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

Joey is Foo’s husband. He first appears in Chapter 9 as a potential dating partner. Joey accepts Foo’s traumas and insecurities and is confident they can work as a couple if they are honest with each other. They discuss each other’s pasts and negotiate their future relationship.

Joey appears prominently as a symbol of safety and love in Foo’s therapy sessions and acts as a pillar of support throughout her struggles against C-PTSD. His family also welcomes Foo, providing her with the social support she lost after deciding to cut ties with her father; they are the primary vehicle through which the memoir explores Love and Community As Healing. Joey and Foo marry in the final chapters of the memoir.

Samantha is the alias for the main therapist who supported Foo throughout her teenage years and early adulthood. She is also the one who first diagnosed Foo with C-PTSD. Although Foo long relied on Samantha for comfort and for information on how to manage her anger and anxiety, she loses trust in her after learning that Samantha hid her diagnosis from her for eight years. While Foo understands that Samantha withheld the information for fear of upsetting her, she eventually moves on to see other therapists.

Auntie lives in Malaysia and is the matriarch of Foo’s paternal family. She is Foo’s father’s aunt and Foo’s great-aunt. She figures prominently as a supportive figure in Foo’s memories, showering her with love and praise whenever Foo’s family visits Malaysia. Despite her short stature, she is a strong, independent, boisterous, and unflappable figure who seems able to overcome all hardships life throws at her. It is later revealed that she treated Foo as her favorite because she knew of Foo’s mother’s abuse. Being powerless to change the situation, Auntie instead chose to console Foo by showing her care in other ways.

Foo later learns of the trauma that Auntie’s family underwent during periods of social upheaval in Malaysia, including World War II, multiple instances of colonization, and the Malayan Emergency (also called the Anti-British National Liberation War). Auntie’s father could not work due to a physical disability, which Auntie’s mother did not know when her parents arranged for her to marry him. Auntie and her mother were the primary caretakers of the family. Over the years, Auntie took odd jobs to support her family, including her younger sisters; although she would have no children of her own, she also cared for her sisters’ children and grandchildren.

Auntie is famous for saying, “[W]hen the sky falls, use it as a blanket” (202), a symbol of her resilience and strength of character. Auntie passes away suddenly shortly after Foo works up the courage to interview her about her past.

Tai Koo Ma is Foo’s eldest aunt on her father’s side of the family. Tai Koo Ma’s father, Foo’s paternal grandfather, was imprisoned and presumably tortured due to being perceived as a communist sympathizer during the British fight against the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). Because Foo’s grandfather could not work properly, Tai Koo Ma and Auntie became the family’s primary breadwinners. Tai Koo Ma’s mother, Foo’s paternal grandmother, was also briefly detained and imprisoned for illegal work when Tai Koo Ma was seven. Foo describes her as another strong, resilient woman who survived many instances of trauma. Tai Koo Ma is one of the few Malaysian relatives who attend Foo’s wedding at the end of the memoir.

Dr. Jacob Ham is the director of the Center for Child Trauma and Resilience at Mount Sinai, a hospital network located in New York City. Foo first learned of his work through the Road to Resilience podcast, where Ham caught her attention by using Bruce Banner and his alter-ego the Hulk as an allegory for how trauma can manifest in survivors of C-PTSD. Foo reached out to him for an interview and was offered free counseling on the condition that she agree to record their sessions. In the memoir, they have a mutually beneficial and supportive working relationship, and Dr. Ham helps Foo realize that her C-PTSD is not pathological but manageable and a part of her identity. With his help, Foo comes to understand that although her trauma has caused her depression and anxiety, it has also made her resilient and resourceful, especially in times of emergency. Foo playfully describes him as her “anti-mother,” a counter to the harmful behaviors taught to her by her parents.

Foo’s father was born in Malaysia to a family of Chinese descent. His early life was marked by poverty and political unrest. A brilliant student, he scored a perfect 1600 on the SATs and was accepted to a prestigious California university. After graduation, he returned to Malaysia, where he met and married Foo’s mother, a bank teller. Eventually, Foo’s father was hired by a Silicon Valley tech company, and the family resettled in San Jose. 

Foo’s father saw the eventual end of his marriage as a personal failure and a source of shame. He often took his frustrations out on Foo, and though he eventually remarried, he kept this information hidden from his daughter. Foo eventually learned that her father had two children with his new wife and had largely—though not completely—kept Foo a secret from them as well.

Foo depicts her relationship with her father as complicated. Though he rarely beats her as her mother does, he verbally abuses her and on multiple occasions threatens to kill both her and her mother. After his divorce, he and a teenage Foo bond for a short time over their mutual anger at Foo’s mother for ruining their lives. However, her father continually relies on Foo for emotional support when it should be the other way around. Eventually, he abandons her for his new family. Foo’s realization that he never loved but has relied on her for the emotional support she should have received from him is a turning point in her recovery. She eventually gathers the courage to distance herself from him.