The decision to change her life came after she was baptized in the pool at her home last year. White posted a video on Instagram in 2022 of a minister holding her head and back before pushing her underwater. White said she wasn’t thinking about anything at the time. After she was baptized, two of her friends decided to get into the baptismal pool too, a moment that makes White smile.

White said that she has always had a strong relationship with God but that she “just needed to come back so that he could really show me some cool stuff.”

Nowadays, in between comments on her Instagram posts from fans — and some haters and doubters — there are comments from more religious-inclined followers offering prayers and Bible Scriptures.

White says the warm welcome that’s come as she’s been more open about her Christian faith has included people sending her customized Bibles, books for her kids and other books senders say have helped them. She also received a doctorate of liberal arts from the Sacramento Theological Seminary and Bible College this year.

“I never needed anyone’s welcome into faith, because I’m not doing it for them,” White said. “As long as God knows my heart, that’s all that matters. Now, if we’re in a community, then we will be in a community together, but I’m not doing it to get somebody’s welcoming.”

Thinking about her faith in bigger ways is also one of the reasons she became sober in 2022. White said that although she wasn’t drinking every day, she would binge drink every couple of days. In speaking about being sober for more than a year, White says “the blessing with that is that nothing happened for me to want to change.” She added that she’s glad she stopped drinking on her own terms and without a DUI, hurting someone or possibly even having her children being legally taken from her. She realized how alcoholism could eventually catch up to her in her personal life.

“I was drinking, I just had to open up my eyes and realize it,” White said. “And then not even just in front of people, even in private. A lot of times, we do things in private, or try to hide things from people, but once you start being real with yourself, that’s when you start to really see or realize certain things and your life is just going to get better.”

But White had also started taking a more intense look in the mirror and realized that she no longer loved the woman she saw. She had been working out but felt like her lips were too big, her breasts were too big and her butt was starting to feel heavy. Something had to change, so she called her doctor. White had her butt reduced. She also had breast reduction surgery and was under anesthesia for 8½ hours. Initially, her doctors thought she would need a breast lift but White was concerned about scarring. Doctors had to remove her nipples, pull in her skin and then sew around the nipples again. During a follow-up a week later, her doctors told her she was healing quickly.

Although White had never been one to document her life by video, she said something compelled her to film herself — while still on pain medication — talking about her surgery, which she posted on Instagram. She then went to sleep. She woke up at 4:30 a.m. with her phone blowing up with notifications and assumed something had happened. Instead, she found many supportive comments across her social media. The reception on social media gave White the courage to be open and honest about her experience.

“So many women have died from surgery, you know, and what I’ve learned is [that] most of the time, we do it for ourselves, but [that] nine times out of 10, we do it for other people or men,” White said. “It’s so crazy to me because some men might not like big boobs or they don’t love big booties and you went and got a big booty.”

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