The Pond Beyond the Forest - by Shigeko Ito (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

For fans of Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know, a memoir of a middle-aged Japanese immigrant mother's struggle to raise her teenage son and save her marriage when she finds herself triggered by memories of her own childhood trauma as he enters adolescence.

At age twenty-two, Shigeko Ito immigrated to America to escape Japan's rigid society and a neglectful childhood home that landed her in a mental hospital at seventeen. She thrived in her new, healthier environment and thought her traumatic past was all behind her.

Until it wasn't.

Motherhood, she realized, was far more challenging than she could have ever imagined. But it was her son's high school years that proved to be particularly daunting, and that was when her past reemerged--in the form of intense flashbacks to her childhood trauma and tumultuous teenage years. With the stream of daily stresses compounded by menopausal irritability, Shigeko often found herself regressing into a bunker-like mentality with childish coping mechanisms, a pattern that threatened to undo her most prized achievement: her happy family.

In The Pond Beyond the Forest, Shigeko faces her past head-on, taking the reader along on her quest to uncover the root causes of her lifelong struggles--a journey that leads to deeper self-awareness, understanding, and acceptance, and ultimately saves her family and marriage.

Review Quotes

"A compelling, honest, and ultimately victorious memoir."--Kirkus Reviews

". . . an evocative exploration of childhood trauma, married life, motherhood, and mental health issues."--Readers' Favorite, 5-star review

"At the center of this remarkable memoir is a heartfelt desire of a mother to raise her child with love, to preserve her marriage, and, for these things to happen, to escape the grip that anxiety has on her . . . This balance teaches us something worth learning."--John R Wallace, PhD, senior lecturer emeritus of Japanese literature at University of California at Berkeley

"Shigeko Ito tells a moving story of breaking the cycle and healing intergenerational trauma, offering hope to others that happiness and peace can be found in simply being who you are and living in the present moment."--Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, clinical psychologist at Stanford School of Medicine and author of From Mindfulness to Heartfulness

"An intimate memoir filled with breathtaking detail. Complicated by her Japanese upbringing that demands obedience and self-sacrifice, Ito confronts her demons while striving to build a family of her own in the United States. A fascinating read that will resonate with anyone who has experienced unresolved childhood trauma."--Lori Matsukawa, journalist and author of Brave Mrs. Sato

"Couched within a Japan-to-America immigrant's tale, this memoir carries the reader along the universal human journey of seeking an authentic sense of self, free from the unconscious, intrusive, and invalidating beliefs embedded during childhood. Readers are sure to appreciate aspects of themselves or loved ones in Ito's revealing and emotionally fraught self-accounting."--Boadie Dunlop, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine

"Shigeko Ito's The Pond Beyond the Forest is a page-turning and candid memoir that chronicles the experience of parenting a teen while dealing with the fallout from one's own childhood trauma. In turns hilarious and poignant, this memoir is so real. Many will see themselves in this story and no longer feel alone."--Theo Pauline Nestor, author of Writing Is My Drink

About the Author

Shigeko Ito grew up in Japan and immigrated to the United States in her twenties to pursue higher education. She studied early childhood development and education, earning a PhD in Education from Stanford University. Drawing on cross-cultural experiences and academic expertise, she explores themes of trauma, resilience, and healing, with a particular focus on childhood emotional neglect. Her writing has appeared on the Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) Foundation blog and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) website. She worked for many years at a Montessori preschool and is an avid animal lover, especially of dogs, who enjoys birding, gardening, and raising mason bees. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband of thirty years.