Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'

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

24 reviews

careinthelibrary's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

4.0

This was really good. It struck me how candid Stephanie was being about her childhood traumas, how those experiences affected her and as a result rippled down to all of Foo's relationships and aspirations.
The descriptions of the childhood abuse was palpable, sickening, and incredibly sad. Major content warnings for these scenes, please take care while reading.

The relationships with her parents in her adulthood was also fascinating. How she manages to maintain some contact with her father despite how much he hurt her. We do what we must to find mental and physical safety but how much we can crave love from our parents even if we fear them. It's a constant balancing act and so emotionally exhausting.

I don't know very much about psychiatry and psychology so this aspect of the memoir was a bit over my head but I still followed along. She made it pretty easy for non-experts to understand the different kinds of treatment she sought. This memoir is so sad, reading about Foo encountering so many hurdles and struggling to find the light at the end of the tunnel. Knowing that she was well enough to write this memoir, reflecting on her life does little to lessen the second-hand blow of her life story to the reader. It's heavy heavy heavy.

I wish her the best in continuing to heal and understand herself before and after the trauma.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Medical trauma, Gaslighting, and Abandonment

Moderate: Ableism, Alcoholism, Cursing, Hate crime, Self harm, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Alcohol

Minor: Body shaming, Incest, Infertility, and War

negative self-talk, bad therapy experiences, victim blaming.

sullle71's review

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse

Moderate: Eating disorder

Minor: Drug use

hangdazhang's review against another edition

dark emotional funny inspiring fast-paced

5.0

Informative yet personal. Nuanced yet easy to read. I indeed had to take a break when reading the chapters about the detail of her childhood abuse but as the writer noted in the beginning, everything will be fine.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Self harm, Grief, Gaslighting, and Abandonment

lilcoppertop's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail