Singer and songwriter Chynna Phillips Baldwin, known for her role in the pop group Wilson Phillips, joined former psychic medium Jenn Nizza on a recent episode of “Ex-Psychic Saved” to discuss her early encounters with the occult, her struggles with addiction and the faith that ultimately reshaped her life.
Phillips Baldwin, now the leader of the online women’s ministry California Healin‘, shared how tarot card readings and New Age practices lured her as a teenager and young adult. What began as an innocent curiosity quickly became a source of confusion, fear and spiritual unrest.
“My mom’s best friend, Alan, was a tarot card reader. He did it on the side as a hobby, and so he used to always say, ‘Come on over. I’ll give you a tarot card reading,’” Phillips Baldwin recalled. “It was so sort of intriguing. And that’s the thing about New Age. It’s very seductive and alluring and mysterious. And that’s why so many people get hooked on it, and so many people get drawn into it, because that’s what the enemy does.”
Click here to listen to the Ex-Psychic Saved podcast
Though the readings often seemed harmless — “most of them were positive,” she said — some experiences left her shaken. “Sometimes I would walk away feeling more confused than actually having clarity and a little bit more fear as well,” she shared.
Her exploration went beyond tarot. Phillips Baldwin shared that she once visited a so-called “white witch” who used angel cards and invoked past lives.
“She told me this horrifying story about how in a past life I either had hung myself or my child had hung themselves, and that I was still holding onto that grief,” she said. The experience, she added, eventually “started freaking me out, to the point where I was canceling appointments with her just because I was terrified to go.”
For Nizza, who hosts “Ex-Psychic Saved” to expose the dangers of occultism after leaving her career as a medium, Phillips Baldwin’s testimony was familiar.
She emphasized that practices marketed as harmless or even “light” can open spiritual doors that lead to fear and oppression. “As if, like, putting the word white in front of it changes anything, because it doesn’t,” Nizza said. “It’s all witchcraft.”
Phillips Baldwin said she always sensed something was off: “I feel like I always knew deep down inside that there was something evil and wrong with the tarot card readings, but I continued to do them, kind of also to sort of appease my friend Alan, because he was so enthusiastic about it.”
Her struggles with New Age practices coincided with personal turmoil. Though she had professed faith in Jesus as a child, she said her environment offered no discipleship, leaving her vulnerable. By her teenage years, she had turned to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of anxiety, abandonment and broken relationships.
“I had so much pain and angst and anxiety and abandonment issues that I turned to drugs and alcohol like so many of us do,” she said.
That lifestyle, she explained, left her spiritually depleted. “I was literally in the hands of the evil one. I was demonically oppressed at this point,” she told Nizza.
Her turning point came years later, through her brother-in-law, Stephen Baldwin, and his wife, who had recently become Christians.
“They were toting their Bibles everywhere,” she recalled. At first skeptical, one day, Phillips Baldwin asked them to pray for her. “I just heard the Lord say, ‘Go in there and ask them to pray over you.’
That moment, she said, launched her back into a serious walk with Christ. She threw away her Buddha statue, bought a Bible and immersed herself in Scripture. “I just was so hungry for the Word, and I could feel myself being nourished by the Word of God, and I just knew that I was home,” she said.
Since then, Phillips Baldwin has dedicated her public platform to sharing her faith. She founded California Preachin’, a YouTube channel where she speaks candidly about her marriage, family struggles and walk with God. That online presence eventually grew into California Healin’, a women’s ministry that provides Bible studies, support groups, retreats and online gatherings for believers around the world.
“For me, I started the YouTube channel because I really wanted to do something for the Kingdom,” she explained. “I really knew from the beginning … once I started talking about my marriage problems, my son’s cancer journey, the fact that I didn’t feel God loved me — when I really started being real and just allowing people to see my vulnerabilities and allowing them to see my humanity, that’s when my YouTube channel really started to take off.”
Now, Phillips Baldwin said, she sees her past as a testimony of God’s grace and a tool to help others find freedom in Christ. “Once you have that experience and that conviction and that conversion, really nothing else matters,” she said. “You just don’t care anymore, really, about anything other than screaming Jesus from the mountain tops, because you really understand the gravity and the purpose for why you were put in this world.”
Despite challenges, including public scrutiny, personal loss and spiritual attacks, she remains committed to pointing others to Christ. Her husband, actor Billy Baldwin, has yet to share his faith journey, but she asked listeners to pray for him. Meanwhile, her daughter, Brooke, is now leading a youth arm of California Healing.
Nizza said the conversation underscored the podcast’s mission: to encourage those trapped in occult practices to turn toward the hope found in Christianity.
“What I found really interesting, and what I can relate to, is that you hit the nail on the head when you said identity,” Nizza said. “When it’s the world’s stuff, you’ll never be valuable. You’ll never be good enough. But when your identity is in Christ, you trust Him implicitly.”
Phillips Baldwin agreed, adding: “Everything else just kind of feels … not completely insignificant, but it feels like Jesus is the priority,” she said. “Everything else, nothing else, can be an idol above Jesus.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
