What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
Stephanie Foo
Feb 2022 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Stephanie Foo
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78 reviews
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10 hr 2 min
Unabridged
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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
“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
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly
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.
Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.
Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.
“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
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly
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.
Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.
Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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
“Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, Ne...
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Ratings and reviews
78 reviews
K Beals
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October 6, 2026
I appreciate this book for addressing a subject the vast majority of people would prefer to pretend does not exist yet is entirely real and wholly destructive. That's why I gave it a 3rd star. However, it's not a very good book. Foo comes across as extremely self-involved and lacking insight about herself and her situation. This is definitely not any kind of guide for overcoming CPTSD. It's simply one person's story. Unfortunately, it sounds like the longest blog post ever, not a published and printed memoir. I dropped out with about 2.5 hrs left to listen to because I was too annoyed with Foo's alternate bragging and complaining about literally everything. I should've just gotten a copy from the library instead of spending money on the audiobook. It's worth a read, if you can keep an open mind (and have more patience than I do).
Rhonda Paradis
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June 7, 2023
learned a lot more about C-PTSD than I did in grad school because of her practical application to her own life. Even though I have studied mental illness, C-PTSD is rather new and hard to grasp, but with the help of her book I am able to understand many of the people in my life, even as a non-practitioner!
Hannah Brislin
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August 16, 2026
I appreciated her approach of focusing on the aftermath navigation. I feel this process is overlooked or not considered but us the most tone consuming part of the whole experience of surviving abuse. Her vulnerability in the final section was super helpful in my own understanding of my cptsd possibly the most relatable book on the journey of healing from trauma.
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