What I Learned from What My Bones Know: Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo--Hybrid Memoir AKA Memoir Plus

Weaving Information and Personal Story in Hybrid Memoir

Stephanie Foo’s memoir takes the form of a hybrid memoir (memoir plus). This type of memoir weaves a personal story with factual information from psychology, history, science, or some other discipline integrally related to the writer’s personal story. Foo weaves her personal story of healing from complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) with factual information about the disorder; methods to cope with symptoms of the disorder, such as anxiety and depression; therapeutic approaches that promote healing; and intergenerational trauma, particularly as it applies to the Asian community in which she grew up. 

 Hybrid memoir can be challenging to write because it requires balancing factual information with story and nonfiction writing techniques with narrative strategies that maintain reader engagement through a compelling character arc of transformation. Stephanie Foo navigates these challenges in several ways. She begins the prologue with seven words that brilliantly foreshadow what the book will be about:

Do you want to know your Diagnosis?”

These are the first words on the first page. These seven words, posed as a question, brilliantly foreshadow not only what the book will be about, but also how the narrative and character arcs will unfold over the course of the story. The therapist’s question to Foo occurs on a day when Foo reaches a decision that marks the memoir's inciting incident and a major turning point in her life. She is thirty years old, battling what she describes as the painful “fanged beast” of anxiety and depression. The battle has raged since she was twelve. Every time she believes she has slain the beast, and she has slain it hundreds of times, it reanimates and attacks her once again.  Her therapist has taught her coping skills for anxiety, communication skills,  relationship skills, and ways to manage her depression, all of which have improved her life. But she is tired of pulling herself up and out of depression. She says to her therapist, “I don’t want to pull anymore. I want a dumbwaiter, or an escalator, or a floating rainbow drug cloud. Anything to lift me toward emotional stability. To fix me.”  But to fix the problem, requires understanding what that problem is. The therapist indicates that the problem is complex post-traumatic stress syndrome (C-PTSD), which resulted from years of neglect and abuse by both of Foo’s parents throughout her childhood and adolescence. Foo’s initial reaction to the diagnosis, when she reads more about it after the therapy session, is devastation:​

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​…it is a biography of my life: The difficulty regulating my emotions. The tendency to overshare and trust the wrong people. The dismal self-loathing. The trouble I have maintaining relationships. The unhealthy relationship with my abuser. The tendency to be aggressive but unable to tolerate aggression from others. It’s all true. It’s all me. . . one word echoes in my head: Broken. Broken. Broken.

Present Information After Establishing the Personal Story, Struggle, and What is at Stake
 
Despite feeling broken, Foo is determined to understand the diagnosis and to heal. This decision sets the narrative and character arcs in motion. She is clear about what is at stake if she does not succeed—self-loathing, the relentless battle with the fanged beast of anxiety and depression, frequent relationship ruptures, a life of chaos, crisis, and pain. At this point, the memoir becomes a quest with high stakes. This is a compelling strategy to maintain reader engagement. But a quest for understanding requires her to weave information into her personal story.  

 Foo presents factual information as part of her personal story rather than as a separate entity. She carefully selects the most relevant episodes of abuse and abandonment. These scenes enable the reader to understand the cause of C-PTSD, which she will present in more depth in later chapters. These scenes also enable the reader to grasp her difficulties with emotion, relationships, perfectionism, and overworking. Ultimately, they invest the reader in her, her personal story, and her struggle. Readers have walked with Foo not only through the abuse she suffered but also through her graduation from high school, her graduation from college, and her successful career as a journalist despite all that has happened to her.

Place Information Passages with Relevant Story Events

Having created a high level of reader engagement,  Foo spends several chapters providing in-depth information about C-PTSD, techniques that help her cope with the symptoms, such as meditation, mindfulness, grounding, and self-soothing, and her experiences with different types of therapy to heal. But even as the weight of passages shifts toward information, Foo continues to incorporate her personal experiences. After three chapters, which place more weight on information than on story, the remaining chapters are predominantly story, weaving in information when it is relevant to events in Foo’s life. 
 
Because Foo introduces the diagnosis as the basis for the narrative and character arc on the first page, because she invited her reader into her experiences and provided important context through brief informational passages, the reader is prepared for the transformation in her thoughts and feelings four years after the diagnosis. While the fanged beast of anxiety and depression still attacks from time to time, she has hope and agency because she knows that bad feelings are temporary and has proven to herself and the reader that she has become the beast’s master:

​Healing is never final. It is never perfection. But along with the losses are the triumphs. I accept the lifelong battle and its limitations now. Even though I must always carry the weight of grief on my back, I have become strong. My legs and shoulders are long, hard bundles of muscle. The burden is lighter than it was. I no longer cower and crawl my way through this world. Now, I hitch my pack up. And as I wait for the beast to come, I dance.
 

There are many ways to maintain reader engagement in a memoir when incorporating factual information. Foo's strategies include establishing the narrative arc, the character arc of transformation, and high stakes in the first chapter, investing the reader in the personal story and struggle before presenting in-depth factual information, and providing information only when it is relevant to unfolding events in the story.