From Ashes to Eden (Part 2 of 16)
They Tried to Bury Us… But God Planned a Garden
This is Part 2 of a 16-part testimony about what happened to me over the past decade — and how God had to completely break me in order to use me to help others.
The first three parts of this series are free and lay the foundation for everything that follows. Parts 4–16 are for paid subscribers only and contain the full, unfiltered story, along with updates on Eden Revival and my ongoing court fights.
“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
Get free email updates — or become a paid subscriber to support this work.
From Ashes to Eden (Part 2 of 16)
Missed Part 1 of this series? Start here.
The Crash
We were flying high in 2013, but God knew what was coming. He had to let it all get smashed into rubble so He could show me the bigger war at play. He was preparing me years before the storm hit.
In February of 2014, I found out I was pregnant with my son — at the exact same time everything imploded.
The Sudden Collapse
Competitors started poaching our bloggers. They were conspiring behind the scenes, spreading lies about me where I couldn’t see or defend myself.
Then one day, almost all the bloggers in the network quit en masse. I sat there at my desk, watching the emails roll in. Some of them had hired lawyers.
They were chasing a get-rich-quick scheme. One of the newer bloggers pitched it. I had always been slow about bringing on new bloggers, and in the fall of 2013, I let a whole bunch of them in.
This one blogger was the proverbial bad apple that spoiled the bunch. She's still blogging to this day. I remember everyone and everything.
I warned them all that it was a terrible idea. A scam that would get them in trouble. I told them they’d get banned from Google. They didn’t listen.
Our business tanked overnight when we lost our bloggers. We went from making $100,000 a month to $10,000. A 90% drop.
We hired a lawyer and he told us we could sue them all for reneging on their contracts – but it wouldn't be worth it.
Losing Everything to Find Out Who's Loyal
Honestly, knowing what I know now, what I have learned in the past few years about the law and fighting in court, if I could go back in time, I would have sued every last one of them.
The loophole in the contract they used to get out of it was lame and I know I would have won. But it's okay that I didn't do it then.
But, like I said in part one of this series, all of this had to happen.
And I gotta admit, it feels pretty good right now, starting my new network. You know why? Because success is the best revenge.
And like I said, I remember everyone and everything.
Here is one of my favorite quotes of all time with President Trump – a clip from a 1992 Charlie Rose Interview. I know exactly what he is talking about here:
Here's the transcript from that clip:
"You see, I'm so loyal to people — maybe I'm loyal to a fault—but I'm so loyal to people that when somebody's slightly disloyal to me, I look upon it as a great act of horror.
Well, I used to say — and in fact, I think I said in my first book that, and maybe this was foolish, but I really meant that — that someday I'd like to maybe lose everything for a period of time to see who's loyal and who's not loyal.
And I frankly, I found out a lot who's loyal, tell you what.
And you can't guess it, you can't predict it. You think certain people would be loyal no matter what, and it turns out that they're not. And you just — you just can't predict that. It's very difficult.
And now I think I would have treated people differently. I think that, you know, some of the people that were most loyal to me—and people that I didn't think would be — some of the people that were least loyal to me, or people you got...
I think I would have treated them differently. I think I would have treated different groups differently.
I would have wiped the floor with the guys that weren't loyal, which I will now do, which is great, you know."
Watching that clip reminds me that God had to prepare the field for harvest. He had to separate the wheat from the tares. Matthew 13:24-30.
So I'm grateful it all played out the way that it did. Because I see those disloyal people for who they are. And like I said, I remember everything.
Public Shaming and Financial Freefall
After the crash happened in early 2014, we were still able to pull in about $100,000 in revenue that year.
But the expenses ate up all the money — the downtown Santa Monica office, software, lawyers, accountants. We laid off everyone and broke the lease.
We had proven the FTC accusations were false. We were fully compliant. They backed off and retracted their claims against us. But the lawyers drained what we had left.
Meanwhile, my income was impossible to revive due to the malicious lies being spread about me. People were still trashing me online (I know who they were) and no one wanted to work with me. So I was completely dependent on my husband and his mother.
A Baby Boy, Born Into Chaos
Summer turned into fall. The baby was due in October. My husband hadn’t found work. Our credit cards were maxed out. I remember standing in the grocery checkout, trying different credit cards to see which one would go through.
My husband finally landed a consulting gig right before our son was born in October 2014.
Holding that baby boy, I thought maybe we had finally turned the corner.
We hadn’t.
The Squeeze Began
2015 tightened like a vice. The two former contractors who used to work for us were suing me personally for about $25,000, claiming overtime and employee status they never had.
And yes, these two women who were suing me were two of the loudest voices online, turning everyone against me.
They attacked me online and destroyed my reputation — quietly, behind the scenes, in private Facebook groups and messages.
I didn’t know exactly what was being said, only that people were repeating lies: that I hadn’t paid people. That wasn’t true. I paid everyone except the bloggers who breached their contracts.
We were still financially strapped. My husband was working full-time but we had a lot of debt we were still paying off from the business loss.
My mother-in-law stepped in to "help" mediate and paid the settlements out of her retirement account. Although I didn’t see it at the time, from that moment, she had a vested interest — and leverage.
Money creates strings and strings can strangle you over time.
Isolation & Financial Dependency
Amid the chaos of the business collapse and new baby, I was trying to untangle the 2013 taxes — a nightmare with over a thousand bloggers and a seemingly infinite number of transactions to comb through.
We switched to my husband’s accountant. The taxes weren’t filed on time. The penalties piled up. The accountant was fired — but the damage was done.
The IRS bill ballooned to over $100,000.
That summer, under duress — no income, no access to money, a newborn — my husband and his mother had me sign a postnuptial agreement to “protect” the house.
No assets listed. No lawyers. I signed because I had no choice.
That same year, my husband cut me off from the bank accounts entirely. That same summer, he cut me off from my family.
“If you maintain relationships with your family,” he said, “we’ll probably end up divorced.”
So I stopped talking to my parents. My siblings. Everyone.
Looking back, I see clearly now: this was orchestrated.
Coercive Control
My mother-in-law had warned me in 2013, the Christmas before my son was born, that she didn’t want to be around my family.
“I don't like the way they treat you," she said. "They’re jealous of you. They’re not supportive.”
I believed her. I shouldn’t have.
What I see now is textbook coercive control — triangulation, isolation, financial dependence, reputational destruction.
I later learned the definition:
“Coercive control is a strategic pattern of behavior used by an abuser to dominate, isolate, and exploit a partner, taking away their freedom, autonomy, and independence. It involves a continuous, often subtle, campaign of psychological, emotional, and financial manipulation, intimidation, and fear rather than just physical violence.”
Before the crash, almost all my friends were the bloggers in my network.
So when they quit in 2014, I didn’t just lose my livelihood, I lost most of my support network. Then in 2015, when I lost my family, I lost the rest of it.
Even worse, the bloggers didn’t just leave. They were trashing me online. Probably due to those contractors who were spreading rumors about me.
I can tell you from firsthand experience – there is nothing more painful than being publicly shamed. (This book really helped me: So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson.)
By the fall of 2015, my husband told me to shut down my personal blog and just stay home with the kids.
I did what he asked me to do. I told myself that the blog was just part of my life. That was over now. I wanted to focus on raising my children, since I’d never get that time back.
Mother-in-Law Meddling
By 2016, our finances stabilized. My husband had steady consulting work and told me not to worry about money.
It was that year that we started working with a tax attorney on an IRS offer in compromise. I wouldn’t come to understand what the IRS really is — and how it operates — until eight years later, in the winter of 2024.
My husband gave me no allowance, no access to cash. Only credit cards that he monitored.
This is why I wanted to make my own money. I never felt safe depending on him completely. And again, I had no support network outside of the marriage.
I trusted him. I wanted our family to stay together. But I never felt safe.
Looking back, I believe that God was leading me the whole time. I believe He had to let me lose my voice, my income, my family and friends and all my support – almost everything – so I could see firsthand how vulnerable so many women are under a system of coercive control.
I honestly believe that my mother-in-law was the fire that fueled the coercive control. I believe that she conspired with my husband to do this to me — whether consciously or not — because control was more important than truth.
You see, she didn’t believe in God. And if you don’t believe in God, you have a need to control people, places and things. Because you operate from a place of fear.
When you know God is real, you trust Him and you walk in faith. When you live in fear, you do desperate and evil things to the people around you.
I believe God made me go through all of this, so that later, in the future, I would be able to fight for others trapped the same way. Because it turns out, coercive control is extremely common in relationships.
As I write this in 2026, I’m not there yet, to the others side, but I believe I will help many people after I win my battle.
Rebuilding
I quietly started rebuilding my blog in the fall of 2016. By 2019, I was pulling in about $4,000 a month working part-time when the kids were in school.
But my husband was working really long hours – 60-70 hours a week. He was pulling in big bucks – around $50,000 a month – but he had to be gone a lot.
A Parallel Family
So we needed nannies, housekeepers, and preschool just to make it work.
The few people I had around me became my lifeline to sanity after being cut off from everyone I loved.
Looking back, I guess I had to create a secondary, parallel family in order to get through that time.
Kind of like how they had to create a parallel economy in the communist bloc countries for decades... until that fateful day in 1989 when President Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
My life in a narcissistic family governed by coercive control was a lot like living under a communist regime. I had to find workarounds in order to exist. Nannies, babysitters, a few antivax neighbors. They were our lifeline.
Narcissists Need Control
Looking back, I wonder if my husband's success threatened his mother, since she couldn't control him.
Just like my success (my first million dollars) must have threatened her back in 2013. That was when she distanced herself from my family and told me they didn't support me.
He was trying to assert himself and his independence. He and I did the Landmark Forum together. That weekend was honestly the closest I ever felt to him. I always felt like his mother came between us.
His ability to make money was making my husband feel more confident, and he was happier. For the first time ever, he started pushing back on her.
But she didn’t like that one bit. I believe she wanted total control over him. Which meant he and I couldn't really have a real relationship.
