From Ashes to Eden (Part 1 of 16)

From Ashes to Eden (Part 1 of 16)

The first 3 parts of this blog series, From Ashes to Eden are FREE. Upgrade for my full testimony: parts 4-16 are for paid subscribers only.

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Introduction

This is part one of a 16-part series about what happened to me over this past decade, and how God had to completely break me in order to use me to help others.  (Isaiah 6:8)

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Isaiah 6:8

This blog series, a modern-day Pickwick Papers, will also become a video series. And ultimately it will become my novel. The novel I have always known I would write. I just didn't know what it would be about. 

I started to try to write this book back in the fall of 2021, one month before my dad died (on my wedding anniversary), and one year before my husband divorced me.

But it wasn’t time yet. I didn't know how it would end. What I didn't know was I would have to live through the ending. I had to live it before I could write it. 

And it was not fun. "Not fun" is a euphemism for what it was. It was hell. I have bad PTSD. Like most soldiers. But I will heal. And actually, writing helps me heal.

Writing this story is going to allow me to let it all go and move on. So thank you for letting me share this. It is my prayer that this story will not only allow me to move on, but that it will also help inspire others to heal.

These posts are still rough… like sketches in a sketch book that wil ultimately turn into paintings. Just trying to write all of this out has been a challenge because of the trauma I have experienced, especially over this past decade.

These first posts are the bones of what will eventually become fleshed-out chapters in my novel. You get to read it first.

Oh and PS: God told me this story will be made into a movie one day. Red carpet in the “New Hollywood.” I believe Him.

I Was Born to Do This

I was born on the Fourth of July. That was not an accident. I'm a firecracker. Fiercely independent.

I always knew I came into this lifetime to do something big. I just didn’t know what it was until very recently.

My name is Ann-Marie Michaels. I was named after my father’s favorite teacher, Sister Ann-Marie, a nun, and the principal, at his Catholic school in Toledo, Ohio.

The name Ann is the female version of John (the truth-teller who wrote Revelation) + Marie (Mary, the mother) + Michaels (from the Archangel Michael, who defeats the devil in the end). 

I’m the truth-teller nobody wants to listen to, saying things most people don’t want to hear. I’m also a mother who cares fiercely about children. A digital soldier with a heart.

It All Had to Happen

Suddenly all the crazy things I did in my life make sense. All the odd decisions, all the bad things that happened. The heartbreak. The good things, too.

Looking back at all the shattered pieces. Everything had to happen to lead me to the exact place I am now. Every single thing that happened in my life now makes sense.

I had to:

• Get injured by vaccines in my 20s – so I could learn how to heal myself.
• Go to New York in my 20s and meet my handsome German boyfriend who planted the seeds about communism and the New World Order – stuff that didn't make sense until 30 years later.
• Abandon my Christian faith as a child – because I had to be without Christianity to see how much we really need it.
• Work in the veal-fattening pens, also called cubicles, in corporate digital advertising for over a decade to learn how to communicate online.
• Build – and then lose –  the biggest health blog network in the world.
• Get censored off of every platform, and be isolated from my family and friends for years.
• Research my ancestry to find out that my family traces back to Catholic freedom fighters and royalty (no wonder I am the way that I am).
• Go through a nightmare divorce, losing almost everything.
• Fight without a lawyer, in corrupt courts, to find out that the family court system is a nightmare for millions of people.
• Lose my only daughter to parental alienation – and then find out how many people are also experiencing this.
• Cure my stepdad miraculously with just water – and then find out later that he died in a nursing home on Christmas (again, a nightmare millions are going through).
• Lose my home in the divorce — and then get thrown out two Christmases in a row by foreign landlords.

All of this had to happen… so I could launch Eden Revival on January 1, 2026.

Eden Revival

Eden Revival was what God called me to do. It's what He has been preparing me for my whole life.

For the past five years, I've had that song playing in my head by Joni Mitchell, you know that one called Woodstock: "We are stardust... and we got to get ourselves back to the garden."

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
– Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

Also, I'll never forget the day our priest at my parish played this song at our retreat back in 2024, Garden by Matt Maher.

