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

Foo rewatches the movie Mommie Dearest in an attempt to trigger herself for her next EMDR session. The movie has one dramatic scene in which a mother beats her daughter using a wire hanger, which Foo has always thought mirrored her life. Although she does not cry rewatching the movie, she finds the scene disturbing.

At her next session, Eleanor asks Foo to imagine a safe place before she they start the EMDR therapy. Once she feels herself safe with Joey in the desert, Eleanor instructs Foo to recall the memory of her mother beating her with a wire hanger while the EMDR machine beeps alternatively in her right and left ear. She is to follow that sound with her eyes closed while reconstructing the image of herself in the closet and her mother looming over her. As the scene unfolds before her eyes, Foo realizes that her mother never loved her and that she was tasked with taking care of her own parents. She feels tears on her face and is stunned that EMDR has worked for her.

Eleanor asks Foo to imagine Joey coming to rescue the younger version of herself. His attempts are not successful, because as a child she could not imagine surviving without her parents.