The Pond beyond the Forest

A memoir of hope and healing

The Pond Beyond the Forest explores the long-term effects of attachment trauma on an adult survivor of childhood emotional neglect. From a Japanese and American cross-cultural perspective, it illustrates how hidden attachment wounds can lead to a host of issues, including parental struggles, marital strife, and mental health challenges.

When Shigeko was twenty-two, she immigrated to America to escape Japan’s rigid society and a neglectful family situation that had landed her in a mental hospital at seventeen. She thrived in the new, healthier environment, and her traumatic past seemed to be behind her. Later in life, however, motherhood didn’t come easily as she often felt burned out from overcompensating to provide her son with the love and attention she wished she’d received as a child.

And when her son enters high school and she tries to deal with his emotional outbursts and rebellious behavior, she sees mirrored in him aspects of her childhood anxiety and depression. The past she thought she’d left behind reemerges with intense flashbacks to her own childhood and teenage traumas. When overwhelmed by daily stresses, she regresses into a bunker-like mentality with mood swings and childish coping behaviors that threaten to ruin her life and family.

After trips home to Japan to attend her father’s funeral and the first anniversary of his death, however, she begins to find a path forward. Reimmersing herself in the dysfunctional dynamics of her Japanese family and revisiting the source of her trauma helps her gain insight into her situation. The friction at home in Seattle suddenly seems to pale in comparison; her family still has a chance. And she returns to her home in Seattle determined to heal herself and repair the damaged relationships with both her husband and son.

Told with blunt honesty but softened with humor, The Pond Beyond the Forest offers a voice-driven narrative of motherhood, marriage, menopause, and mental health. It alternates between her current life as a mother and wife in Seattle and her troubled upbringing by emotionally distant parents in Japan. As the story traces her journey of uncovering the root cause of her problems, she shares her experience not only as a cautionary tale but also as a message of hope that it is possible to heal from childhood attachment trauma.