The first time I heard that song, I cried. I still cry every time I hear it. It's exactly what God has called me to help Him do.

All the broken are mending
The mournful rejoicing
Seeing through tears
Of peace overflowing
And You walk with me
You never leave
You're making my heart a garden
– Matt Maher, Garden

Eden Revival is my vision for a national (and eventually global) health freedom network: a grassroots movement to revive the Garden of Eden: natural health, freedom based on our God-given constitutional rights, obedience to God, real food, and community of friends and family who support each other.

We will do it via online classes and forums, Zoom calls, local chapters, annual conferences.

I’ll be teaching, and working with others to teach, everything I've learned over the past few decades working as a health blogger and running the health blog network...

Everything from:

• Sourcing and cooking real food
• Natural health
• Finding local farmers
• Gardening and homesteading
• Starting small businesses
• Online marketing and content creation
• Homeschooling
• Constitutional law and representing yourself in court (this last one is something I've only learned about in the past few years, but I know many people are suffering at the hands of a corrupt court system – and I now know that together, we can take it back and turn it around)

My Role as The Messenger

This is my testimony. How God turned my mess into a message, and turned me into a “messenger.”

Funny, that's what Joan of Arc said in that movie, The Messenger: "I don't think. I leave that to God. I'm nothing in all this, I'm just the messenger."

The Messenger is one of my favorite movies of all time – right up there with Independence Day.

God asked me to walk through the fire so I could come back stronger. And, also He had me do it so I wouldn't be afraid of the fire. And that way I could help others.

As hard as this past decade has been, I have been obedient to Him. Because I knew He would never fail me. As I always say, "Our Lord is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent." How can He fail?

What, then, can we say about all of this?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
(Romans 8:31)

My Calling as a Writer

Looking back, the foundation for my life's mission was laid long before the blog network, before the marriage, before any of it looked like "success."

In 1991, I was studying law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And I was miserable. I just could not see myself becoming a lawyer. I knew I would be good at it, but deep down I knew I was too emotional. Too sensitive.

What I really wanted was to become a writer. A novelist. But back then, in the 1990s, there were no blogs. There were very few books that were self-published. You had to go through the channels of getting a literary agent to represent you and get you published.

Of course, the people who got published were the people who were "in the club" – in the Ivy League schools.

"I Like New York in Spring… How About You?"

I figured I needed to be in New York City to make it as a writer. 

I had seen the Terry Gilliam movie, The Fisher King, with Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges in the fall of 1991, and it really made an impact on me. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It’s one of my favorite movies ever. 

Hate to spoil it for you. Sorry not sorry but I gotta cut to the chase. The climax scene with the song, “I Like New York in June” makes me cry every time I watch it. I think this movie was one of the big reasons I went to New York. 

Actually, I think God led me there. Maybe He used this movie to get me there. Some things just have to happen.

I applied and got into NYU. I think maybe I got a small scholarship. But the scholarship wasn't enough. I was going to have to take out a lot of student loans. And that scared me.

Nonetheless, I moved to New York in the spring of 1992. I figured I’d spend the spring working and soaking up life experiences and in the summer. I could try to stay in the NYU dorms, then start school in the fall.

Pre-Giuliani NYC

New York at the time was not a friendly place.

This was before Rudy Giuliani came and cleaned it up. After he took down the Five Families. Absolute hero!

There were homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks. You had to step over them just to get to brunch.

I got mugged my first week there. I lost all the money I had saved up to rent a room in an extended stay hotel slash boarding house on the Upper West Side.

That's what led me to move into the youth hostel. And now, looking back, I wonder if it was actually meant to be. Like I said, all these things had to happen.

It was a massive, gorgeous red brick Victorian Gothic building with grey gables on Amsterdam Avenue. The hostel was a lot cheaper than the boarding house. Instead of having my own room, I could stay in a room with five other girls in bunk beds. 

They had a place to get breakfast downstairs, and a patio area out back where we would hang out and drink beer and smoke cigarettes. I made friends with people from all over the world.

I got a job pretty quick, working at the publicity department at Universal Pictures on Park Avenue. I took the subway to work, listening to cassette tapes on my Walkman. It was springtime in New York and the weather was balmy and gorgeous. 

