A Facebook page called “Michiganders Against the Twin Flames Church of Union” has garnered over 400 followers since it was first created less than two weeks ago.
Nicole Schroeder, 30, said she made the online page as a way to raise awareness about high control groups like Twin Flames Universe (TFU) and to help any victims looking for support after encountering TFU founders’ and Suttons Bay couple Jeff and Shaleia Divine.
“I really wasn’t expecting (this page) to reach this many people and for this many people to feel so strongly about it…” Schroeder said. “The more communication, the more information that we can put out there to be fact checking and follow up on their movements and what they’re planning, the better.”
TFU did not respond to questions regarding the most recent community conversations and accusations against the group.
Schroeder, who grew up as fifth generation on her family’s property just south of Suttons Bay, is a survivor of a cult herself. Since leaving the California based cult in 2017, Schroeder has been working to spread awareness regarding manipulative groups and narcissistic leaders.
When the documentaries from Netflix called “Escaping Twin Flames” and Amazon Prime’s “Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe” aired last year, she said she watched both of them and understood the real dangers posed by the organization.
TFU claims to help followers find “harmonious union” with soul mates, or “twin flames,” through costly online coaching and classes. While TFU says its community is founded on “love and mutual respect,” ex-members in the documentary say otherwise, and go into detail about the Suttons Bay couple’s dangerous and coercive control tactics.
“When the Twin Flames thing all came out, it was kind of right in my focus of people who are abusing power and taking advantage of other people — they live less than a mile from where I grew up, so it kind of ended falling right into my backyard,” she said. “I want to remind people to come at this situation with empathy and with kindness because it is hard to understand if you haven’t been in this situation and it’s really easy to look in from the outside and criticize.”
Schroeder also attended the recent Traverse City National Writers Series event featuring TFU survivor Keely Griffin and cult expert/author Dr. Janja Lalich. While listening to Griffin and Lalich speak brought back a lot of traumatic memories of Schroeder’s experiences in a cult, she said it ultimately helped her to create the Facebook page which serves not only as a safe space, but also as a platform to share any information regarding TFU and their future plans in the area.
“To me as a human, I see it as my duty to do the best that I can for the people that are around me,” she said. “Because this is something I have experienced, I feel very strongly pulled to help bring awareness to the situation and help bring some sense of self autonomy to the people currently in the group.”
Since creating the Facebook page, Schroeder said she was contacted by one of the “Escaping Twin Flames” directors, Cecilia Peck, who informed her that many of the victims and TFU ex-members featured in the documentary were now following her page.
“She just wanted to make sure that the language that was being used was friendly to the victims and not triggering, so we talked for a while about that and my experiences and my focus in helping people to find their way out, find their own feet, and no longer be under the control of these two people,” she said.
One of Schroeder’s main concerns is Jeff and Shaleia purchasing property in the area to start a commune and how it could become an even higher controlled situation for TFU followers. With the rise of TFU online, especially during and after the COVID pandemic, the organization has grown in foljewelers lowers by the thousands both in the states and internationally.
“When we think about historically when high controlled groups start to converge into one place and bring all of their followers under one roof, it tends to not go in a good direction,” she said. “I think most people are familiar with what happened in Jonestown with Jim Jones as well as Waco Texas… so the fear of violence against their members is kind of my biggest concern, and that goes for them being anywhere.”
An upcoming TFU “spiritual life summit” is set for June in Traverse City, but a venue space has yet to be set. Schroeder said she hopes to coordinate and create with local business owners a poster that could be placed at storefronts to inform current TFU members and survivors that they are a LGBTQ safe space.
“My biggest message to the victims and to the people that are still currently there, leaders like this do such a great job of making you feel like the outside world is not welcoming to you or like you will not succeed outside of their universe. That’s just not true,” she said. “There’s so much more out there for everyone that doesn’t have anything to do with giving your money to some random guy that thinks he’s Jesus — it is possible to get out, and it is possible to find meaningful love and connections with people and not be taken advantage of in the process.”
