okay hi guys so I know this is probably a shock to a lot of you I wanted to make this video to talk to you guys about why that it's been a long time coming the reality of my YouTube career that I've never talked about and share what my hope is for how you and I can continue a relationship outside of YouTube because this is my last video I wanted to do something special so I went through my camera roll and like screenshotted a whole bunch of pictures that I just took for memories or sent
to like family group chats I love watching it I've watched it over and over and over and over and it shows like the chronological progression of things you'll see but that's how I wanted to end my last video I kind of want to rewind a little bit and start from the beginning growing up I was presented with two conflicting messages either life was about success and money and career or those things don't really matter when you really take a step back and life is actually about relationship the stronger of the two messages was that if
I don't make a very large amount of money I'm never going to be happy so as a pre teen and early teen I ended up pushing back against that idea I always think of like the Scrooge movies I saw so much truth in movies like It's a Wonderful Life and I felt my heart being pulled in that direction not being like so driven by money I loved music that had that message too I remember listening to satisfied Mind by Johnny Cash and uh thank God I'm a Country Boy by John Denver on the train going
to school high school but the reality of having to make money and support myself kind of hit me when I was in high school when I started paying for certain things obviously not everything I was still under my parents' roof I started to see why it was stressed to me just how important money is in high school I kind of conclud uded that I didn't want to live for school I didn't want a big career but I also wanted to be able to afford a lifestyle that I was comfortable with I was like okay I
think a physician assistant would be the best option for me because it's only two years of school after your undergrad and you make a good living so my first year of college I started working as a nurse aid because I needed that to get into physician assistant school or a physician assistant program I remember looking at my first check to me I was like oh my gosh I'm like lifting grown men by myself who can't get out of bed I'm showering them it's like it's a intense kind of job and I was like I'm only
getting paid $12 an hour and then taxes and like I was watching a lot of YouTube at the time and eventually as I kept watching YouTube I was like I think that I can do this I was like why would I keep doing this job continue to go to school until I'm 24 not start making real money until I'm 25 when I can literally just just film my life and make more money doing that than I would be making as a doctor let alone a physician assistant and so all of that messaging that money was
the key to happiness kicked in and I was in that mode I thought growing on YouTube and making a career out of just living my life would solve all of my problems immediately after I started posting I started noticing how being a public figure even in front of a very small audience was was negatively affecting me but I had no plan on stopping so I thought it would be weird to like say publicly on YouTube oh this job's really hard I think it's negatively affecting my mental health oh but I'm going to keep posting so
I was kind of just like life's hard Alana like suck it up you don't want to be a nurse aid right like you have to do something the first year was me just basically trying out a whole bunch of different videos I tried so many different things it took me one year of working 7 days a week week to make my first $100 everyone in my life told me that I should stop because it wasn't working so I started like studying other channels that were really popular at the time and they just so happened to
be like scandalous story times and like having a sexier style a bold like flashy lifestyle and so instead of just being myself I felt like I had to be like those creators the successful ones or even top what they were doing I felt like I was like kind of competing with them being a public figure and allowing people to see the intimate details of my life what felt like competing with other creators and Instagram girls and trying to get more and more and more views changed me and not in a good way going about my
channel and growing in that way is on me nobody was telling me to do this for a video or make sure that you post this type of content I was doing that to me so years into YouTube I finally had a good amount of subscribers and like a steady average view count and brand deals coming in consistently that was like such an amazing accomplishment that's what I felt at the time like oh my gosh I actually did it I figured it out right the whole thing was built on the type of content that I was
posting but I wasn't liking what I was posting I was just liking that I had some level of success and I knew that stopping YouTube or drastically changing my content would have made me happy but that wasn't an option I wasn't willing to give up the money in my mind in order to be happy I would just have to start liking the content that I was filming and posting for years I tried really hard to get excited about things that I knew I had to film to to get views I switched to music that promoted
the message that money was power money means you made it encourag flaunting money music that made a big deal out of being sexy and using your body that like that's what made you exceptional and I consumed media that pushed those messages too everything around me was feeding me that narrative and I think in some ways it it worked I did start changing and liking certain things that weren't really authentic but at the time I was like yeah I'm part of this this whole world YouTube hardened my heart and that's on me doing what I was