One of my friends at the hostel was working as an intern at the David Letterman show. My job was a lot less glamorous. I sat, alone, in a windowless room, going through newspapers to find reviews or stories about Universal Pictures releases. This was before computers. When I found a review of one of our movies, I had to cut it out and put it in a file. 

The German

One morning before work, I went down to get breakfast and saw the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my life.

To this day, he is the most handsome man I've ever seen. I even tried to look up Hollywood actors – none of them compare. Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio – meh. They all fall short. And no, I'm not gonna put a picture of him on here because I'm respecting his anonymity. Yes, he is still alive.

I put my bag and Walkman on the chair in front of him, to mark my spot. Grabbed coffee and yogurt, and plopped myself down, trying to act normal. He was eating cereal.

He said he had just arrived in New York, an architecture major from Germany. He had been on a solo trip to New Zealand – he took a semester off from school after graduating high school.

His hair was the color of white sand beaches, his eyes impossibly blue, like the shallow water near the shore where the sun turns everything turquoise. I nodded as he talked, but I was barely hearing the words.

When I looked into his eyes, I felt myself drifting — being lifted onto a seaplane skimming across glassy water. Palm trees swaying below. A tropical island awaited us, somewhere warm and balmy.

Open-air suites with gauzy white curtains billowing in the breeze. Bare feet on cool stone floors. Champagne sweating in crystal glasses. Salt in the air. No clocks. No responsibilities.

I tried to focus on what he was saying. I really did.

Anyway... ahem.

I wasn't sure how old he was – he looked about my age. 

So I asked. He said he was 21. I was 23.

An “older woman,” I joked.

I told him I had to go to work. But I’d be back that night. A bunch of us had plans to go to the local pub. “You should join us,” I said.

After work, he was standing there when I went out back to meet up with my friends. We talked the whole night. Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.

Books, movies, music, politics. I told him I loved Chopin, Oscar Wilde and Woody Allen. He loved Bach and Mozart and he also loved Woody Allen.

Keep in mind, this was the ‘90s. That was before everyone realized Woody Allen was a pedophile.

We were inseparable for the rest of the trip. The day he left was the saddest day of my life. We ate croissants and sipped coffee. He hugged me so hard before he got on the bus to the airport.

Grand Central Station

Then the letters started. I had a mailbox at Grand Central Station. Every time I'd pick up his letters, I'd think about that scene from The Fisher King.

I'd read his letters at my desk at the publicity department. He wrote them on parchment paper with a fountain pen. He sent me a photo of himself. I sent him some photos of me. This was before we had iPhones and social media. I spritzed my letters with my perfume.

I was falling in love. Deeply. But I knew it was probably doomed. How could we be together? We were on opposite sides of the world.

We were like Parry and Lydia from The Fisher King. They only had one date. And then he ended up in a coma.

Still, I thought, that movie had a happy ending. It just took a while for it to play out.

Europe

I knew I had to go see him. So I saved my money for weeks, made hot tea at home with instead of getting coffee out, walked to work instead of taking the subway. And I got a cheap ticket to fly to Amsterdam and packed a single backpack. 

It was my first time to go to Europe. A trip I'd been wanting to take for years.

He picked me up at the airport and drove me back to his parents house in Germany. I’ll never forget the moment our eyes met at the gate. He was so tall – over six foot. Stunningly handsome. He had on a pale pink polo shirt and walking shorts, leather shoes with buckles.

We spent a few nights at his parents house. The first night, his father asked me at dinner, "Who is your favorite classical musician?" That would never happen in an American home. I was nervous so I said Brahms. He seemed to approve. I did like Brahms, but my favorite is Chopin.

He was worried about me getting bored in his suburban northern German town. So he planned a trip for us. What he didn't know is I could never be bored with him. I didn't care if we just watched movies, cooked dinner together – whatever.

But I'm glad we took the trip because it was amazing. He planned the perfect adventure for us.

We took an overnight train to Prague. We walked on cobblestone streets and rode the subway, went to the theater and museums, drank beer in the evening at cafes.

He showed me the difference between the beautiful cathedrals and other buildings built by Christians and the hideous boxy buildings built by communists.

I would have never noticed this contrast if he had not pointed it out. I didn't even know much about communism – we never learned about it in school.

Which really makes you wonder, doesn't it? It took me three decades to finally realize what actually happened in WW2.

When I write the full version of this book, I'll get into it.

For now, I'll just leave you with an actual diary entry from General Patton:

"Actually, the Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. It's a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans."

The Coming New World Order

One day, we went to the Jewish ghetto and toured the cemetery. I remember how all the gravestones were crowded and falling over on top of each other. We both felt so bad for the Jews.

We talked about the Holocaust and I remember how bad he felt as a German for what his people had done to the Jews. Little did we know what would come out decades later... what is coming out now.

We even rented that movie, Sophie’s Choice, when we got back home to Germany. I now realize how emotionally manipulative that movie is, and how full of lies it is. But I'll get into that later. Or you could just watch a Candace Owens video. Ha.

I also remember him showing me all the different bills and coins he had saved from different countries – France, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy. He said he was worried about the Euro coming.  Said he had a bad feeling about all the currencies going away – and the European Union.

It wasn’t until over three decades later that I would find out the truth about what happened in WW2. And of course, we found out how bad the European Union was. 

I believe those seeds were planted back then for a reason. Sadly, our relationship did not last after that summer. He had to go to college and said after college, he would be getting a master’s degree. School is free in Germany so he would be a fool not to take advantage of it. 

He wrote to me a few times after I returned home to the US. But I was still in love with him. I was dreaming about him. It hurt too much to read his letters.

So I just stopped responding. It was the only way to move on with my life. My heart was broken. But I had no choice. I had to make myself forget about him.

Injured by Vaccines 

I decided that fall that NYU was too expensive and made the decision to move back to Texas. As a resident, I could go to school for a fraction of what it cost to attend NYU.

So I transferred from NYU to UT Austin. I stayed with my mom in Dallas for the fall semester, then moved down to Austin in January of 1993, figuring I would work part-time and go to community college to try to knock out some of my credits.

When I transferred to UT in the fall, they forced a bunch of shots on me. Multiple vaccines in one day to "catch up." I didn't think much of it then. Just a routine appointment.

Not sure how long it took but over time, I started having a lot of pain. My knees hurt constantly. The pain was so bad at night, it would wake me up. And the pain was spreading to my fingers and elbows.

Eventually I got the diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis. I also realized I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). The doctor didn’t diagnose me with CFS because they didn’t believe it was a real disease. I had read about it though, and had all the symptoms. I also had chronic sinus infections, seasonal allergies, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities MCS.

I was living on Aleve and over-the-counter allergy medications. Doctors couldn’t help me. They said rheumatoid arthritis was a degenerative disease. Meaning it would continue to get worse.

They said I'd end up in a wheelchair. Their solutions: drugs and surgery. 

I refused to accept that. I knew there had to be a better way. I spent hours in the library (this was before the internet has really taken hold). I fought my way back to health on my own. 

I cut out gluten and sugar and within 30 days, all my symptoms were gone as long as I stuck to a strict diet. Within a couple of years, I was completely healed. I could eat whatever I wanted again, with no pain, no fatigue, no allergies, no symptoms whatsoever. 

You can read my recovery story here: My Story: How I Cured My Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The doctors were wrong.  That's when I realized what we're told about health isn't always the truth. God had to injure me that way so I could discover natural healing – the foundation of my future career running the blog network.

California Veal Fattening Pens

In my twenties, I slogged through jobs in corporate advertising in San Francisco and LA.  Over a decade of bureaucratic BS. I hated it. Meetings about nothing, nepotism, pushing crap I didn't believe in. 

But God was training me. I mastered digital marketing, graphic design, copywriting, building brands. Skills that I would need later.

In the summer of 2006, I finally quit my last corporate job – the worst job ever. It was at JDate in Beverly Hills. Yes, I really worked at JDate. 

Talk about nepotism. This company was a joke. There was no real work getting done. The engineers literally followed me out begging me not to leave. I had helped them launch the first updates on the site in years.

