Hiroko is a great woman for us to profile this time of year. Her life is an example of making goals and accomplishing them in the midst of great trials.

While Hiroko was raised by parents who were well-meaning, she felt throughout her childhood that she just didn’t measure up. This feeling affected every area of her life, but it especially impacted her relationship with food. Food was used as a means of control in her childhood home, as reward and punishment. During her childhood she was also haunted by depression which followed her throughout life, especially after the births of each of her 4 children. At her lowest point Hiroko weighed 218 pounds and was a size 24. It wasn’t just the weight that meant rock-bottom to her, that was just an outward sign of all that was afflicting her.

For years she felt that the depression was her fault, feeling that if she exercised more, prayed more, ate less, or read her scriptures more that her depression would go away. After the birth of her second child, during a bout of post-partum psychosis, Hiroko took an overdose of medication. Her cry for help was answered when she went to counseling and was prescribed medication to help her with her depression. She realized that the Lord had given her a different means of getting help. She realized that for her, counseling and medication didn’t mean she was bad or weak, but they were blessings from a loving Heavenly Father who wanted her to be happy again. Her priesthood leader, or bishop, has been a source of great comfort and counsel as well. Hiroko still struggles with seasonal and post-partum depression, but now she has knowledge and tools that help.

After trying many ways and means to loose weight Hiroko found something that worked for her. I’ll let her tell you about it:

I prayed for guidance, explaining to the Lord that he made my body and knew it better than I did, that I couldn’t do the weight loss on my own. I asked my husband for a blessing as part of my start to losing weight. Two months later, the local gym offered a weight loss contest similar to a popular TV show. I was blessed to be on the right team, blessed with the right trainer that used gospel principles, at times, in training. He taught fat-loss, not weight-loss, nutrition, wise choices, how to control my food, how to change my behaviors and the whole picture, not just weight loss.

Oddly, I found myself starting to deal with other emotional issues after losing the weight. Issues I drowned out with food. I thought my issues were all food related, but it became apparent that there was a layer underneath all the fat I used as an emotional shield. That has been a road in and of itself as I have learned that food isn’t a means of escape (although, every now and again, I find myself there again). I faced the issues hidden between all the chocolate cakes, gallons of ice cream and whole pizzas. I still keep in mind the gospel principles that coincide with weight training and exercise as I work out. It keeps my focus in both aspects.

Now Hiroko is working to help others meet their goals for weight loss. She is making progress towards becoming a personal trainer and nutritionist. Being a wife and mother to her four children comes first though. Because of what she has been through she teaches her children that food is energy, to be used in moderation. She also teaches that they should be grateful for their body, no matter what shape it is. She says, “I have been blessed with key LDS women in my life. Women who have been a beacon to me throughout the course of going through all that I have. Most of them don’t even know how much of an influence for good and strength they have been to me. It has been a very long road to finding me, finding myself, finding the Lord. Truthfully, it’s a road I’m still on, but I’m trying my best to find the end of it.”
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This is Hiroko’s advice for people seeking to lose weight:

Different things work for different people. Don’t beat yourself up. There’s always tomorrow. Keep a food journal. The most important thing is writing down the emotion and the event with everything you eat. If it’s a regular meal, or if you just had it out with your teen and went for the Oreo’s. Tapping into why we eat is key to changing the behavior and the pattern. Do this for at least 2 weeks before starting any program. It’s easier to change when we know what to change. Everyone’s pace is different. Go at your pace, what you know you are inwardly capable of (because you are more capable than you think you are!).

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At the impressionable age of nine, Emily witnessed the murder of her 13-year-old sister at the hands of their own mother. After hearing this one fact about Emily, probably much like you, I wanted to know more about her. Thankfully she has an open heart, even after all she has been through, and is willing to share it with us. However, this is not about relating the negative experiences that Emily had to endure as a child, it is about the healing that she has found since that time.

After growing up abused, and in foster care and adoptive homes Emily didn’t have a good attitude towards religion, families, or her own body. Emily was not a Mormon at this time of her life. She admits that she tends to think in a scientific way, needing evidence for belief. She was not looking for religion or change, but it came anyway. Her change of heart began with an interest in ballroom dance.

As she took ballroom dance lessons she learned many true principles that she had little experience with in her life before. Because of the physical abuse that Emily suffered she felt disconnected from her body, although she didn’t realize it. Through dance she was forced to think about her body, to feel it, to focus on how it helped her. The healing of  negative emotions associated with her body began on the dance floor. It taught her to be present in her body in a way that hadn’t happened before.

Through dance Emily began to learn the power of relationships- that when each person in the relationship does his or her part there is a wonderful reward. This would later lead to her comprehension of the importance of covenants.

Emily’s dance instructor was a positive influence in her changing life. She spent time with his family and it was an eye opening experience after the abnormal family situations she grew up in. Getting to know his family taught her entirely new ideas about families. She never felt the need for a father before, not the kind she had seen anyway. But now she saw a new type of father – loving, supportive, kind – maybe she could use that kind of Heavenly Father.

There is no doubt in Emily’s mind that without the lessons she learned in dance she would not have been able to understand, or have a heart soft enough, to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is something I haven’t told you about Emily that may surprise you. She is Deaf. That’s right, a ballroom dancer who is Deaf. Just chalk up another “Wow!” in her story. Keep reading, because there are more.

Emily’s dance instructor asked for her help in return one day. He was attending a job fair at church and found someone who was also Deaf who needed a job. He asked Emily if she had any leads. It impressed Emily that this church would provide interpreters for the Deaf, because they are so hard to come by at other congregations she’s attended, so she asked what church it was. She didn’t even know what the name of the church meant! Thank heavens for the internet because that’s where she found Mormonism – Mormon.org and then later LDS.org.

It was not an overnight process for Emily though. She doesn’t want anyone to think it was that easy. It took nine months from that first missionary contact until she was baptized just last week.

“I was like a broken glass that had to be slowly and patiently fused back together so that I would be present and whole and able to make that choice. If people had been disrespectful or pushy, it would have shattered me, and I would not have made the choice to convert.”

The process of investigating the gospel started with talking to the missionaries. Emily read the Book of Mormon many times. She focused on Moroni 10:

“Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.

“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

“And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” Moroni 10:3-5

As Emily’s studies went on she also made changes in her life. She had been living with a man she was not married to, so she moved out and into a tiny apartment at a financial loss. Her eating and drinking habits changed. Her wardrobe became more modest, due to her righteous desires, but also due to a mystery gift box of modest clothing. She learned to tithe and re-read the Bible with an increased understanding of her place in God’s plan.

Looking back the change seems huge to Emily, but really it wasn’t. It was a culmination of little steps, a progressive sequence. At any point her progress could have been stopped. Emily’s confidence that it has all unfolded as it should can give us all peace in troubled times.

This step-by-step process is similar to how she views her baptism. It is a large step to take in her life, but she knows it doesn’t mean she is perfect. It is just another step in the path to get closer to her Heavenly Father. It is another beginning.

Join us Thursday to see what Emily has been doing since her baptism.

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