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

by Stephanie Foo

Hatred, I learned quickly, was the antidote to sadness. It was the only safe feeling. Hatred does not make you cry at school. It isn’t vulnerable. Hatred is efficient. It does not grovel. It is pure power.

It didn’t matter if my parents were proud of me. I was proud of me, and that was the most important thing. Because I had done this. I’d gotten myself here with my own hard work.

It’s okay to have some things you never get over. In the span of half an hour, this man whom I had known for less than a season did what nobody in my life ever had: He took all of my sins and simply forgave them. He didn’t demand relentless improvement. There were no ultimatums. He asserted that I was enough, as is. The gravity of it stunned me into silence. Joey was the opposite of the dread.

How had I not known, until this moment, the pleasure of breathing? How had I not known that feeling air on my palms could be so comforting? How much pleasure had I missed because I was too in my head to pay attention? How often had I longed to leave all of this, to die, because I hadn’t understood how satisfying it could be?

But the sadness of a lost childhood feels like yearning, impossible desire. It feels like a hollow, insatiable hunger.

We all want to be taken care of, and that’s okay. The woman who appears to me when I meditate, in her soft, baggy clothes—she isn’t quite the same as a parent, and she never will be. But she takes me into her arms and whispers, “I want to love you.” I lean in and let her.

Again, women who experienced childhood trauma are 80 percent more likely to experience painful endometriosis.4 They’re much more likely to develop premenstrual dysphoric disorder. More likely to develop fibroids.5 It may affect fertility.6 They’re at greater risk for postpartum depression7 and depression in menopause.

The pain from being slapped to the floor or lashed with hangers—it was not gone. It had been stored deep inside my joints and womb. I was still being punished.