In September that year, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. I was jobless, dependent on the father. 

We were not married. He broke up with me weeks after I told him I was pregnant. Two weeks later, he came back and said he wanted to help me raise her.

Our Daughter 

Our daughter was born on April 13, 2007. On my grandmother Ruth's birthday. Grandma Ruth was a devout Catholic, descendant of St. Louis IX, King of France. 

I did not find out that my grandmother was 99.9% French and the descendant of royalty until just a few years ago.  But I’ll explain more about that later. Ruth was a simple, humble woman. She never even knew about her ancestry.

The vaccine pressure started immediately after my daughter was born. At two months, they gave her four shots in one day. I had the worst gut feeling of my life. 

Our next well visit was at six months. I told the pediatrician I needed to research more. He yelled at me, said if she died of whooping cough it would be my fault. 

I cried the whole way home. And then I fired him. No more shots. Ever.

The Blog That Became a Movement

In November 2007, with my newborn daughter, working from home, I started blogging about real food and natural health.

I shared everything that had worked for me — the diet changes, the detox, the research that saved my body when doctors couldn't. 

I didn't connect my illness to those college vaccines until decades later. 

But God was already moving, lighting a fire in me to help others find the truths the system covers up to profit off of our sickness.

A year later, in November 2008, that fire turned into something bigger. I founded Real Food Media, the first health blog network. 

The Shot Heard Round the World

We later renamed the company Village Green Network because we couldn't trademark the original name. 

We didn't realize it at the time but the name was from what kicked off the American Revolution: the Battle of Lexington & Concord. The shot heard round the world.

We were just mommy bloggers writing about raw milk and grass-fed beef. Little did we know, just a decade later, we'd be fighting a war to save live in a fake global pandemic with a bioweapon disguised as the cure.

Putting My Silicon Valley Skills to Good Use

I looked around and saw all these passionate health and food bloggers pouring their hearts out, but struggling to make any money or get heard above the noise. I couldn't let that stand.

I helped them find sponsors, taught them everything I'd learned about SEO from my husband’s friend, who was one of the world’s top SEO experts. 

We grew fast. We were teaching people about real food, natural health, and how to avoid the drugs Big Pharma pushes. I helped a few of the bloggers in our network hit six figures. 

I absolutely loved it. It wasn't just a business; it was a movement. I loved connecting the bloggers with sponsors, with farmers, with everyday people who were hungry for truth and desperate to feel better.

By 2013, our fifth year, we had 1,000 blogs and $1.3 million in revenue. That year, in just six months, I lost 40 pounds just from walking every day. 

The momentum was growing. I invited my partner (soon-to-be husband) to join as CEO so we could scale it even bigger. He agreed, and he helped a lot. We met our goals. However, he wasn't truly happy in the role; his heart was in music and Hollywood. 

In September, the FTC came knocking, accusing us of fraud. They said our bloggers were not disclosing financial ties and income claims. It took us months, but we were able to prove that everything was compliant. But the lawyers drained us of a lot of money.

On December 30, 2013, my husband and I finally got married. We’d been living together for seven years. Our daughter was six years old. We decided it was finally time to tie the knot.

The First Cracks in the Foundation

God was building something massive with this network — a real voice for natural health that threatened the Powers That Be.

And the Powers That Be noticed.

But when something grows that big — and that threatening — the attacks will come.

What came next destroyed everything we had built.

Check back tomorrow for Part 2... when I learned how your life can be destroyed legally, financially, and in plain sight...

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Anyone who is signed up as a paid subscriber for only $5/month ($3.75/month with the annual plan) will get the excerpts via email.

The final book will be published this year, and I'll be offering a special coupon for all my paid subscribers to get it at a discount. I will be selling the book on my site as an e-book and also on Amazon and other booksellers.

Here is the link to the Table of Contents.
Here is the link to the publishing schedule.

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The first 100 members of Eden Revival get this online class for FREE! Join Eden Revival today and get this class and six other free classes.

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The first 100 members of Eden Revival get this online class for FREE! Join Eden Revival today and get this class and six other free classes.

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