In Monat we have a saying called “finding your why,” and along with that goes “your why should make you cry.” It’s the deep reason why you’re in this business. Why you started it, why you stayed with it, why you continue going on hard days. It’s goes deeper than wanting nice hair and an extra $500 a month (those are both a plus though).

Because of how personal this is, it isn’t something a lot of people share publicly, but recently I’ve felt it weighing heavily on me. I’ve felt a need to share it with you because if you don’t truly understand why I do what I do then why would you want to support me? To get great hair, sure, but you could buy Monat from anyone and get great hair, so why me?

Tuesday April 30, 2019 I shared my heart. I did the most uncomfortable thing on the internet that I’ve ever done—ever. I went live in my Facebook Group (Hair Care with Mallory Peasley—if you want to watch it) and shared my why with people that I know personally and people that I’ve never even met in my life. My why was something that nobody knew about me. Before this not even my husband knew why I was truly doing what I do. Something told me I needed to do it. I ugly cried hard. Hard. So now I’m here on the blog, I want to share it with you here, I just feel like I need to share it here too.

First and foremost I just want to let you know that I will never, never ever, be able to portray the emotions I have behind this why, if you want that please go watch the video. I’ve left it up in my group for anyone that wants to watch it.

So here we go—my why. This plumbs back further than October 2017 when I checked the “I agree” box and hit submit my form. First I need to tell you a little about me. I graduated from high school and college in 2014 (geek, I know), after that I immediately moved out and started my photography business—Mallory’s Photography. If you’re not a photographer then you probably don’t know that photography is a shark tank. The competition is fierce and there’s not a lot of support—from anyone. People in the business don’t support you because you’re competition, most of your loved ones don’t support you unless you’re handing out free shit, nobody supports your business and your success. It’s hard.

I found myself taking on shoots that I didn’t even want—READ THAT AGAIN—taking on sessions I didn’t want because I needed the money. I needed the income. I needed the success. I needed it. I didn’t love what I was doing because I wasn’t doing what I loved anymore. I wasn’t giving my best self to myself or my clients.

I’m a type 4 on the enneagram and man oh man if you read what an unhealthy 4 is like you will see that it was me. I slipped into this hole. I was failing and instead of changing what I was doing I left myself slip into a dark place where and I wouldn’t let myself out of it and this went on for a couple years.

Fast forward to 2016—2016 was one of the best years of my life. The high that I rode in 2016 was huge. It actually started in 2015, at the end of 2015 I applied for a mentorship with Sarah Hill, one of my favorite favorite favorite photographers in the whole wide world. When I applied I thought “the worst she can say is no,” I never thought I would get in. I didn’t think I was good enough for it—then the email came. I GOT IN! ME! I WAS ACCEPTED!

I remember so vividly how I felt when I received that email, could nine doesn’t even begin to describe it. I had no idea how I was going to pay for it, how I was going to get there, anything. But I didn’t care, I knew I would make it happen, so I emailed back right away that I accepted. I was gonna find a way. So that was end of 2015—2016 was when the actual mentorship was.

May 2016, the mentorship was here, my mom and I were off to Nashville for a girls trip and some serious learning time for me. The amount of knowledge Sarah shared with me and the other attendees was so incredible and, frankly, it felt undeserved. The way Sarah supported so many other photographers was unheard of, others worried about competition and thought sharing tips and tricks would dampen their own success, but Sarah knew there was room for us all. I went home feeling all sorts of new, my mom and I had the greatest time, and I was so ready to jump back into photography and only take on sessions I wanted.

On top of Nashville, I had traveled to Virginia Beach a few months later, and at the end of 2016 Dylan and I embarked on our very first international trip ever—Paris. THEN Dylan proposed in front of the Eiffel Tower and it was all caught on camera. So, I mean, 2016 was pretty cool I guess. We rode that high right into 2017—when it all crashed down.

