INTERVIEW: Shigeko Ito, Author of The Pond Beyond the Forest

Interviewed by Leslie Lindsay

Like Shigeko Ito, I am no stranger to childhood trauma. Like Shigeko Ito, I bet you aren’t, either. It seems inescapable, this concept of a ‘perfect childhood.’ Does anyone have such a thing?

In her debut memoir, The Pond Beyond the Forest: Reflecions on Childhood Trauma and Motherhood (She Writes Press; October 2025), Seattle writer Shigeko Ito, who holds a PhD from Stanford University in child development, delves into her Japanese upbringing, marked by obedience and self-sacrifice, while melding her current life in the United States, married to a physician and raising a teenaged son.

This luminous and compellingly honest memoir recounts Ito’s journey of self-discovery and healing from an emotionally neglectful childhood in Japan. The trauma of her upbringing, she shares in The Pond Beyond the Forest, took hold during the early days of starting her own family and becoming a mother.

From her neglectful childhood home in Japan — which landed her in a psychiatric ward at age 17 — to her immigration to the U.S. at age twenty-two, this relatively slim book accounts for a wide slice of Ito’s life.

A mother myself, I was immediately moved by the dedication of The Pond Beyond the Forest, in which Ito declares:

To all moms with unhealed childhood trauma.

But you don’t have to be a mom to read this book. You don’t even have to identify as female. It’s about parenting struggles, mental health, marriage, and so much more.

Please join me in conversation with Shigeko Ito.

---

Leslie Lindsay: Shigeko, thank you so much for chatting with me about The Pond Beyond the Forest. I am always intrigued by the genesis of a book-length project, something that takes an incredible amount of time, effort, self-reflection, and more? And did you find what you were looking for?

Shigeko Ito: I began exploring creative writing in 2007 when my son was ten years old. Before that, I journaled as a way to cope with the unexpectedly difficult experiences of motherhood that depleted me, leaving me feeling as if I had nothing left of myself. A recommendation from an acquaintance led me to a week-long writing retreat in British Columbia, where I first discovered the profound healing power of storytelling. I returned to that retreat several more times, deepening my connection with writing each year. Some chapters of my memoir originate from pieces I wrote as far back as that first retreat.

I took many other classes in the meantime, but it wasn’t until 2015 that I seriously committed to the idea of a book-length project. The process of writing and revising took many years, but through this journey, one of the most valuable outcomes was a profound shift in how I see myself — gained by revisiting and working through painful experiences in a way that fostered healing and self-acceptance. So yes, I found what I was seeking: not just a completed memoir, but deeper insight, understanding, and inner peace.

LL: Relatedly, titles and book design often encapsulate so much of the meaning and symbolism of a book. From a title perspective, The Pond Beyond the Forest marks a significant place for you, perhaps an interior place, or a literal place. Can you talk about that, please? And also, the section dividers appear to be koi swimming in a circle, I saw that as a nod to your Japanese upbringing, but also in terms of cycles. Am I on the right track and did you have any say in the book design?

SI: The title, The Pond Beyond the Forest, came directly from the Prologue Fish Dream, an actual dream I had a few years after moving to the States. This dream was so vivid it stayed with me for a long time, and later I realized it perfectly encapsulates the cyclical nature of my hero’s journey in its simplest form. It symbolized my escape from a place of darkness — my emotionally hollow and disconnected family, and the restrictive Japanese society where I felt stifled and unable to be myself.

The forest represents challenges, obstacles, trials, and the unknown — much like the hero’s journey where the protagonist must go through fire to emerge stronger, wiser, and more resilient. Releasing the fish into the big pond beyond the forest signaled my freedom and liberation from the dark past. I also have a special affinity for koi ponds, having grown up in a home with a beautiful Japanese garden featuring a large koi pond and waterfall. It was a place of refuge, sanctuary, and solace where I spent much of my time alone. I loved playing with very tame koi who let me stroke their heads and liked to nibble my fingers.

The pond symbolically represents reflection, contemplation, introspection, and insight, while the koi fish in many cultures, especially in East Asia, symbolize fortitude, overcoming adversity, and transformation. So the title is rich with symbolism. And yes, you are right with your interpretation on koi dingbat: the koi swimming in a circle with one big koi and one small koi symbolizes both the mother-child dyad relationship and the broader continuous life cycle, representing harmony, balance, interconnectedness, and the cyclical nature of life.

LL: You had a very challenging childhood in Japan. Your mother was a socialite and emotionally distant, to the point of being neglectful. You have two older brothers, and a father who was a surgeon and opened his own hospital. I’m curious if you can tell us more about your family of origin?