doing all of those years at that time it made me more selfish more greedy more hateful it encouraged me to show off it encouraged me to sexualize myself I felt like I was in a rat race to get higher and higher get more views more views more views I did enjoy talking about Mental Health on YouTube cuz that felt the most genuine and I do remember that deeper side that more genuine side coming out but it was rare I remember I did the Kylie Jenner hip injections video I realized at that point in my life
I was still living at my parents house and I said in that video there's no amount of money there's no promise to look perfect no amount of procedures no material possession that will ever fulfill you and I was saying in that video that basically the purpose of life is Rel relationship I didn't have a relationship with God yet at that point but I had a hole in my heart and I was trying to fill it with a million different things and nothing of this world was working none of the stuff I was talking about or
showing online I felt was like truly important and the the purpose of life and what we should all be thinking about and focusing on but at the time my feeling was like this is my business this is my job have to keep posting content similar to the content that all of these people subscribed to see basically I put my mental health on the back burner because I was prioritizing money like I said that's the mode that I was in obviously like this isn't healthy and I started going to therapy in 2020 and she immediately recognized
that the grip money had on me was the root of all of the issues she had me make a pros and cons list of leaving YouTube and social media I don't know if I wrote this on June 30th I think I wrote it before I took the the picture of it and sent it to a friend but it was 2021 I blurred out some of like the personal sensitive information on face tune just because I didn't want to share all of that publicly but for the pros I wrote I won't have to plan days weeks
activities showers Vacations or anything around around a timeline of what makes sense to post next I can dress how I want I don't have to pretend to care about style or makeup or pimples or Nails I don't have to worry about how I look I will dress how I want I don't even think I realized that I wrote that twice the con of course was not bringing in as much money every month feeling shame because of blank's opinion family my friends won't look up to me for being a YouTuber I said I don't know what
I'll do without it and then I also for some reason thought the market was going to crash in early 2022 and I thought like I need to have money so basically just all money concerns it wasn't like oh I really love my job so then the back is also all Pros I can eat what I want there was like such a trend of I tried Kylie Jenner's diet or a Victoria Secret model diet I tried like an intermittent fasting video and it did so well I can act how I want a lot of times I
would like really try to analyze why did this video do well over this video well maybe I was more sarcastic in this video maybe I was more goofy to recreate that in the next video and that's really exhausting I can be free with my friends for a long time I felt like every single activity I did I had to film every time I was at a restaurant every trip every time I was with a friend every conversation everything I wore everything I ate could have been turned into a a video when your life is your
job everything you do can be a way for you to make money be present with my family with my friends no more face tuning I can be who I want to be not trying to be the person they subscribed to see no overthinking about when to post and putting that Above All Else real connection comes back the power money had over me caused me to structure my life in a way that was like a breeding ground for depression there were an infinite amount of decisions I made based on that mentality about money so it was
hard to see that they all flowed out of that it was like no it can't just be one thing it's like there's a web of things that are making me unhappy I have to fix each individual thing it's like no I only had to fix that one core thing and so many things would change in my life like I wish I had known that my therapist knew that because of that one mentality I subscribed to I made endless choices that were the wrong ones once I stopped believing the lie that I will only be happy
if I push myself that much once money lost its power over me my depression was gone it didn't happen overnight obviously so basically therapy encouraged me to believe that the purpose of my life is my happiness but led me to think that I must be pursuing the wrong things because I'm I'm not happy so after many many months of therapy I finally was like okay you're going to post as frequently as you feel okay posting I knew what was going to happen if I did that I was like I don't care my mental health is
more important I knew like I told myself Alana be prepared to make a third of the money that you're making because YouTube loves consistency so if you start posting sporadically your views are going to go down and so I did start posting a lot more infrequently My Views did start to go down but I was so much happier and after a short time money had lost its grip on me so my heart started to soften a little bit I posted less and less and less and the last time that I had a symptom of depression
was December 31st 2021 6 months went by and then a year went by and I posted YouTube videos about it like did therapy actually work how I'm depression free it's a year now it's like now it's been over 2 years so by summer of 2022 I felt on top of the world I had been depression free for about 6 months during that summer I was posting even more infrequently I kept a lot to myself and I actually started liking YouTube for the first time because it wasn't a burden anymore I wasn't forcing anything I no
