s heavy at times and even resurfaced parts of my own trauma, which made me pause more than once. But in those pauses, I also felt something deeply healing, the reminder that I’m not alone in this. I appreciated Stephanie’s honesty, her curiosity, and the way she explores her healing journey with both grace and grit.
👍 3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
Helpful for cPTSD Sufferers
Sally  ·  ✓ Verified Purchase
For anyone who has survived childhood attachment trauma by exhaustive enduring & adapting, this book will resonate with you. We are not alone. It also paints a picture of what healing requires & what “dropping the sword” feels like.
👍 3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
Excellent!
TroubleEFG  ·  ✓ Verified Purchase
A wonderful depiction of not only what it is like to have complex trauma, but what recovery from trauma looks and feels like too.
👍 Helpful

Reclaim Agency From Trauma

Join Stephanie Foo on her powerful, enlightening, and hopeful journey of reckoning with the hold of the past over the present.

What My Bones Know
A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma