Mallory Ervin's Big Vibrant Life (2024)

If you’re one of Mallory Ervin’s nearly 800 thousand Instagram followers, you may think you know everything about her. The bubbly blonde mother of two (Ford, 3, and Shepherd, 2), wife of the handsome and hilariousKyle, former Miss Kentucky, and three-time contestant onThe Amazing Racealmost always has a smile on her face.

Whether she’s recording inspiring podcasts, sharing new pieces from her Living Fully merchandise line, teaching new recipes from her own kitchen, or spending time with her family and friends, Ervin shows off much of her big, vibrant Nashville life on a daily basis. But in her new book,Living Fully, Ervin opens up even more, revealing the trials and tribulations that made her the well-known woman she is today.

At 28, fresh off her reign as Miss Kentucky, Ervin found herself spiraling into an addiction to prescription medication. In an attempt to keep up her perfect appearance andmake it to every one of her commitments, Ervin began to use stimulants. Those led her to sleeping pills to ease the insomnia they brought on. She’d wash them down with a bottle of wine. It was a secret she kept (and a habit she maintained) for five years—until her mind and body began screaming for help. That’s when, with the help of her family, she entered a treatment facility. It was a harsh reality check for the beauty queen, but it saved—and changed—her life.

InLiving Fully,Ervin shares the lessons she learned from treatment—but not the kind you’d expect. She tells deeply personal and universally relatable anecdotes that will have readers crying along with Ervin’s former self while recognizing parallels in their own lives. But she’s quick to point out that these stories are a facilitator for the book’s meaning—not a definition of it.

“When I went to treatment and I was stripping away all my titles and attachments to everything from the way that I looked to my [public persona], that was the catalyst to the whole Living Fully brand,” she says. “This is not a recovery book. But my recovery was the catalyst for living fully.”

But what does it mean to be “living fully?” Ervin, who isso dedicated to the act itself that she named her book, her merchandise line, and her podcast after the practice, offers a deep dive into the phrase.

“Living fully is living a vibrant life; it’s all the colors—darkand light,” she says. “People don’t want to live fully because they are worried about living the dark colors, the dark times, but once you’ve stepped outside of your comfort zone and fully dive into those moments, you realize that you are living life to the fullest.”

For Ervin that philosophy was born out of trauma, but she says that’s not the case for everyone. In fact, she says it’s not just about hitting rock bottom—it’s about redefining it.

“It’s a lot easier to make changes in your life when there’s a red flag glaring, but when you’re living like a lot of people are and just skimming the surface of life, numbing out the hard things, not really feeling happiness on a regular basis, and everything feels mediocre, you have to be the one to say, ‘This is a red flag and I have to make changes,’” Ervin says. “If you’re saying things are fine—fine is the other version of rock bottom. One version of rock bottom is where I am at the beginning of the book. The other is the version of rock bottom I hit even today: We get into the mundane, the ‘I don’t want to do that.’ It is valuing comfort over living this vibrant, rich, big life.”

She says her goal in writing the book wasn’t just to motivate those going through their darkest, hardest days (although she does that, too); it was to snap people out of the idea that simply existing is not the same as truly living.

“I want to rock the boat of all the people that just feel like they’re fine. Until I went through what I went through I didn’t know that there was a vibrant version of living,” she says. “The highs are so much higher, and yeah, the lows are a lot lower, but you can get through them.”

Ervin is quick to point out that it’s not enough to read the book and say you’ll live your life fully. It’s about committing and recommitting to the act.

“This book is about choosing and then rechoosing to experience life in a different way. It’s choosing and rechoosing that I’m going to go through the hard things. I’m not goingto fear adversity. I’m not going to let fear be the thing that I base every single decision on.”

The choice to write the book is a prime example of that. Ervin could have easily continued to share her life’s highlight reel on social media. But instead, she chose to let her followers in further, showing them the dark parts of her life that made her the person she is today. It’s not something many influencers are willing to do—letting their walls down and making their flaws known. And while Ervin knew it would be hard, she also knew she wouldn’t be true to her own ethos if she didn’t share her journey.

“I’ve always felt like my platform was a platform of service. If these people are looking at me and they’re trying to emulate the way that I cook or the way that I dress my kids and I didn’t tell them [about the struggle] it would be so unkind and such a disservice,” Ervin says. “I could have gone to the grave without people knowing my story. I could just say, ‘Idon’t drink,’ instead of, ‘After Miss America I went to rehab for five and a half months.’ And that was hard because even some of my closest family and friends didn’t know the story.”

She makes the point that what followers see on social media—hers and that of other influencers—isn’t the full story.

“Maybe it looks polished on the outside, like, yeah, I did Miss America, and I have a family that’s still together. I have these things that look very shiny and polished, but I certainly do not want people to see me as that, because that would be a total failure for me as a person influencing another person. That would be the definition of a wasted life and a wasted platform.”

Ervin, who famously grew up as one of 23 first cousins in a tight-knit Kentucky family, says that while becoming an online personality was never on her radar growing up, she always knew it was her destiny to make a mark on the world.

“I am from a really interesting family that is obsessed with legacy and values rich storytelling,” she says. “They would hold quarterly family meetings and ask us as kids, ‘What is your legacy going to be?’ They wanted us to understand that it was important to live these big lives—be it big as a teacher or big as somebody doing public things. I think of living my life every day in legacy mode: When I walk into a room how do people describe me? I think of my kids—how will theydescribe me when they go to college? It’s a big thing to me. I knew I would not be proud of the legacy I’d left if I’d written some shiny, polished version of, ‘here’s how youlive a better life.’”

And for those who haven’t experienced that version of life or who fear the change required to get there, Ervin has a message.“I hope that in telling these stories, I can convince them that there’s something out there—a bigger, fuller life. That’s what is always in the back of my mind when I make thehard choices or choose the more difficult path,” she says.

“If I could take a megaphone and shout from the rooftops after doing this in my own life and seeing that it is so much brighter on the other side... it’s so vibrant. It’s so filled with joy and contentment and groundedness. Once you get a taste of it, you’ll see why I keep fighting the fight.”

For Ervin, using the ups and downs of her real life to help others is the ultimate act of being an influencer.

“As an influencer I hope to influence you with the stories from my life and the things that I went through to get here. There’s a better way to live and I wrote this book to help people make those changes. I didn’t write it like I’m an expert or your teacher. I’m just sharing the things that I learned, and I hope that they resonate with people. People are looking to me to influence how they live their lives through the ordinary joys like fashion and cooking, but it ain’t all peach cobblers and Gucci cardigans,” Ervin says with her trademark, boisterous laugh.

“How can you truly influence someone’s life. Sure, I’d love for them to wear the dress I’m wearing or make a recipe, but when they’re facing a loss or a crossroads, I want them to remember my story. I would much rather influence them that way.”

Ervin pauses, pushes her blonde hair behind her ears and lets out one last joy-filled laugh.

“I mean, they can buy the dress, too, but I hope they wear it while they’re living a big, vibrant life.”