Congrats to Shigeko Ito!

A big congrats to our client Shigeko Ito on the release of her memoir The Pond Beyond the Forest, which has received a great review from Kirkus:

“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.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Raised in an affluent but emotionally disconnected family in Japan, Shigeko often felt emotionally abandoned. At sixteen, she stayed with a loving and nurturing American family through a summer homestay program in California—a stark contrast to her Japanese family that deeply unsettled her. Upon returning to Japan, this familial culture shock was so painful that it triggered an existential crisis. Alarmed by her erratic behavior and emotional outbursts, her family committed her to a mental hospital at seventeen, where she was misdiagnosed and treated as schizophrenic.

At age twenty-two, seeking to escape Japan's rigid society and her neglectful childhood home, she immigrated to America. In her new environment, she thrived, building what seemed to be a stable life, and believed her traumatic past was behind her.

Until it wasn't.

Motherhood proved far more challenging than she could have ever imagined. Her son’s high school years proved particularly daunting, unmasking the fragile foundations of her emotional stability. That was when her past reemerged more intensely than ever before, unleashing emotional flashbacks to her childhood trauma and tumultuous teenage years. Compounded by daily stresses and menopausal irritability, she often retreated into emotional distancing and childish coping mechanisms—patterns threatening to unravel her most cherished achievement: her happy family.

In The Pond Beyond the Forest, Shigeko takes readers on a courageous journey to uncover the roots of her lifelong struggles and, through introspection, self-awareness, and self-acceptance, finds a path to healing—one that ultimately restores and strengthens both her family and marriage.

Grab your copy here.

Shigeko Ito grew up in Japan and immigrated to the United States to pursue higher education. She studied early childhood education, earning a PhD in Education from Stanford University. Drawing on her 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 CPTSD Foundation blog and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America website. In 2025, she was named a semifinalist in the nonfiction category of the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. She worked for many years at Montessori preschools and is an avid animal lover, especially of dogs, and enjoys birding, gardening and raising mason bees. She lives in Seattle with her husband of thirty years.