2017 was the worst year of my life. Dramatic maybe, but true, so damn true. Coming off of the high that 2016 gave us was hard. We were starting to wedding plan, budgeting, meeting with the important people (photographer, duh), when my car stops moving one day. Literally, I was on my way home from work when the car wouldn’t go. Immediately I assume the worst, I call Dylan and tell him what happened and he tries to calm me down and say it’s probably just a sensor or something, ya know new cars have all these sensors that control everything and if one goes out it seems like it’s a different issue. He came to pick me up and actually lifted my spirits, I started to believe that it could be the $130 fix that he was telling me it probably was.

Finding a mechanic to actually look at my car is a whole different story, nobody even wanted to touch it aside from a Mitsubishi Dealership, and I was not paying a ton of money for someone to just look at it, sorry. Dylan told me he would figure it out—I was so thankful to be marrying someone who knew his way around a car. He worked with a Mitsubishi Dealer’s Mechanic, this guy was so nice, he would answer any of Dylan’s questions and it was so helpful. When Dylan finally figured out what was actually wrong with it, it turned out that it was the worst case scenario. All of my fears that I had sitting on the side of the road on my way home that day had come true. My transmission was fucked.

MY TRANSMISSION. MY FREAKING TRANSMISSION. My car was a 2013—so not very old—and it had 150,000 miles on it, not low, but definitely not to the point where you would expect the freaking transmission to go out on it. I’m sure you can only imagine how expensive this was going to be. I had no idea what I was going to do, how I was going to pay for it and pay for a wedding, I was freaking out.

Remember how I told you nobody wanted to touch my car, even to just diagnose it? Yeah, well nobody wanted to actually fix the problem either. It took a month to find someone to work on it. Okay, finally found someone, got the car down there, it’s being fixed. Not happy about all of it but happy that it’s getting taken care of, until we got it back—the bill was high, sure, but the mechanic hands me the keys and tells me that I should sell it right away because the same issue will probably happen again. Gut punch. I just paid $4000 for this to happen again? Are you fucking serious?

While my car was being repaired Dylan was looking at other cars for me, he actually found one that I loved and that he thought was a good deal, when the mechanic said what he said I called Dylan and asked what I should do. “Do I just go buy the other car?” “Do I risk it and keep mine?” “What do I do?” We decided that the right move was for me to get the new car, it meant that I was adding a car payment to my life again, but do what you gotta do, am I right? So I bought the car. I was feeling good—it was a car I had been eyeing for a while and I was excited to get it, even under the shitty circumstances. Okay, things are going well, shit’s good again. I couldn’t shake the thought of how much money I spent on my car and what that would have done for our wedding budget (photographer specifically), but things were good.

Anyone have Instagram? I imagine your answer is yes, well me too. I followed (still follow) Sarah on Instagram (Sarah—the photographer that taught me in 2016) and noticed that she was posting about these hair products. I was really interested but, to be honest, kind of annoyed. My hair needed help and I knew that it did—but after trying so many different professional products I told myself that it was just the way my hair was. It was just life. So I found it really annoying that she found a product that worked—stupid right? I know.

In April 2017 Sarah announced that she loved the product so much she decided to start selling it too. Okay fine, I’m in, I sent her a message. I told her about my hair, what I struggled with, and included a picture. She emailed me back right away with a recommendation. My total was going to be roughly around $200 for the products and I remember thinking “excuse me? $200? Not gonna happen, nope, maybe it works but I can’t afford that.” I actually didn’t even email her back.

Okay, not gonna do that! I started using Brazilian Blowout—and I actually loved it, at first. My hair was feeling better, looking better, it was easier to manage, and I remember thinking “psh, I don’t need Monat, it’s so expensive and Brazilian Blowout is cheaper and works so I’m gonna stick with it.” HA. Yeah. Brazilian turned out to just be a bandaid for me (and now that I’m using Monat I realized that Monat was actually the cheaper option). The good things wore off. My hair was broken and shitty again. I let myself go back to thinking that it was just life, just the way my hair was, we all have problems that we can’t fix and we all just have to deal with them.

