The Education of a Stylist

Another solid day in the salon. Packed from the moment I unlocked the door until I pulled it closed behind me. I climbed into my truck, fired it up, and opened my phone to a few missed calls. I put the voicemail on speaker and pulled out of the lot.

I was passing the cemetery when I got to the third message.

"Hi, it's Jessica! I feel really embarrassed that I forgot to tell you — I witnessed a hit and run in your parking lot today before my appointment. I left a note on the windshield of the truck that got hit. If you find out whose truck it was, I have photos of the person and their truck."

I looked up through the sun blasted windshield. A little piece of paper was flapping in the wind, held down by the wiper blade.

Shit.

I called Jessica back. She forwarded the photos immediately. I opened them to find the client who had been in my chair right before her — we'll call her Nikki. Nikki drove a very large, very lifted, jacked up truck.

I called Nikki.

"Oh Monica, I didn't know it was your truck. I got out and didn't see any damage so I just didn't think it was a big deal."

I told her my preceding client had witnessed the whole thing and had photos. That Nikki never actually got out of the truck.

"Well I didn't know who to tell, so I just left."

I pointed out that I was still inside my suite. Along with the other forty tenants in the business park where the salon was located.

"Please, I am so sorry. If I had known it was your truck I would have said something."

I told her there was damage and I needed her insurance information.

"Do we really have to do this?"

That's when my professionalism slipped.

"Nikki, you did a hit and run and damaged my car. That is illegal and just wrong."

She kept apologizing. I ended the call and followed up with a text canceling her future appointments. She responded begging me to keep her as a client.

I sat with that image for a moment. Envisioned shaving her head.

Not a chance.

That's the thing about twenty five years behind a chair. You see all of it. The worst of people and the best of them, sometimes in the same day. Nikki was the worst. Michael was the best.

I should tell you about Michael.

I first became aware of him when I was in beauty school, working part time at a bagel shop. I used my coworkers as practice canvases — my friend Chris had a buzzed head and the patience of a saint. I painted bullseyes, flames, checkerboards on his skull, and then we'd walk two blocks to Michael's salon so I could show him my work. I was auditioning without saying so. This went on for months.

I didn't end up working for him right away. I got an apprenticeship I couldn't refuse and spent two years as a human hand clip for a master stylist. In hindsight I am so glad, because that path gave me an education I couldn't have gotten any other way. But Michael stayed in my orbit. About fifteen years later my career came full circle and I found myself back in his world — renting a chair in his salon. I did that for about six years. And then we took a leap and became business partners.

We opened M Salon together. A boutique salon, just the two of us. I helped cultivate the aesthetic, the feel, the colors. I built custom furniture for the space. Both our names started with M. It was swanky, chic, and ours.

What bonded us immediately was curiosity. We could talk forever about processes, chemical structure, product. I introduced him to hair extensions and he took it further than I ever did — learned every method of installation and then decided he wanted to manufacture it. He did. That's Michael. Whatever he touches he goes all the way into.

He is also the only adult I trusted for a long time.

He watched me go through the hardest season of my life. The devastation, the heartbreak, the PTSD cycling through mania and crashed out depression. He was there for all of it — the divorce, the tragedy, the slow painful climb back up. I will never forget painting that salon with him, and the things that only those walls have heard us say to each other.

We have our own version of HIPAA — we call it snippa. What happens in the salon stays in the salon. It applies to our clients and to each other.

Telling him I was leaving was one of the hardest conversations I have ever had. I was torn up about it for a long time. It felt like failure. Like letting him down. I put off the words longer than I should have.

When I finally got them out, he met me with grace.

Why would I have expected anything different.

Michael is passionate and dedicated to his craft for life. He gave space to single moms to build careers, raise families, and grow as humans over his entire career. He is what this industry looks like when it's done with heart. The chair belongs to people like him — people who are still curious, still passionate, still all the way in.

I was, once. And then something else called louder.

Leaving the salon feels like leaving a family member behind. Because it is.

I love people. I always have. Twenty five years behind the chair will either burn that out of you or deepen it — for me it deepened it. But somewhere along the way the chair got too small. People were bringing me more than their hair. And I had more to give than I could deliver in the space between the color application and the rinse. That gap, between what they needed and what I could actually offer standing behind a chair, is what eventually pushed me out the door and into the most meaningful work of my life.

For most of my career I kept hair clients at a healthy distance. That was intentional. This is a personal service. People are vulnerable in your chair. Trust has to be developed and maintained. I wanted to be seen as a professional, not as someone's buddy. I took my craft seriously. I had years of continuing education and hours of mastery behind me. I wanted to keep a clear line between who I was at the salon and who I was at home.

There were years where keeping that line wasn't just professional preference. It was necessary. I was navigating devastating news about my children's father, managing counseling appointments, lawyers, court dates. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about my life outside the salon. Powerlifting became my safe topic. I could steer the conversation there and no one had to know how hard things were on the other side of that door.

But that was then.

There was a client named Carina. I became endeared to her right away. She was upbeat, bubbly, funny as hell. If you can make me laugh I will love you forever — that is my weakness in humans. We shared a love of music from our era and could talk endlessly. My appointment time with her always flew by.

