In 2007, I was a mess. Low confidence, low self-esteem, anxiety, a general unease about life I couldn't quite name. A friend handed me a bottle of Peppermint oil one day, she said it might settle my stomach, and I remember actually feeling a shift in my body. Something so small, and it caught my attention completely.

For a few years, I just kept borrowing hers. (I was twenty. I've made peace with the mooching.) 

But in 2010, I finally got my own membership, both to buy the oils myself and, almost on a whim, to sign up as a distributor too. My starter kit arrived with a bottle of Lavender, a bottle of Peppermint, and a small pamphlet. And tucked in among the product information was something about how I could actually make money doing this.

I was terrified. And I was intrigued. Because reading that income disclosure statement was the first time in my life I let myself consider there might be something for me beyond debt and student loans.

Still, I sat on it. For three years, I was a distributor in name only, I never enrolled a single person. It wasn't until January of 2013 that something in me finally said, okay, now. That was the real beginning of two love affairs at once, with the oils, and with entrepreneurship itself. I learned how to support my body, my nervous system, and my mindset, all at the same time, using these tools as I went.

What I loved most, even back then, was the purity of it. Every ingredient, in every oil and every product, held to one standard, it was the founder's mission to make the cleanest products in the world. He used to say, "If you can't swallow it, it shouldn't be going on your skin!" This was long before toxins and endocrine disruptors were something anyone talked about at dinner parties. It felt like I'd found an entirely different way of living.

When I had my son, one of the things I was most grateful for was already having a home built around these products, free from so much of what fills the shelves at the store. I knew what to do to support his immune system, gut and overall wellness. We are a genuinely healthy (definitely not perfect) family, and I don't think that's an accident.

Not a day goes by that I don't thank God, the Universe, Spirit, whatever you call it, for bringing these products into my life. They've supported my body as faithfully as this work has supported my soul. And somewhere along the way, without ever meaning for it to become the point, they've generated a real and lasting income, too.