The Pond Beyond the Forest: Reflections on Childhood Trauma and Motherhood

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.

Copyright:

2025

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

256 Pages

ISBN-13:

9781647429812

Related ISBNs:

9781647429805

Publisher:

She Writes Press

Date of Addition:

10/07/25

Copyrighted By:

Shigeko Ito

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Self-Help, Biographies and Memoirs, Parenting and Family, Psychology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.