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

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Prologue-Chapter 5

Part 1, Chapters 6-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-16

Part 2, Chapters 17-22

Part 3, Chapters 23-27

Part 3, Chapters 28-31

Part 4, Chapters 32-35

Part 5, Chapters 36-39

Part 5, Chapters 40-43

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Trauma and Silence in Asian American Communities

One of the major topics of Stephanie Foo’s memoir is silence in Asian American communities surrounding mental health. Historically, many immigrants and refugees from Asia arrived in the US after surviving extremely traumatic experiences, yet they often refused to share those experiences with their children, even when asked. For example, Foo’s father grew up in poverty and his family witnessed extreme violence during the Cold War. Other refugees had to survive excruciating conditions while migrating to the US, some even losing family members to the voyage. Foo is convinced that silently carrying such trauma cannot be healthy. In her own case, she laments that had her parents only spoken about their traumatic memories, their family might not have been torn apart. Her memoir is in part an exploration of the likely causes of this silence, both within her family and within the broader community.

Foo suggests that one contributing factor is the stereotype of Asian Americans as a “model minority.” To the outsider, Asian American immigrants often appear to comprise a monolithic block defined by upward mobility and socioeconomic success. This myth not only elides the widely varied experiences of different Asian American groups but also masks the trauma and anxieties that may lurk beneath the surface of even the most outwardly successful families. Foo also believes that many Asian American immigrants see working hard and becoming successful as the ultimate way to redeem or let go of their traumatic past. They often impose this stringent standard on their children, forcing them to excel academically at the expense of everything else. Members of the younger generation, vaguely aware of the sacrifices their parents went through to help them thrive in the US, often attempt to forgive and forget instances of abuse. These elements contribute to a general silence on the topic of trauma.

Regardless of the silence’s source, Foo believes it is ultimately healthier to speak up. She argues that communication is important for maintaining healthy relationships, whereas isolation can only serve to deepen the trauma. Even if the older generation hides their past, the suffering they have endured is passed down through their genes. Their children will be affected whether they process their trauma or not. Foo encourages Asian Americans to speak up about their own mental health, rejecting the notion that doing so is weak or self-indulgent. In the end, Foo concludes that the healing and recovery process always involves self-love, community, gratitude, forgiveness, and kindness.

How Trauma Shapes Identity

What My Bones Know is a story about healing from complex trauma, but it does not conclude with Foo freeing herself of C-PTSD. Rather, her journey leads her toward managing and embracing it as part of her identity. While Foo initially feels the debilitating weight of her diagnosis, even thinking of it as a pathological condition that will determine much of her life’s course—shortening her expected lifespan, rendering her more vulnerable to addiction, and preventing her from forging long-lasting relationships—she eventually finds agency within the diagnosis.

Trauma shapes Foo’s identity before she is even born: As her later research reveals, the epigenetic changes that trauma produces can pass from one generation to the next, and Foo believes that her family’s history makes such inheritance likely in her case. Compounding these biological changes are the learned behaviors Foo adopted throughout her childhood to survive her parents’ abuse. By the time she is an adult, these coping mechanisms—e.g., her defensiveness in interpersonal interactions—are so deeply ingrained as to be instinctive aspects of her personality. However, as she embraces self-love, distances herself from her father, and builds a healthy new community of friends and family, Foo realizes her complex trauma does not render her a passive victim even as it informs her character. Though she cannot change her past, she has acquired tools to help her in the present and to look forward to the future. She is not doomed to continue the vicious cycle of trauma begetting violence as long as she can identify the ways trauma has shaped her and recognize when those patterns of thought and behavior are maladaptive.