He was trying to keep her happy, but to do so, he had to shrink himself. The sewage from their toxic relationship flowed downstream and I was the dog that got kicked. He hated her control over him, and so, in turn, he controlled me.
I don't blame anyone for what happened. This is just how life is when you don't have faith in God.
When you don't lean on God for your strength and happiness, you are constantly searching for these things outside of yourself. You turn to drugs, or work addiction, or sex addiction – or you become codependent.
You try to control people, places and things in order to have a sense of power and peace. But that never works.
And honestly, I think we were all victims of the Deep State. They want us distanced, isolated and fighting.
Waking Up to the Bigger War
2016 is when I woke up — politically and spiritually.
My husband had actually told me about the New World Order back in 2006 when we first started dating. The one my German boyfriend had warned me about decades ago.
That year, I went from agnostic liberal to conservative Christian. I started researching Hillary Clinton and Seth Rich, reading the Wikileaks, and investigating Pizzagate. I saw all the things they covered up before the Instagram accounts went private and people started getting censored for telling the truth.
And that's when I voted for Donald Trump the first time in 2016.
Friends and family members ghosted me. I was labeled crazy.
But I followed where God led me.
At Easter 2018, I returned to the Catholic Church and we started going to mass every Sunday.
Not out of duty or obligation, but conviction. I enrolled my daughter in Christian school.
My faith came back. Strong and unbreakable.
I knew what it was like to live for decades without God and the Church. Always in fear.
Now I was putting my full faith in God – for the first time since I was a child.
Getting Censored & Deplatformed Early
Summer 2019: the hammer fell again. Google and Pinterest wiped out health bloggers overnight. Replacing us with corporate health websites like "Medical News Today."
I lost 90% of my traffic and income overnight. I waited for it to come back. It didn’t.
I was paying minimums on credit cards, scraping to try to pay back taxes. My husband refused to help with the debts. He said they were mine.
I had no idea then that this was part of a bigger agenda rolling out.
The enemy destroyed my platform, my career, and my financial independence. I had to see the censorship firsthand — how these evil forces silence the truth. The truth that threatens Big Pharma and their beast system.
God had to allow me to go through this so I would later understand why Eden Revival, a health freedom network, had to exist.
I hadn't come up with the idea for Eden Revival yet. That wouldn't come to me until almost a decade later.
But I knew then that we the people needed to create something that would be independent of their control.
Check back tomorrow for Part 3... I was about to learn that the most devastating form of violence doesn’t leave bruises — it leaves you broke, isolated, and unable to escape.
What was happening inside my home was about to happen to the entire world.
Get free email updates — or become a paid subscriber to support this work.
Help Me Keep Blogging & Grow Our Health Freedom Network
- Become a Founding Member of Eden Revival, my new health freedom network, TODAY! The first 1,000 Founding Members lock in 50% off for life (starting at just $2.50/mo). The first 100 members get 7 full online classes FREE including Detox & Heal (value $553). Don’t miss out— Join now!
- Subscribe to the Blog — Paid members get exclusive content plus excerpts of all my books as I write them, including my upcoming book, Detox & Heal (based on my online class). Support the mission for only $5/month or $45/year. Subscribe now.
- One-Time Donation — If you’re able to give, even a small amount makes a huge difference right now. Here are the ways to give:
GiveSendGo
Paypal
Venmo
Cash App
Thank you so much!
Together we’re rebuilding health freedom, true community, and personal sovereignty—one step at a time.
Join My New Health Freedom Network, Eden Revival
Connect with patriots, farmers, influencers, and healthy living brands for real food, natural health, constitutional rights, and freedom.
Get discounts on our annual shopping guide, conference, merchandise, classes, merchandise and more.
Join now and save 50% – grandfathered in for LIFE!
The first 1,000 people get free classes.
Click here to join Eden Revival.
Get Excerpts from My Upcoming Book, Detox & Heal
I am posting excerpts of the book on my blog.
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.
Join today as a paying subscriber to get the excerpts of Detox & Heal.
Sign Up for My Online Class
Want more than just the written excerpts? If you want to watch videos of all the lessons, sign up now for my online class, Detox & Heal.
When you sign up now, you will get full access for life. This is to thank those of you who have been through me since the beginning.
When you sign up now, you will also get FREE access to my upcoming online constitutional law class, Take Back Your Rights. More on that soon...
Sign up for Detox & Heal now
Sign up for Detox & Heal now
Got Questions?
Comment below or send me an email at annmarie @ annmariemichaels dot com.
Follow Me
I'm hard to find on social media because I keep losing accounts:
Sign up for my free email updates on my blog
All the ways to follow me online
Disclaimer
Information found on this site is meant for educational and informational purposes only, and to motivate you to make your own health care and dietary decisions based upon your own research and in partnership with your health care provider. It should not be relied upon to determine dietary changes, a medical diagnosis or courses of treatment.
I have marketing and business connections to brands, topics and/or products on this site. Through the use of affiliate links on this site, I may collect fees from purchases made.
Comments ()