Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

This book was so well written. I feel like it’s hard to find people who are curious about themselves and the world in the same way as Foo, and I really appreciated her authorial voice and the content which she wrote about.

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zygomatic's review against another edition

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emotional informative sad slow-paced

2.0

This memoir starts strong and then becomes a rambling, pseudoscience mess. I thought that Foo was being insufferable and would come to that realization by the end, but that's not the case. She's judgmental of every person she describes, as she actively disparages anyone who is not 100% in support of her or knows and appeases her triggers without informing them of said triggers. She judges people's knowledge based on race and makes fun of people's clothes and calls people she doesn't know "fuckboy." She blames schoolteachers for not finding out about and reporting home abuse, and rambles about the curriculum that they are not able to set.

She mentions that social workers and psychologists are not making much money, but then expects them to accept verbal abuse. Her annoyance and dismissal of professional opinions and doctors at large due to things like facial tics shows her lack of empathy and understanding that these people are trying to help others with a broad spectrum of disorders of varying degrees, while usually being underfunded. They are keeping themselves together mentally to help the most people possible, which means they are probably tired and not having the best day every day. They are also people who deserve respect--like all humans. They do not deserve to be yelled at, nor should they enjoy it. And many are definitely dealing with their own trauma. Yet Foo is oblivious to the end, making fun of many care workers and never understanding why people might not want to associate with her professionally or socially, listening to her self-centered complaints.

She quits her own job for having a micromanaging, dismissive boss who yells at her, so why does she think she can do the same to others? I understand that the root cause could be the trauma, but to not acknowledge this and instead say "nothing is my fault at all because I have CPTSD" seems disingenuous and mean. It's frustrating to read her lack of responsibility or remorse for any actions after diagnosis and "breakthrough." Like, you threatened people with baseball bats...you don't think that might affect the person you chased?

Isn't it wonderful that because of her connections she can take a year off and gets to have free sessions with a doctor who charges $400 per session? It is great. But my god is it distracting from the idea that others can use this story as anything other than a dissociated dream.

Dismissing other people's trauma is gross, but the author does this when talking about certain groups, saying that male PTSD is "only 4%" while female rates are at 8%, and not mentioning veteran rates, except to say they are not the exclusive owners of PTSD. But veterans literally have more PTSD-related disorders (higher than 11%) and suicidal ideations (almost 50%) than the regular population, so I don't understand her effort to dismiss their experience with a throwaway line? It's a huge issue.

The author's writing becomes progressively more annoying by the end for me personally: her humor is not for me--mentioning excrement over 10x--and she starts racking up swears for the sake of it in the second half ("I was a fucking wonder. And I continue to be a fucking wonder" (pg. 306). Um, okay?) The dialogue seems unrealistically melodramatic, but if it's factual, it is what it is. It's still eyerolling.

Foo created a reflective memoir and sees nothing wrong with her actions after researching, interviewing, writing, and editing, and that's a feat in itself. Not having common decency after this journey seems like a huge blind spot, and I don't think that was intentional. So maybe this memoir should have been shelved for a while because much of this comes across as tone deaf. Talking about unconditional love when you've shown that love is conditional (cutting off her parents) doesn't ring true.

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samcsmith's review

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

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jburkespraker's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

Not sure what to add as a trigger warning because there a so many. I loved the short chapters and the way she pulls the audio recordings in at the end.

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frenchpants's review

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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bedroominarles's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.75

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