What drew me to her beyond the laughter was that she seemed to have some stuff, like me, and didn't pretend that she didn't. We used dark humor to feel our feels. I loved that about her.

There came a day when her normal bubbly self walked in riddled with anxiety and sadness to a much deeper degree. I recognized it. Twenty five years of standing behind people in a vulnerable space teaches you to read a room. I felt compelled to say something.

I told her it was okay to not be okay. And then I listened.

Carina had been banging her head against a wall with western medicine. Reactive by nature, focused on symptoms, passing her around without ever addressing the source. It's hard to watch someone desperate for relief and not getting anywhere. She didn't want that either. She was frustrated and exhausted.

I had spent years doing my own deep work. Unturning every stone, building a dream team of support, learning things about healing that I never would have found inside the conventional system. I had knowledge that had cost me a great deal to acquire. And I thought, fuck it. I'm just going to say it.

I connected her with a healer I knew. Someone outside the conventional system, counter culture, not always accepted — but the kind of help that had broken things open for me when nothing else would. It was a risk to suggest it. I took it anyway.

She went. It worked.

Her husband Clayton confirmed it. He thanked me while I was standing behind him in the chair, scissors in hand, taking it all in.

It felt so out of place. I'm a hairstylist. I do awesome hair. I had just changed someone's life and it had nothing to do with hair.

Carina was the exception behind the chair, not the rule. Most client relationships didn't have the depth or the trust to go there, and I respected that line. But when it was right, I had learned that sharing a piece of myself could help someone feel less alone in whatever they were carrying. That instinct didn't go away when I left the salon. It became the foundation of how I coach.

Programming is only a fraction of the work. I coach all aspects of the human — the holistic, the behavioral, the messy internal stuff that shows up when someone is in pursuit of becoming stronger and more resilient. You can't separate the person from the platform. I learned that behind the chair. I practice it in the gym.

Which is how I ended up standing across from a woman repping out 95 pounds like it was nothing on a Saturday morning, knowing immediately that there was more there than she was letting on.

A couple of years ago, on a Saturday, I first really saw her. Jasmine was sitting on that bench watching her girlfriend lift, a pile of dark curls on top of her head, glasses, arms crossed, looking like she was trying to take up as little space as possible. Eventually her girlfriend asked if Jasmine could work in on bench with her. I said knock your socks off. I wasn't expecting to see what I saw.

She was repping out 95 pounds like it was a tinker toy. I walked straight over.

"You holding out on us?"

She looked around, then down at the floor, avoiding my eyes. "I don't know, maybe???" Then the nervous chuckle. The one that comes out at the end of her sentences like a question mark she can't help adding.

I stood there nodding, taking it all in. She was built like a powerlifter. Short, powerful, a powerhouse hiding inside a hard shell. I had a hunch. I told her to come in on Saturdays and bench for a while. See how it goes.

She did. Every week. So consistently that I asked her to compete in a bench only meet I was hosting. She did great. Got a taste of it. After that there was no looking back.

Her biggest learning curve was learning to stabilize the kind of raw power she was sitting on. On her very first deadlift session she tore her hand, worse than I have ever done mine, and that is saying something. It didn't stop her.

The first things I worked on with her had nothing to do with technique. Stop apologizing unless you have something to be sorry for. Take up space. You are allowed to take up space.

That was three years ago.

She got married last year. She's heading to her first Nationals in the coming weeks. When she walks into the gym now she owns it. She doesn't dodge me or her peers anymore. She doesn't say sorry for existing. Everyone at OPS knows Jasmine. They know how strong she is. They may not know how hard she has worked against herself to get there.

I do.

The training session had ended. The group had gone. The music was off and the gym was quiet. Jasmine was sitting on the same bench she sat on that very first Saturday. Her shoulders were heavy. She was fidgeting with her hands in her lap. She looked sad and burdened.

I pulled up the rolling office chair and sat down. Just slightly lower than her. I listened. I felt the weight and the panic in her voice. And at some point I made a decision.

I told her the part of my story she needed to hear.

I watched her shoulders drop about two inches.

That was the moment I knew.

I took a pay cut to do this. That's the honest truth. I walked away from twenty five years of a successful business, a full book of clients, and a craft I could do blindfolded, for less money and more meaning. People think that's brave. I think it's just math. I raised five kids in a tiny house on state assistance. The salon changed that. I worked my way out, built a business, bought a house, created something from nothing. I know what money can do. I also know it was never the point. I know the difference between what looks valuable and what actually is.

Right now I am a powerlifting coach. A nutrition coach. A meet director. A referee. An athlete. And somewhere along the way I became the heart of our team. I hate saying that, but it's true, and it's exactly where I want to be.

I didn't go looking for this life. I just kept going all in on the things that mattered, and paid attention when something fit. The chair built me. It paid for my house, raised my kids, and gave me twenty five years of education in human beings that no classroom could replicate. I am grateful for every minute of it.

But watching someone become who they were always supposed to be, that's priceless.

Change is the only thing we can rely on. I'm living proof.