In the fall of 2017 Dylan and I were feeling good again, we saved up more money than we had expected to for the wedding—considering I almost spent our entire photographer portion on my car—life was looking up again—when our landlord shares his intent to sell our house, asap. Are you fucking kidding me? Selling our house? Where are we gonna go that allows two big dogs? Tell me. So we had a long talk, actually we had a lot of long talks, and decided that we like our house, we like our location, the asking price was reasonable, and our mortgage would be about the same cost as our rent was, we decided to buy it.

According to what we were told, first time home buyer loans used to be different. They used to not require a down payment. Key word: used. Now they require a downpayment, of fucking course, so the loan officer says maybe we can do a rural development loan. Those don’t require a down payment but hahahaha we can’t do that either because we have a silo on the property. What? Why? Why does that matter? It does for some reason. So we’re back to needing a down payment. The down payment needed wasn’t a huge percentage or anything but coincidentally it was just about the cost of our wedding photographer—AGAIN. It was roughly $7000—so in 2017 we unexpectedly spent $12000 of our wedding budget. I know, I know, “it’s just a wedding.” Except no, it is not. This was the day. The day that we start our lives together, the day we promise to be with each other even when we hate each other, the day our families and friends come to support us in our forever promise. The day.

Trapped. We felt so damn trapped. Do you know what that feels like? To be stuck and feel like there is no way out? I’m not saying we regret buying our house—we don’t—but it sucked that everything had to hit us at once. We couldn’t catch a break. Enter Monat.

In October 2017 I “treated” myself to Monat. I signed up as a Market Partner to get the best discount and said “I’m not going to sell, it’s not for me, I can’t do it. I just want the discount.” I started using Monat and initially, if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t love it. My hair felt hard after I rinsed the conditioner out and I absolutely hated that, it was such a small thing, but I hated it. Because of that small reason I had actually contemplated stopping my use of it, but I had already spent the money on the products though so I was sticking with it. I wasn’t just gonna give it up. I kept using the products and man am I glad I did. My hair was feeling hard because was going through the transition phase and I am so glad I powered through.

Okay, back to buying the house and feeling all the feelings of trapped. When we decided that we were going to buy the house and that something had to give, I told Dylan that I was going to try selling Monat. I was gonna put feelers out there and tell people about it and why I like it and just see if anyone was interested. The Friday after I “put the feelers” out there I received a paycheck. A PAYCHECK. The relief and joy that we felt—you would have thought it was $100,000. It was in that moment that I knew I could do it and it didn’t require me to be salesy. It was a light we saw while we were feeling so trapped. Monat was our light.

Whenever this business gets hard I remember the trapped feeling and I know I never want to feel that way again—but this isn’t my only why. I have started to realize that my husband, Dylan, has never dreamed. He’s always been the biggest supporter of my dreams. He’s worked hard at his job to provide retirement and insurance for us, but if you ask him what he actually wants to do he says “I don’t know,” or “work is just work".” He’s never been given the opportunity to dream for himself—until now. Monat has given him the opportunity to dream. Now I can support his dreams and that feeling is incredible. That feeling—I can’t even describe it. For a company to give myself and my husband the opportunity to dream so.damn.big. It’s everything. It is everything to us.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported me, us, in this—whether it’s trying samples, becoming a customer, becoming a VIP, or even walking along side me in the business—I wouldn’t have been able to achieve any of this without you, and to anyone still reading this, you’re the real MVP. Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to get through 2017, for allowing us to not have to choose between a home and a wedding photographer, for allowing us to dream. Cue the tears, honestly, thank you for allowing my husband to dream. We owe it all to you.

Again, I urge you to watch my live talking about this because I can’t type the emotions into it, I just can’t. Thank you for all of your support. None of this is possible without you.

If you’re interested in Monat, you can reach out to me via email, instagram, or on my website.