longer did things just to make a good video I finally felt like my life was for me not for the camera I started listening to the old music that I used to listen to again um which I'm still enjoying I started reading I started learning an instrument I had so much more time to just like enjoy life it was such a great feeling I can't even explain it to you to just be normal and not be like sharing my life online the less I felt like a public figure the better life was the happier I
was so at the time this affirmed that acting on the idea that the purpose of life for me is my own happiness worked so I was like okay I'm going to lean into that even more I remember at the end of 2022 thinking this year is the happiest I had ever been but instead of being ruled by things that made me unhappy I was living completely selfishly I didn't think too much of it at the time but now looking back at 2022 although I felt happy like Moment by moment I didn't have guidance I didn't
have Security in knowing my future and knowing what life after death was going to look like and I didn't have anyone in my life who I looked at and thought like this they have the answer there were people in my life myself included who turned to tarot and fortune tellers and crystals because there was an underlying uncertainty there we looked at astrology books we knew each other's birthday and we're like oh do you think that we're on the best friend list like are we really that good of friends or uh the birthday of our future
husband just to feel like we had some semblance of control and power in our lives in our futures we were trying to find like the thing that would give us real peace and comfort but none of those things actually seem to work some of us were religious I wasn't one of them but growing up in Catholic school I remembered that I was taught that we should turn to God Alone to comfort us and to direct us so having people in my life who said they believed in Jesus but also trusted in crystals tarot fortune tellers
it was kind of confusing or at least it made me kind of feel that religion wasn't working any more than any of the other things so during that year of 2022 I actually wrote a journal entry that I read to you guys in a video and in that journal entry I basically asked the question is being happy all that there is to life I had spent at that point about a year living for self successful actually achieving happiness which like everyone seems to think is the goal the Finish Line after actually like being happy for
that amount of time I was kind of just like okay I'm 26 today but in 2022 I was like okay I'm 24 years old I've like cracked the code I have everything that I want I'm happy is this really it I knew at that point that living to serve myself cannot be the end all be all the past little over a year of my life has been more special more beautiful more meaningful more fulfilling than I ever imagined life could be shortly after that journal entry the Lord use someone to show me what happens when
you love God above all things living to have a relationship with God and to serve God and to serve other people God Alone was their peace their guide their comfort all of that resulted in me seeing a secure and happy person but their happiness went so much deeper than the happiness I had ever seen anybody else possess and they just had a piece about them they were so confident in the future I just just remember thinking I want to know why a relationship with God not a religion but a relationship I had never heard anyone
talk about it like that makes this difference in somebody so after that encounter I got really curious I saw something I knew was real that day that I had never experienced before but I wasn't ready to accept Jesus as the answer there were parts of the Bible that didn't make sense to me that I never fully grasped or learned about and doubted so so I found answers to all of my questions and in time my mind was satisfied in an intellectual way but then my heart was satisfied in a way that I it's hard for
me to even explain a little over a year ago now I was holding my head in my hands and crying in my bathroom in my house in that moment I accepted Christ my relation ship with him started on that day I was instantly safe and I knew in that moment that I was forgiven for all of my failures throughout my life the moment that I put my faith in him I knew that when I die I will stand before God confidently because my faith in Christ allows the father to see me as holy and blameless
and I was so like mind blown by that because I'm not blameless I've made so many mistakes in my life I've done so many things that I'm not proud of I was just like so overwhelmed that there was a way that I could be seen as blameless by God and I just knew in that moment it was nothing that I did I didn't earn that it was something that Jesus offered me and all I had to do was believe in him and I would be able to have what he was offering and I just had
this overwhelming feeling in knowing that from that point on I would be able to live my life out on Earth with unshakable peace and happiness true deep Joy because I know that my eternity my future is secure and like I said I knew that I had and have no way of doing that on my own I cannot take credit for that all of the credit goes to him and I broke down into extreme gratefulness with that understanding Jesus Christ suffered and died for me I saw it all in that moment that he's been guiding me
and protecting me and preparing my heart for Him my entire life this whole whole journey and like as much as I can try to explain it to you there's an infinite amount of information and details that I don't have time to physically repeat but I will never forget that day he from that moment on just turned my world right side up and in some ways I became a different person from that moment on I've wanted nothing more than to really get to know him and love him and live my life for him it's the least
I can do there's a verse that says delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart I started delighting in the Lord I started reading the Bible I started reading books I started going to conferences um just trying to learn about God getting to know him having a relationship with him it's really hard to have a relationship with someone if you don't know anything about them if you don't communicate with them if you don't get to know their character what would they do in this situation what do they believe
about this like I I wanted to get to know God just diving into his word so I started reading the Bible and then I started listening to it and I started trusting God Alone did I have to go and undo things that I've done in order to have a relationship with God no is it even possible to go and undo every wrong decision I've made every time I've hurt somebody every time I've hurt myself no that's not possible and that's not what God asks of me or of anyone the only thing that can do that
is belief in Christ would I have plastic surgery now if I hadn't before no how I look is just such a small part of my week now my life I just don't have that desire did I want to continue posting content like I used to post after I came to Christ no I think that's obvious I think it'd be really hard to like genuinely believe in the validity of the Bible and that it is the word of God and like Delight in that and be so like overwhelmed with gratitude for what Christ has done and
then also not see changes in that person watching the shows or movies I used to watch listening to the music that I listen to for a while dressing the way that you saw me dress I don't know how else to explain it besides just saying that they don't appeal to me anymore I feel free I feel like there's so many burdens that are gone I feel like I can just be me without adding anything that's what Christ has done for me on this Earth and he's given me the only way to get to the father
what could I be more grateful for and excited about than that in some ways like I said I am a different person and I know it's cheesy to say but I also feel like in a lot of ways I have returned to the person that I was before the world told me who to be but it goes so much farther than that without God God 2022 was in my opinion the best it was going to get for me I was happy I had everything that I could want but it was an empty selfish happiness I
was you know bringing all of these things and people into my life that I knew would satisfy me in that moment and deep down I was questioning my purpose and I didn't know what was going to happen after I die what I've gathered from reading the Bible is that the purpose of life is relationship God created man to have relationship with him and then he created more people to have relationship with him and each other and then we broke that beautiful relationship between man and God and God sent his son God In the Flesh to
restore relationship between man and God you know at one point Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment and he says love God above all things this is the first and greatest commandment and love your neighbor as yourself it is all about relationship and it's all about putting God first if you were Satan and you knew that this is what God intended for us what would you do try and spread the lie that our purpose is to love ourselves Above All Things live for your own pleasure that's all it's about and the LIE of all
lies is that loving ourselves is actually acquiring things money status looks career Satan's goal is to distract and deceive keep them focused on things keep them focused on themselves keep them far away from relationship with God take what is good and make them think it's bad and take everything that's bad and make it look good so why you're here why am I leaving YouTube it's interesting to see the progression when I started YouTube money ruled me then you know years later I put my happiness first posted very infrequently money was no longer ruling me but
it became a healthy motivation for me continuing the job then I started having a relationship with God and money stopped being the motivation people were my motivation despite knowing that being open about my faith publicly could and probably would result in people unsubscribing and tons of lost money I felt that sharing him with you was way more important than what I could lose so I started posting and I never could have imagined how many of you guys have a relationship with God and I was genuinely shocked that the sponsors didn't slow down I was I
was convinced that I was going to lose a lot of opportunities but the Lord allowed me to keep YouTube as a job while also not having money be my motivation and it was working out and so I met Tim and when we first met I was like oh my gosh this is like so obvious that we're supposed to be doing this together like he's a videography he's a videography he can help me film he's so creative but I still had the same negative feelings about being a public figure hi I've been editing this video for
a while been thinking about everything for a while and it just really comes down to the fact that something that's really important to me is being present such a theme I think for my career and the the moments where I posted less and was able to be more present that's the best I felt as long as I'm a public figure and my job is to post on YouTube I can say oh I'm being present I'm not going to film this but it's always in my head like but you're a public figure though and it's your
responsibility to share this with people it's also really difficult to think what I should include in certain videos that will help the most amount of people when I don't know where 30,000 people are at with God I don't know what questions you have I think it's honestly not the best for my audience I think that if you have an opportunity to do what I'm about to share I'm going to be better for it and you're going to be better for it yeah months ago at this point I realized that there is a way for me
to accomplish everything without sacrif sacrificing anything I'm so glad that you have gotten an opportunity to see how God has changed my life but I've known for a while now that I was going to make this video and that my YouTube Journey has come to an end I started praying about it months ago at this point every single day sometimes multiple times a day asking God to just make my path clear like is this the right decision or not I finally woke up one morning with like unbelievable Clarity and peace and and it hasn't left
me since it's interesting because the way I was thinking about leaving YouTube before I had this Clarity was to make a video saying like I'm I'm done with YouTube like I just did tell you the whole story and then just stop posting when I woke up with Clarity I heard like such an obvious answer that there are so many women who don't have a relationship with God and have genuine questions and fears about that but are seeking and so many of who do have a relationship with God and have genuine questions and fears it became
so clear to me that morning that the Lord wants me to have a personal relationship with those women with you guys individual people not as a teacher or an expert because I'm still learning too but as a friend so I kept praying and I said okay Lord keep giving me peace about it keep showing me that this is the answer so shortly after that I got an email from this girl who I went to Catholic High School with and she said that she's been watching me for years and um she asked me like two to
three questions about God and she explained her fears to me and writing back to her one person giving her my full undivided attention and being able to really know her needs personally that filled my heart I had more joy writing to that one person and connecting with that individual than I've had making a video that's going to reach thousands of people that I can't put a face to and that it isn't possible to have a deep connection with and so he just kept on showing me in in so many ways that this is the path
he wants me to be on this is the next phase of life not thinking about money or talking to the masses just focusing on relationship every day with God with my husband with my family with my friends with my neighbors and now with you and that's such a blessing such a blessing that I even have that opportunity obviously over these past few months I've already seen a glimpse of all of the beautiful things that are going to come from me diving into this next chapter of life I'm so grateful that I have God guiding me
so I created a new email there's obviously no money involved I want to hear from you and obviously I don't know how many people will send an email but based on how many emails I get I will figure out if the best way to connect with you is to Simply write you back like I did with this girl do a group Zoom maybe meet up as a group do an online Bible study I'm I'm up for a lot of different you know ideas all I know right now is that you all matter including those of
you who aren't ready to ask questions about God I want to be here for you guys without getting paid to be so so the next part of this video is really special to me having these photos seeing the time pass by seeing the change I want to leave you with what is about to play but before I go I want to say that you have changed the trajectory of my life I don't know what my life would have been if I hadn't posted and if you hadn't watched and I wish I could have done things
a lot differently from the start instead of making changes two years ago but none of that changes the fact that you guys have been here and you've cared I'm so thankful for those of you who have really been here I just want to say thank you I'm going to leave this channel up so that people can always see the change that Christ has made in my life and who knows maybe in the future I'll use this channel to Simply post the responses that I send you know to people who email me but thank you guys
once again for everything for being with me on this journey and send me an email I will talk to you guys soon bye Here's My Heart Lord Here's My Heart Lord here is My Heart Lord speak what is true Here's My Heart Lord he is My Heart Lord is My Heart Lord speak what is true I am found I am yours I am loved I'm made pure I have life I can breing I am here so I [Music] am Here's My Heart Lord Here My Heart [Music] Lord he is My Heart Lord speak word it
is true cuz I am found I am yours I am loved I'm May pure I have life I can breathe I am healed I am free you are strong you are sure you are life you endure and you are good always true you are life breaking through oh he is my love he My Heart Lord he My Heart Lord speak word is true he my life love he my life [Music] he's my life Lord speak what is [Music] true speak word is true speak word is true I I am found I am yours I am
Lov I'm made pure I have life I can breathe I am healed I am free cuz you are strong you are strong you are life you endure and you are good always true you are life breaking through you are more you are that know you are you are here you are Lord you are you are great you're all I have you're everything he My Heart Lord he is my heart love take it all again My Heart Lord speak what is true he's my life Lord he my life he is my life love I love speak
what is [Music] true home come in your home now
