Reviews with content warning for Racism - What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

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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mojobo's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

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lindseyshaw300's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This book is somehow both tragic and hilarious! Foo somehow manages to brilliantly describe her journey with CPTSD in a way that allows you to embark on it with her. She’s real and raw and honest and funny. It is hard to read about the graphic descriptions of childhood abuse and the compelling descriptions of overwhelming grief, but it is well worth it. I learned so much while reading it. This book is one that I’ll definitely reread in the future! It would be good for other sufferers of CPTSD or anyone who is curious to learn about it, especially for the benefit of better understanding a loved one.

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