Named one of Kirkus Reviews “28 Indies Worth Discovering”

"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

“An honest, insightful, engaging, wise, and redemptive book about one woman’s reckoning with childhood neglect and C-PTSD, that will speak to anyone who seeks to heal their own intergenerational patterns of wounding—and to hold their life story with self-compassion.”—Anne Liu Kellor, author of Heart Radical

“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

"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’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

“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