“A compelling, honest, and ultimately victorious memoir.
— Kirkus Reviews”
Title: The Pond Beyond the Forest
Author: Shigeko Ito
Publisher: She Writes Press
Distributor: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: October 7, 2025
Length: 248 pages
ISBN-13: 9781647429805
Format: Paperback, eBook
Genre: Memoir
Keywords: Mental Health, Generational Trauma, Motherhood, Marriage, Complex Trauma
Purchase: Simon & Schuster | Book Passage | Third Place Books | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon
“… an evocative exploration of childhood trauma, married life, motherhood, and mental health issues.
— Readers’ Favorite, 5-star review”
“...honest, insightful, engaging, wise, and redemptive.... read this book with deep interest and respect for the journey that Ito takes us on.
— Anne Liu Kellor, author of Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging”
“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”
“Shigeko’s memoir blends the voice of a storyteller with the perspective of a researcher. She confronts difficult life challenges by taking a narrative deep breath and moving forward. I love the way she balances her Japanese mother’s behaviors with her own as she parents a teenager.
— Janine Brodine, retired professor, Department of English, University of Washington”
“Weaving two narratives, Ito navigates motherhood while reconciling her own difficult childhood in Japan. Finding solace in animals, her Pacific Northwest family, and eventually in herself, this is a moving, poignant account of intergenerational trauma and what lies beyond it.
— Gail Folkins, author of Light in the Trees”
“Shigeko Ito’s The Pond Beyond the Forest is a fascinating story of self-creation after trauma, told in unsparing, unvarnished, and often hilarious prose. I devoured this memoir about the long shadow cast by childhood neglect, and how midlife motherhood brought Ito into a confrontation with her own past and unhealed pain.
Thoughtful, courageous, and deeply felt, this is a book readers will remember long after they’ve turned the final page.
— Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch”
“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, television journalist and author of Brave Mrs. Sato”
“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”
“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. She has secret weapons: empathy, objectivity, persistence, a sense of humor, and a love for animals. We see them all. Ito shares equally stories of her mistakes and successes with the same openness and warmth. This balance teaches us something worth learning.
— John R Wallace, PhD, Senior Lecturer Emeritus of Japanese Literature at
University of California, Berkeley”
“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”