Meet Christina Sayles

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christina Sayles. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Christina, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
Mental health issues and struggles are something that I’ve dealt with for a majority of my life. I’m a mix of anxiety, ADHD, depression, Autism, eating disorders, & PTSD (& more!) all rolled into one. I’m a full-time mom, who once upon a time, tried to have a full-time job in front of a computer. However, I quickly learned that my ADHD was a major hindrance to my ability to get the job done. It wasn’t fast paced enough to hold my interest. So, I traded in the slow-paced office job for a faster paced warehouse job. Another mistake. Instead of being bored from the work, it was now sending me into panic attacks. It felt like I couldn’t find a balance or anything that would work for me.

While trying to find my place in the 9-5 world, I was also dealing with a large amount of grief. The end of 2020 brought many significant losses in my life & family. I noticed my depression & insomnia were becoming exceptionally worse. I was closing myself off from other people & felt unable to cope. Concerned that something was wrong, I went to be tested by a neuropsychologist. I was diagnosed with autism, ADHD, anxiety disorder, depression & PTSD. With all of these things piling up and being stacked against me, I was stumped for a while, trying to figure out where I fit in. But then one day I had a thought, “if I can’t find anything that works for me, why don’t I create something that works for me?” And that’s how Christina’s Magical Moments (CMM) was born.

I knew I wanted to do something that could combine my love of theme parks, fandoms & bringing joy to people. I wanted to do something important & impactful. I wanted to, in a way, give myself to the world. So I started making fandom-related content on Tiktok. It seemed pretty well received – I had 1000 followers pretty quickly, which allowed me to do live streams – and I started streaming from theme parks. From there, I fell into a routine and CMM began to really take off as its own endeavor. I was able to share my happy place with people all over the world – and that made my heart happy.

You might think, “spending your days at theme parks? Interacting with people from across the globe? That’s just gotta be great all the time,” right? Well, I learned that that’s not necessarily true. Some days are hard. Some days you don’t want to get out of bed. Some days thinking about the crowds in the park made me not want to go. Sometimes things going on in my personal life made me just want to stay home. On especially hard days, I’ve wanted to give up altogether. On days like that, when everything feels too overwhelming, I really dig inside of myself and remember why I started CMM. I want to bring the magic to the people who need it. I want to be that light in someone’s day who may be struggling. I want to be that safe space for someone who feels like they don’t have one. The CMM community has become something so important to me. As much as they rely on me for content/entertainment, I rely just as much on them. It’s a two-way street really. Their kind words, their encouragement, etc. All of those things remind me that I am making a difference and help me to push thru on my not-so-good days.

There’s also a whole other beast that comes with being a public figure in the social media world – the act of comparison. Anyone who says they don’t compare themselves to others is probably lying. However, letting those comparisons affect you is different than letting them run you. Am I guilty of comparing myself to other content creators? Of course. Sometimes it makes you feel plain rotten. But I’m learning that it’s not always a fair comparison. I can look at my own strengths and I can see the value in them & myself. Instead of comparing myself to other people (and things I may not have, or experiences I may not get), I’ve started thinking about all that I DO have. The most important thing I have is my amazing family. My husband Andrew & our two daughters are the biggest supporters of CMM & encourage me every day to be the best version of myself that I can. Andrew is an especially big part of CMM – Not only does he offer me his help & support constantly, he sees the good that CMM does for the community & myself. Besides my family I have great friends and a wonderful community that’s not only allowed me to be my true authentic self, but has also embraced it. At the end of the day, persistence, dedication and passion are what’s important to me, and even though my mental health may sometimes make these things more difficult to pursue, it’s not in my nature to give up.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Christina’s Magical Moments (CMM) is your place for all things theme park & fandom related! While predominately on Tiktok, CMM also posts content on YouTube, Instagram & Facebook. One of the more popular things I do are my live streams from various theme parks. I’m located in Southern California, so I stream from Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood and Knott’s Berry Farm. In addition to live streams, I also put out daily content on anything from new merch in the parks to theme park ASMR (and everything in between). I like to share my tips & tricks to theme parks too! I know with my disabilities, it’s helpful to know things about different attractions or even about quiet spots you can escape to if you’re feeling too overstimulated in a park. If these things help me, I know they could help someone else.

CMM goes beyond just content that I put out. It’s a community of people who have come together. We currently have a discord server, where we can all converse as a big group. This server not only allows me to connect with everyone (and send out announcements like when I go live), but allows everyone within it to connect as well. The friendships coming out of CMM have been amazing. We had our annual meetup this past November in Anaheim. It was such a fun event & was so great that so many people were able to attend. We even had CMM ornaments for sale this Christmas!

We have a couple of exciting things on the horizon! CMM will be launching a Patreon soon which will allow me to not only expand the community, but to interact with it on a more personal level!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
There’s been a lot of qualities or skills that have been impactful to my journey. First & foremost – remember to have fun. If you’re having fun with your content people will see it. That joy will be reflected in your videos and photos. On the flip side – if you’re doing something without enjoyment or simply doing it to gain views, likes or followers – people will see through that. And that lack of fun & passion will reflect in your content.

Number two is to have realistic expectations. Many people have this assumption that being a content creator or streamer is easy money and is going to pay all of your bills. This is not always the case. It’s true there are a lot of big time streamers, content creators, and influencers, who have large followings, various partnerships and lots of deals. But they didn’t just get this success overnight. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication and consistency.

And number three – care about people. We, as content creators, influencers and streamers need to understand that on the other side of that screen is a real life human being. The experience that we provide impacts these people – even if we can’t always personally observe this for ourselves. You never know how your actions can help someone else. I know for me, my personal goal is to bring a little light to someone’s day (even just one person) and make them smile. If I’ve done that, I’ve done my job. And hopefully, my job of being a source of joy for people will one day help support my family as well.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
Besides, my husband and my kids, my parents have been some of the biggest supporters I’ve ever had – not only with CMM, but in life. I was raised in a home where both my parents were pastors. So they instilled in me how important it is to express love and care for all people for who they are and as they are. They’ve shown me what it looks like to be humble and selfless when it comes to humanity. My parents are the perfect example of what love looks like. I will also say, their compassion is what inspired me to be a pastor myself and I think that’s where my desire to love, inspire, and encourage people comes from.

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