McKenna DeVelbiss could have easily curdled into bitterness. As a kid, she was teased for her weight and appearance, called “fat and ugly,” the kind of cruelties that cling to memory long after childhood ends. Later, she hid her sexuality for years after watching how others were treated.
Yet, somehow, at 25, DeVelbiss shines. On TikTok, where she goes live nightly from the tiny village of Addison, Michigan (population 585), her gentleness radiates through a phone screen, drawing in celebrities and teenagers alike and building a community so devoted that some say her words saved their lives.
She started her account as a kind of personal challenge, as a way to push herself past the anxiety that made public speaking and even eye contact difficult.
“I don’t have a thing or niche, some people cook or dance, I just spend my time being me,” DeVelbiss tells TODAY.com. And being herself, it turned out, was exactly what people wanted.
One video in particular, DeVelbiss’s reflection on how remarks, cutting or compassionate, can lodge in a person for life, struck a national nerve. It circulated far beyond Addison, reaching everyone from Ms. Rachel to Paris Hilton.
“I just wanted to say that words matter, whether good or bad,” she begins, before listing the memories that she has never quite shaken: the kids in elementary school who told her “my nose was too small for my face,” the child who warned her not to jump on the bed “because I'd break it,” even her own mother cautioning that she “shouldn’t wear striped shirts because it’s unflattering for a bigger person.”
Then the clip pivots, as she recounts the small kindnesses that stayed with her just as vividly, a woman at the Apple Store who told her she was “a breath of fresh air,” and an older shopper at Walmart who said her smile made her day, followed by another person saying the same thing the very next day.
“So," she concludes, “words matter, whether you think so or not. Sometimes people will remember that for the rest of their life.”
Five years ago, COVID-19 hit DeVelbiss so hard it left her with long-term complications: nerve damage, brain fog, overwhelming fatigue and the loss of her ability to drive. A once-independent young woman, she was suddenly housebound and had to shuttle from doctor to doctor without answers.
When told how unjust it all sounds, DeVelbiss gives a knowing sigh. “I’d rather it be me than someone else,” she says.
And the remarkable thing is, she says she really is doing just fine, due in large part to TikTok.
The platform gave her something she didn’t know she was missing: a sense of purpose, a reason to speak, a community that sees her, and the outline of an unlikely future.
DeVelbiss, who didn’t attend college, says she never had traditional career aspirations, none of the “doctor, physical therapist” paths her peers talked about. But now she’s beginning to recognize her own path. Her followers call her simply to talk, to hear a voice that makes them feel a little less alone. Some credit her with pulling them out of dark spaces. She listens, she tells them they matter, she reminds them to stay.
“I’d rather hear about you on my phone than in a news article,” she says.
She's here for anyone who is struggling, anyone who needs a lesson in kindness or a reminder that they matter.
“This is my gift,” she says. “I feel what they feel, and it lets me help them.”
