Kallissa Bailey

“Learning to need a family—to rely on them and give myself to them—was a skill I had to learn in order to date Joey.”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“In Gretchen Schmelzer’s excellent, gentle book, Journey Through Trauma, she insists on the fifth page: “Some of you may choose a therapist: a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor, or member of the clergy. Some of you may choose some form of group therapy. But I am telling you up front, at the beginning: in order to heal, you will need to get help. I know you will try to look for the loophole in this argument—try to find a way that you can do this on your own—but you need to trust me on this. If there were a way to do it on your own I would have found it. No one looked harder for that loophole than I did.”[1]”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“You’ve interviewed sixty people who are estranged from their parents,” I stammered. “I don’t know if you have studies on it, but, um, in your experience—did the people who estranged themselves, did they feel free afterward?” “No,” Catherine said with certainty. I waited. There was nothing else.”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“He didn’t answer. He’d stopped calling months ago, now that I’d helped resolve his relationships with his family. I waited and I waited. My phone stayed silent.”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma