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

by Stephanie Foo

I am not a girl. I am a sword.

became a happy little family: me, him, a mischievous cat.

If you are beaten for hundreds of mistakes, then every mistake becomes dangerous. If dozens of people let you down, all people become untrustworthy. The world itself becomes a threat.

“You don’t have to fix anything to deserve love. I love you for who you are. You can fuck up. You can do whatever you want and you’ll still deserve love.”

The abuse is either walled off from conscious awareness and memory . . . or minimized, rationalized, and excused, so that whatever did happen was not really abuse.”