Book Review: What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

Rating: not rated

What My Bones Know is one of those memoirs I just don’t know how to rate. Raw and cutting, it’s a transparent account of Stephanie’s upbringing by abusive parents and her journey of working toward finding healing and wholeness after being diagnosed with CPTSD.

As a reader, bearing witness to detailed accounts of such gut-wrenching abuse was difficult. I had to take breaks from reading to care for my own heart. But I also think that there is something significantly important about bearing witness to one another’s pain as humans (I don’t think our society does enough of this; we tend to run from or avoid pain whenever possible), so I kept reading.

One thing I appreciated about such an honest sharing of her story was that it highlighted that life is not like a movie or a novel with a tidy, happily ever after, it-always-works-out-in-the-end kind of storybook conclusion. Often, there is no redemption arc that magically and suddenly makes all the bad things humans endure worthwhile. Recovery from trauma and abuse is messy and hard. It requires so much work and it doesn’t often lead to some definitive, “Oh, look, I’m all better now!” moment. Stephanie allowed us to see that in sharing her own story, including a lot of vulnerable moments. In doing so, she told a true story, not the glossy one society might have preferred to hear, and I think that’s brave.

For other potential readers:

This book is hard to read. It’s not the kind of book you read when you want to learn how to heal from your own CPTSD (though there is some research and other information scattered throughout that you might find helpful). It contains descriptive scenes that many readers will find troubling. There are a lot of trigger warnings that could be listed for this book, so do look them up before reading if you find being aware of those ahead of time helpful. The book does also contain strong language.

I read this book by switching between the hard copy (owned) and the audiobook (library). While I usually really enjoy audiobooks narrated by the author, I found that this one was harder to get through via audio than it was when I was reading the hardcover. If you are a highly empathetic person like me, you may find it easier to get through when reading the hard copy and hearing your own voice in your head vs. the author’s voice through audio. Hearing the pain and emotions in her voice made the narration feel heavier than it already did and the subject matter is already quite heavy, so I found it easier to read myself vs. have the book read to me.

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