By Abigail Aguilar –
Taylor Reigh walked away from 1M subs on YouTube because God told her to.
“I was told to let go of my old channel,” she says on her new channel. “I was praying to God in the shower and asked him what he wanted me to do. The answer was: I want you to give up your YouTube channel.
“I did not like that answer.”
The reason why it’s hard to walk away from a popular YouTube channel is you’re getting paid by YouTube and you’re getting deals from sponsors who want to advertise. You’re walking away from money.
Taylor made a counter proposal. Why not just do Christian videos on her old channel? She could reach so many people for Jesus, she argued.
But behind her not baseless reasons lurked a sinister motivation in the dark corners of her not fully sanctified heart: “I was self idolizing. I wanted my name in lights.
“I worked so hard to get this channel. I worked so hard for all the viewers. I worked so hard for all the brand deals,” she says. “It’s not about me. When you fully surrender to God, you start to understand that everything of this world does not matter because you are dust. God is the one that gave you breath, so why would I want to be known?”
Before she was married, Taylor had last name Skeens. She grew up in a home in Florida with a lot of fighting. She and her sister never felt safe. Dad was physically and emotionally abusive. They were Catholic and put on a facade for church.
She hated church, a sentiment she spilled on a now-deleted video from 2016. Church, to her, meant facade. It was empty of true power, transforming power.
Her parents were strict. She couldn’t get a job. She had to go to community college close to home.
She broke from the stifling restrictions and toxic home life by getting married (the first time).
Marriage was her first taste of freedom.
Basically, she married more to escape than because she had found her ideal life partner. It lasted a year.
The reason she divorced her then husband was her channel was taking off. She was thrilled because finally something was going right in her life. It was an outlet for her creativity. He didn’t like it and demanded she shut it down. So she divorced.
On YouTube, her popularity began to rise and rise and rise. She was traveling all over the country for meet-and-greets. She was connecting with influencers. She was making money. Her star shone brightly.
She was also drinking heavily.
She had a long-distance boyfriend of two weeks. After being sexually abused at a party, she called her boyfriend crying. She hadn’t consented and she felt violated. Her boyfriend burst with compassion and offered immediate support.
“Book a flight right now and come stay with me at my mom’s house,” he said. She didn’t think twice. When she arrived, he picked her up from the airport and took her to his house. He took her to his room.
Then he did to her the very thing he was supposedly rescuing her from. “He SA’ed me knowing what happened to me less than 24 hours before,” Taylor said. “I felt so violated. But he acted like he was in love with me.”
Despite the troubling welcome, she felt conflicted and stayed with him for a month. “I felt like he was the person who gave me attention,” Taylor said. “I felt like it was true love.”
Together they moved to LA, she to pursue her career, and he to live off of her income. Also, he had a porn addiction, Taylor says. The relationship, which had been rushed into, soured and became toxic.
“I was lost and hurting,” she said. Breakup was inevitable.
She sought healing through crystals, tarot cards, Christ consciousness, manifesting and dabs, concentrated cannabis. Through her deep dive into New Age, she got to the point where she believed “I am god,” she recounted. “I felt powerful, in control of my life. I had meaning again.”
She got into another relationship while plummeting in depression. Meanwhile, her YouTube channel rocketed upward. Marijuana didn’t help her depression.
At the urging of her then-boyfriend, she started therapy and began to sift through the dark corridors of her heart. A new person began to emerge.
Out of the traps of the past, she had a moment of clarity: What comes after this life? New Age offered no answer.
“I never resonated with Christianity,” she said. But still it was Christianity that began to offer her answers. Her boyfriend encouraged her to read the Bible. She also stumbled across “The Chosen” episodes about the life of Jesus and the disciples. It brought the Bible alive.
“I set aside my pride and listened to my soul, and it said, ‘Read the Bible,’” she remembered. “The Chosen told the story so beautifully. It made them into real people with all their emotions. It connected me with reading the Bible.”
She realized God loved her. “I feel like he wanted me,” she said. “He is not a hurtful God. He wants you. I just put my hands up and said, ‘Ok, God, I’m going to let you take care of this. I’m so tired of being lost.”
Today, she is a Christian and is married. God brought to a place where she gave up her status associated with her old YouTube channel.
