“Our prayer has always been that we would use our influence to point everything back to The One who made a way (Jesus!)."
“Our prayer has always been that we would use our influence to point everything back to The One who made a way (Jesus!),” Vining wrote. “We know that this money and this opportunity and this voice have not been given to us because of anything WE have done, and they are not ours.”
In 2017, Vining and another Young Living seller made a goal to get Young Living oils into a school in Uganda that was founded by an American evangelical Christian missionary. The Vinings and their partners were eventually able to raise enough funds to get oils and diffusers into every dorm room and classroom at the school — in order to give the students “appropriate wellness supplies to prevent icky diseases and unwellness,” Vining wrote. She felt that this plan was a calling from God.
“It’s about more than oils, you guys,” Vining wrote. “It’s ALWAYS been about so much more than oils. It’s about ‘wellness, purpose, and abundance’ (YL’s slogan) and it’s about using ANY platform we are given, to glorify the King.”
Vining’s essential oil influence also led to a career on social media, where she became a prominent Young Living influencer. As her prominence within the “oiler community” grew, so did her online presence, and she went from having 56,000 Instagram followers in September 2018 to more than 200,000 when she quit the company in August 2021.
Many other Young Living sellers also found success on social media, where they were able to share their devout faith and their enviable lifestyles while also recruiting new downlines, or Young Living retailers who report to them. McLean, the former Royal Crown Diamond who was sued by Young Living along with the Vinings last year, grew her platform to more than 29,000 Instagram followers and launched a book and video series called 24 Days of Prayer for Your Business. In the series, McLean led followers virtually on a spiritual devotional aimed at centering their faith in their business ventures, Young Living or otherwise. Truitt, who has more than 43,000 Instagram followers, is also open about her Christian faith, often discussing her religion along with her business ventures and devotion to health, wellness, and fitness.
It is because these oil peddlers connected their spirituality so closely with their careers that their sudden insistence that the company is now somehow anti-Christian has been so jarring. But according to the oilers, after years of success in Young Living they had begun to feel a darkness creep into the company and that’s what led them to leave.
Last week, Truitt kicked off the public drama when she posted a series of Instagram stories about issues she had had with Young Living. According to Truitt, after seven good years of selling Young Living and reaching the second-highest Diamond status, she and her husband began to feel like the company was “changing,” and not for the better. Truitt didn’t specify what these changes were, saying they “couldn’t really pinpoint it,” but “we heard things that didn’t really agree with our spirit.” After praying about it, they decided to resign from Young Living at the end of 2021.
“We knew that the Lord was calling us out of that,” she said.
Truitt said that, despite having resigned last fall, she received a “demonic” book in the mail earlier this month that she thought was sent from Young Living. She said the company had sent it to all its Diamond-level sellers and claimed that Mary Young, the wife of the late founder, had encouraged the leaders to read the book and pass it along to their downlines. The book, titled My Word Made Flesh, is cowritten by a self-help guru named Robert Tennyson Stevens, who runs a company called Mastery Systems (Stevens did not return a request for comment). Stevens describes himself on his website as a “masterful facilitator of individuals and organizations that choose to transform their lives into healthy, creative, loving and fulfilling experiences.” Stevens wrote the book with Vonn Harting, a Young Living Royal Crown Diamond who moonlights as a motivational speaker, and Young wrote the foreword.
The spokesperson for Young Living said Young’s choice to contribute to the book was separate from her role at the company.
“Mary Young’s choice to write a foreword stemmed from her own belief about the use of language to promote positive outcomes and her desire to support a friend,” they said. “She wrote her foreword prior to much of the book even being written based on the authors’ intent to teach people how to use positive language to help bring about change in their lives.”
I attempted to get a copy of My Word Made Flesh to see what it actually contained, but after placing an order for the $79 book on Mastery Systems’ website, my order was canceled and refunded with no explanation. My Word Made Flesh has now been scrubbed from the website.
According to Truitt, when she received the book and flipped through it, she was horrified.
“This book is one of the most darkest and demonic books I’ve ever had in my house,” she said. “I cannot wait to get rid of it but I had to share.”
In Truitt’s video, she reads from a book that she says is My Word Made Flesh. The “demonic” elements of the book, Truitt claimed, include encouraging people to do basically a “seance with oils” and telling them to repeat “I am the resurrection and the life of my lineage.” In the Bible, Jesus calls himself “the way, the truth and the life,” and says “no one comes to the Father [God] except through me.” To Christians like Truitt, she explained, the book’s phrasing is very offensive as it seems to imply you are supplanting Jesus’s spot.
“This book is one of the most darkest and demonic books I’ve ever had in my house."
“There’s nothing more false than that,” she says in her Instagram story. “Then taking Jesus out of it and putting yourself in there.”
Truitt warned “believers” who were still in Young Living that if they did what the company asked and brought the book into their household, “it will completely ruin you.”
“Leaders of Young Living, you received this book, and so if you are hiding this book from your teams you are condoning this evil,” she said. “And if you promote it, you need a serious heart check.”
“This is so much bigger than money, this is so much bigger than day-to-day life, this is eternal significance,” she said. “And you have to stand up and rise up and run from this.”
Vining soon posted on her Instagram stories in support of Truitt, saying that she was proud of Truitt for sharing “the truth.”
“Believers be discerning,” she wrote. “The enemy [Satan] prowls like a lion, and he can look (and smell) really good… this isn’t about a book. Though that book alone would have been a deal breaker for me… this is the tip of the iceberg on this issue.” Vining added she was praying for clarity to speak out more about her experience with Young Living but knew she had to denounce this “spiritual darkness.”
The reaction from Truitt’s community to her denouncement of Young Living was overwhelmingly supportive. Commenters praised her “braveness” and for speaking out against “evil.” One woman wrote she had considered signing up for Young Living but would not after seeing Truitt’s stories. People also slammed Young Living on social media after Truitt spoke out, saying they were blending “oils and the occult.”
“Am I the only Christian woman who is not surprised one bit that an essential oil company would come out as satanic?” wrote one.
Other Instagram accounts, like Christian podcast host Blake Guichet from @TheGirlNamedBlake, have been posting about how the company is “anti-Biblical.” Guichet had previously posted “deep dives” into the supposed darkness in Young Living and said she wasn’t surprised to see Truitt’s stories.
“I knew Young Living was into some dark stuff, and everyone thought I was crazy,” she said.
Since posting about the book, Truitt has erased all mention of her claims from her account. She continues to post memes about spiritual warfare, uploading a C.S. Lewis quote that reads: “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”
Both Truitt and Vining are now preaching the benefits of their new company Modere, which you can swipe up on their accounts to buy, or even sell, products from if you choose.
“God did design our bodies to move,” Truitt wrote on Instagram stories, adding, “I have been using Modere products for a while and it’s just been so different, my body feels so different… the youth is just flowing out of me.”
Meanwhile, Young Living’s social accounts have so far been silent on the controversy. They continue to post about the benefits of oils, encouraging their 1 million followers to “focus on you by taking some time out to practice mindfulness with your favorite essential oil blend.”
Their followers filled up their comments section with hearts. ●
Stephanie McNeal · Feb. 22, 2020
Stephanie McNeal is senior culture reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Stephanie McNeal at
stephanie.mcneal@buzzfeed.com.
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