The realization that those patterns aren’t always maladaptive also helps Foo make peace with who she is. The final chapter of What My Bones Know argues that C-PTSD can transform into a superpower in times of crisis. When the world is in chaos, Foo’s trauma is not a debilitating mental disorder: It is a survival mechanism that allows her to think clearly and logically even under severe pressure. Having grown up in a household where survival was never guaranteed, Foo is used to facing life-and-death situations. By the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, she had already reconciled with the past and embraced the future; thus, she saw in the pandemic a chance to turn her C-PTSD into something helpful. Armed with empathy and a multitude of instruments to help ease others’ anxieties, Foo quickly became a supportive figure among her friends. Despite being an essential part of Foo, trauma does not control her; she can choose how to respond to it, even turning it to good purpose.

The Brain–Body Connection

One of the book’s most pervasive themes is the complex, shifting relationship between memory, emotion, and physiology. Foo cites recent scientific research suggesting that trauma can encode itself in the DNA of those who experience it, passing down to the next generation not only through behavioral patterns but through actual genetic inheritance. Initially, this information seems to confirm Foo’s sense that her C-PTSD is a permanent, debilitating condition over which she has no control. Only through extensive therapy and self-reflection does she come to understand that, though her personality will always be informed by trauma, she can control how her trauma impacts her.

In Chapter 36, Foo reluctantly goes on hormonal birth control to combat endometriosis despite her awareness that this form of contraception will likely exacerbate her depression. As expected, she experiences a dangerous resurgence of the worst symptoms of her C-PTSD in conjunction with pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). This experience prompts her to think deeply about the degree to which physiological changes can alter the emotions just as emotional experiences can trigger physiological changes. The mind is inseparable from the body, and Foo realizes that she cannot treat one without treating the other. Foo also thinks about this experience in terms of the gendered nature of the conversation around PTSD, which is often thought of as a problem primarily affecting men, particularly soldiers and veterans, even though it is statistically much more prevalent among women.

In exploring the brain–body connection, Foo asks probing questions about identity and free will that ultimately connect to the book’s other themes. As she embarks on her healing journey, she worries that she will always be a product of her trauma, and what she learns about how deeply traumatic experiences encode themselves in both the body and the brain seems only to confirm this. However, as she gains insight into herself and the communities around her, she realizes that she is in control of what she does with the materials she’s been given and that even though her traumatic memories will always be a part of her, she has the agency to shape her own life and identity.

Love and Community As Healing

Foo goes through different stages of healing, as there is no simple therapy to treat complex PTSD. She begins by reconciling with her past and accepting that her parents never loved her. This helps her stabilize her emotions in the present and gives her enough emotional distance to grieve her lost childhood. The next step is learning to self-soothe and ground herself in the immediate present when depressive episodes or panic attacks grip her. This process involves various forms of therapy, including minding her diet, exercising more, trying out various forms of meditative yoga, and exploring PTSD treatments such as EMDR. While exploring these various options, Foo slowly learns both to manage her present symptoms and to offer herself the love she deserves.

However, the greatest aid to Foo’s recovery is the long-term support provided by Joey, his family, her therapists, and her group of close friends. Abandoned as a child, Foo grows up to be defiant, mistrustful, and combative. She realizes her problem as a college student, when her friends begin to abandon her and her boyfriend breaks up with her, claiming to fear that she might kill him. These experiences leave Foo terrified that she will end up alone: She never learned the right way to interact with others and does not know how to forge lasting and meaningful relationships, even as the absence of familial support makes her all the more fearful of abandonment. Her anxiety often stems from her perceived lack of social skill: She becomes depressed when she thinks she has offended others and constantly berates herself for it.

Healing therefore involves addressing the void inside her by building a strong community around her. Foo realizes the only way to do this is through love, gratitude, support, and forgiveness. When both parties are empathetic and supportive, even fights can deepen bonds, strengthening relationships via two-way apologies. Forgiveness and gratitude are natural parts of healthy interpersonal relationships, whereas combativeness and violence only beget distance. Tellingly, Foo feels the void inside her filled for the first time at her wedding, surrounded by family and friends. She has overcome her complex trauma—though she has not erased it—by building meaningful connections and by learning to love herself and others.