How to Cope Through Pain: Shigeko Ito on Complex PTSD and Family Healing

Shigeko Ito is an author, educator, and mental health advocate with a PhD in Education from Stanford University. Drawing on her cross-cultural experience and academic insight, she writes about intergenerational trauma, the lasting effects of childhood emotional neglect, and the healing process.

Her memoir, The Pond Beyond the Forest: Reflections on Childhood Trauma and Motherhood, tells the story of a middle-aged Japanese immigrant mother struggling to raise her teenage son and save her marriage while confronting memories of her own childhood trauma as her son enters adolescence. Throughout the journey, Shigeko remains committed to healing herself and improving her relationships with her husband and son.

Her story resonates with many readers, especially those who feel burdened by unresolved trauma. In her interview, Shigeko spoke about the challenges of parenting as a survivor of childhood trauma, healing from complex PTSD, and how writing her memoir deepened her self-understanding, self-compassion, and acceptance. She is passionate about raising awareness of complex PTSD, a still-emerging diagnosis that many people overlook because of its subtle and elusive nature.

READ HER MEMOIR HERE

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.

CONNECT WITH SHIGEKO HERE

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You Can Break Through Severe Generational Trauma Including Holocaust Survival

Willie Handler is a child of two Holocaust survivors and has inherited not only their trauma but also their resilience. That resilience helped him battle through life’s challenges.

Willie Handler has reinvented himself on several occasions throughout his work career. He has been a hospital administrator, a government policy manager, an insurance expert, and a consultant. Following his retirement from the government, Willie began a writing career.

Growing antisemitism and Holocaust denial motivated Willie to research and write about his family’s story during the Holocaust and the impact it had on him. 

Willie has published three satirical fiction novels over the past few years. His latest book is a memoir focusing on growing up as a child of Holocaust survivors. He is currently working on a book dealing with generational trauma in descendants of Holocaust survivors. 

In light of what is happening in the world, this interview with Willie is timely and enlightening.

Growing up, the author and his family constantly lived under the shadow of the Holocaust. There was persistent tension at home. He was frequently told: “Finish your dinner. We didn’t have food like this in the camps.”

His parents only provided bits and pieces of their Holocaust experiences since he “didn’t need to know.” A few years ago, Willie Handler decided that he did need to know. Thus began a journey into his family’s past, eventually revealing their extraordinary survival and the painful losses that came with it. Their stories reflect not only the evil that swept Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, but also the resilience of the human spirit.

His parents appeared to have taken some shocking secrets to their graves, forcing the author to view them in a different light. With the acknowledgement of his own buried trauma, and following years of research, he has finally stepped out of the shadows.

CONNECT WITH WILLIE HERE

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Are You a Victim? Or Someone Who Wants a Better Life?

Have you had to survive staggering loss in your life? Robin Cote is a widow who also lost her young daughter but taught herself how to heal in spite of life's sometimes-ugly dealings.

Robin is a survivor, not only of loss but also of domestic violence, verbal and emotional abuse, rape and bullying. She is an outspoken advocate for victims. Through all she has endured, "VICTIM" will never be a word use to describe Robin.

Her journey started when she was raped as a teenager. Robin's father didn't believe her and wouldn't call the cops. He said she deserved it because she had a sip of beer (which had been drugged) and her mother didn't comfort her. From that point on, she KNEW she was on her own.