"A compelling, honest, and ultimately victorious memoir."—Kirkus Reviews
The Pond Beyond the Forest
Reflections on Childhood Trauma and Motherhood
Description
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.
Reviews
". . . an evocative exploration of childhood trauma, married life, motherhood, and mental health issues."—Readers' Favorite, 5-star review
“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