SI: I was born into a wealthy but emotionally disconnected family of five. I often describe us as people who just happened to live under the same roof but had little to do with one another — no shared meals, no meaningful communication, and no one checking on each other. As depicted in the Barabara (disconnected/dismembered) Family chapter, the separateness was quite extreme. Yet growing up in such a family environment, I had no frame of reference, and as a child, I simply accepted this as normal.

From the outside, my family may have appeared perfect, but beneath the surface, there was significant dysfunction stemming from the absence of fundamental ingredients like attention, support, and guidance. I was also sent to a school far away starting in kindergarten, so I had no neighborhood friends. The most devastating consequence of this experience, I believe, was a distorted sense of self — an internalized belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, leading to a negative self-perception and identity.

LL: It’s interesting to me that often our childhood traumas tend to resurface at times in our adult lives when we are faced with new tasks that mimic the past. For example, when you became a mother to your son David, many feelings of emotional neglect returned. I think this speaks to the long-term effects of attachment trauma. Can you tell us more about that, please?

SI: My motherhood experiences were quite challenging from the very beginning, despite my genuine excitement about becoming a mother. There were external circumstances, such as being a transplant right before my son was born and having no support system in place, my husband just starting his grueling residency, and a traumatic childbirth that led to a series of complications and repercussions. More importantly, however, I set an unreasonably high bar for myself as a mother simply because I didn’t want to be like my neglectful mother. I became exhausted and depleted early on, but I was so focused on my son’s well-being that I didn’t even realize I was experiencing postpartum depression.

In my memoir, I focused on my son’s high school years, because that was when everything I’d been suppressing finally detonated. When we have unresolved trauma from the past, it may stay dormant, but it never disappears — it gets triggered during periods of extreme stress. I was caught off guard when my unresolved attachment issues resurfaced. I overreacted to my son’s ups and downs because I could no longer distinguish whether they were simply normal teenage angst. In my case, when I was 17, such mood swings and an existential crisis led to a temporary psychotic episode.

LL: There were several ‘threshold’ moments in The Pond Beyond the Forest, in which you were faced with moments to reconsider or recalibrate your life. One of which was when you were hospitalized in a mental hospital at seventeen, another when you lived with an American family during school and experienced unconditional love and support for the first time, and then your marriage to Peter, motherhood, but also your father’s funeral. If you had to pick just one of those, what would you say was the most pivotal moment in breaking the cycle?

SI: It is difficult to pick just one. But if I had to, I would say the summer I met my caring and loving American host family in Napa was one of the most pivotal moments of awakening that absolutely changed the trajectory of my life. Without that experience, I may never have envisioned the kind of family I wanted to create, nor consciously confronted and dealt with the invisible wounds I had inherited from my family of origin.

Since I became a mother relatively later in life, my perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause overlapped with the child-rearing years, adding another layer of complication to the process. However, having the model of the host family helped me untangle the threads of family dynamics and piece together my fragmented memories into a more coherent and constructive narrative, allowing healing to occur.

LL: Ultimately, I found The Pond Beyond the Forest compulsively readable, funny even, and though the material was often heavy, I found a lightness pulsing the story forward. What types of self-care did you utilize as you wrote? What might you advise other writers who want to broach vulnerable and traumatic experiences?

SI: Hmm, that’s a tough question — as you might have noticed, I’m not particularly good at self-care. However, I was driven to finish this book, so I took frequent breaks (sometimes lasting months), during which I read other memoirs and craft books, enrolled in writing classes, and sought support from other memoir writers. This is one reason it took almost a decade to finish, but looking back, I needed that much time to process the scope of this topic. Memoir is all about transformation, so I couldn’t complete it while still in the midst of it. Another factor might be my quirky sense of humor, which finds absurdity and even humor in the darkest moments — a skill I may have developed as a coping mechanism. This often (but not always) helps prevent me from going all the way down the rabbit hole. If I had to pick one thing, though, I’d say I didn’t rush the process, if that can count as a form of self-care.

LL: Thank you so much for this, Shigeko. Truly a remarkable journey. How are things now? Can you give us a glimpse of your son and husband? The dogs?

SI: Things are going great now, thank you for asking. My husband is still working hard as a pathologist but is planning to wind down within a year or so before retiring completely. He developed a keen interest in mountaineering late in life and is now gearing up for another big climb in January. My son lives and works in Brooklyn and seems to be really enjoying his job. He still plays piano and will soon be participating in an amateur piano contest taking place in Paris. Our toy poodle Amber passed away about two and a half years ago at the age of nineteen. We now have a one-year-old rambunctious Australian mini Labradoodle who is very affectionate and adorable—though, boy, she’s high-maintenance. I wanted a dog who is quiet and sleeps all day, but she’s totally the opposite. I seem to have coddled her too much and am now dealing with the consequences, but I’m still debating whether to send her to a two-week boot camp. I’ve been sleep-deprived since she joined us on our 30th anniversary on Valentine’s Day. Sounds familiar?

---