After leaving the Amish, he spent a decade partying. Years later, he discovered he has a 16-year-old daughter (exclusive)

The content creator, 45, left his strict Amish order when he was 18 years old

NEED TO KNOW

• After Eli Yoder left his Amish order at 18 years old, he spent over a decade partying, drinking and engaging in activities that completely opposed the strict traditionalism of his youth
• Yoder, 45, later found religion again and started speaking about the Amish lifestyle online
• Recently, he shocked his social media followers by revealing that he has a 16-year-old daughter he did not know about until recently

When Eli Yoder left his strict Amish order, he did away with all religious practices, breaking free of the traditionalism that defined his life for 18 years. He yearned to have control over his own life and live every day on his own terms.

He started drinking, hanging out at bars and clubs and partying in ways the Amish lifestyle would never allow. “I was on the wild side for 19 years,” Yoder, now 45, tells PEOPLE. He had multiple partners during that time in his life, but it would be years until his actions caught up with him.

In recent years, Yoder decided to start sharing his story on social media. With over 1.8 million followers on TikTok, he continues to open up about his childhood in the insular Ohio community and educate viewers about the Amish world. Yoder has consistently discussed matters related to his personal life, talking online about his relationship to his Amish family and about his father, who was shunned for breaking Amish rules before he died by suicide at age 46 in 2003.

This past April, Yoder posted a video to announce a bombshell life update. “Well, 16 years ago, when I was still an alcoholic, I made some bad choices. But out of all the bad choices I have ever made after I left the Amish, this one, a blessing came out of it,” the Undeceived author began in the TikTok, which has over 230,000 views.

“What I’m about to announce to you may shock you, may stun you and may just surprise you. I was also surprised when I recently learned that I have a 16-year-old daughter,” said Yoder, who concluded the video with photos of his daughter, Mackenzie. “I’m blessed to call her my daughter,” he added.

The content creator has one other child, 19-year-old son Jonathan, whom he shares with his wife of 20 years, Nikki. Yoder tells PEOPLE that he was friends with Mackenzie’s mom and her current husband during the days in the partying scene. At one point, they even worked together. Before he found out about Mackenzie’s paternity, Yoder remembers once thinking that she looked a lot like his sister.

He says Mackenzie’s mother wondered the same thing. “She thought about it. She now admits it since the results are out, but she said, ‘I didn’t want to stir the pot. I just knew you got married and I didn’t want to bother,’” Yoder explains. “And I respect her for that.”

Mackenzie was the one to pursue their connection after completing an ancestry DNA kit. After she reached out, Yoder sent in his own DNA and his relationship to the teen was confirmed. Once they finally met, he says Mackenzie was excited for her biological father’s followers to learn about her.

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He was keen to share as well. Yoder accepted religion back into his life; he’s a Christian now, and he says that the practice of evangelizing has introduced him to people with similar backgrounds to his own in terms of drinking and partying. Still, when he announced the news about his daughter, he expected his social media viewers to feel the same shock he did, but he also assumed they might make some more pointed judgments about his rowdier lifestyle once upon a time.

“They [might have] thought, ‘Well, Eli Yoder was living so wild. He stepped out on his wife and cheated,’” Yoder tells PEOPLE. However, he quickly corrects that misconception, clarifying, “We were all partying together. We’re still friends with them.”

However, Yoder was fascinated to see how much the news did indeed resonate with his audience. People with similar pasts reached out to him, thanking him for being “so honest,” he recalls. “It encouraged them. It gave them hope.”

Read the original article on People