Royal Oak, MI May 2026

Uplifting Women

Welcome to the Women's Issue! As a woman business owner, I always feel the necessary obligation to uplift other women business owners. When I first started my company, working from home, I felt like I was a bit on an island. Thankfully, years later I am able to connect to the community even more now as a publisher. Turns out I haven't been on as much of an isolated island as I thought.

In the process of becoming a publisher I have had the great fortune to meet so many truly talented, inspiring and amazing women. At one point Royal Oak may have been considered the home to women named Willow with dreadlocks and coated in patchouli...well some earth sisters may still be here, but now there is so much more to the women of Royal Oak. SO MUCH MORE.

In this issue you will learn a little more about me. As a photographer I am sure you can understand I am far more comfortable behind a camera than in front of one. Marshall did what he is naturally great at—interviewing. Hope you enjoy reading the article! Marshall also flexed his photographer skills taking photos of me in Royal Oak’s one dirty alley to accompany the article.

Needing to feel beautiful? You need to meet Russ Simon. Nobody does what this man does for women!  Russ can beautify and polish every woman for that special occasion or help you keep your eye brows perfect. I mean PERFECT! His work is amazing.

You will also meet the lovely Amanda Proctor with Dee Dee's Fine Vintage. Amazing place that will make you want to hunt and hunt for that one piece. And make you want to come back to repeat that same hunting and finding feeling.

Also, we will talk color with Dee Pineau of House of Colour. Dee walks us through what it means to get your colors right and how it can help every women. Defining the colors and styles that work best for you.

Lastly, we take you to a new feature—the Royal Oak Corner where you can read about a local that represents what RO is all about at its heart.

Thankfully yours,

AMY GILLESPIE, PUBLISHER @ROYALOAKCITYLIFESTYLE

May 2026

PUBLISHER

Amy Gillespie | amy.gillespie@citylifestyle.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Marshall Zweig | marshall.zweig@citylifestyle.com

Corporate Team

CEO Steven Schowengerdt

President Matthew Perry

COO David Stetler

CRO Jamie Pentz

CoS Janeane Thompson

AD DESIGNER Rachel Kolich

LAYOUT DESIGNER Kirstan Lanier

QUALITY CONTROL SPECIALIST Brandy Thomas

Learn how to start your own publication at citylifestyle.com/franchise.

Proverbs 3:5-6

business monthly

ROUNDUP OF NEWS FROM LOCAL BUSINESSES

Best Boutique Shop: Modern Supply

Tara and Amy solve the challenge of finding modern home decor and thoughtful gifts that balance form and function. Every product is chosen with intention, aligning with our elevated design aesthetic—modern sophistication, refined minimalism, and effortless elegance. Our beautiful home accessories all feature quality craftsmanship, creating a cohesive style and a curated lifestyle for your home. The store is known for unique gift ideas for design lovers—from minimalist ceramics and eco-friendly kitchen tools to luxurious self-care items and seasonal gift sets. modern-supply.com

Best Local Cafe: The Cacao Tree Cafe

Amber has developed and led cooking and nutrition programs for community centers, wellness organizations, and corporations, emphasizing “food as medicine” while showcasing accessible ingredients and flavor-forward recipes. She has served as a featured chef on eight Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan cruises. Her experience also includes serving as a culinary consultant with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) for its Native Food for Life program, bringing plant-based education to Indigenous communities in the Southwest.

Best Wellness Center: Rhythm Wellness Center

Versala created the Rhythm Wellness Center from both her personal healing and her passion to help others. Here, she created a space where people can slow down, reconnect, and heal—body, mind, and spirit. Through compassionate care and holistic therapies, she helps clients tap into their body’s innate wisdom and reclaim their well-being. "This work is my purpose, and I’m honored to walk this path with others.”

all the way INTERESTING THROUGH

Amy builds our magazine like her photographs: seeing what others miss

ARTICLE BY MARSHALL ZWEIG

The first thing Amy Gillespie looks for when she raises a camera isn't the subject. It's everything behind the subject.

“In every shot, there’s a foreground, a middle ground, and a background," she says. "I make sure something is interesting all the way through the frame."

She learned it from meeting famed National Geographic photographer Sam Abell. Abell was known as the quiet photographer; his images never announced themselves.

The approach stuck with her. Every time she puts a camera to her face, she's not just capturing what's in front of her. She's looking all the way through.

It turns out that's exactly how she publishes a magazine too.

Amy Gillespie is the publisher of Royal Oak City Lifestyle—and, uniquely among the publication's national network of franchises, its photographer as well. She came to the role after decades in visual media: commercial work, catalog photography, event coverage, and portrait sessions—often in what she lightheartedly calls Royal Oak's one dirty alley. (“It’s got the most character," she says.)

She also holds a Certified Professional Photographer credential that fewer than three thousand people worldwide hold. She passed the exam on the first try. In the ninetieth percentile.

The credential required serious mathematics and design theory. That combination—visual instinct grounded in technical precision, artistic eye fused with analytical mind—is something she's navigated her whole career.

"There are plenty of artists that might have more raw talent than I have," she says. "I've survived because I had that combination of business acumen and determination."

For years, though, that survival looked a certain way from the outside. She was called just a photographer. To her face, by people who'd seen her work, hired her, benefited from her expertise.

It didn't stop her.

She describes herself as naturally thick-skinned. A challenge to her competency was never going to be the thing that changed her direction.

But she noticed it. You don't spend a career as a natural observer without noticing things.

"I never felt the need to defend myself," she says. "People either are smart enough to ask the right questions or they're not. I'd deliver excellent work and move on."

What surprised her, when she became a publisher, was how quickly that word—“just”—disappeared.

"It's taken me becoming a publisher for people to be like, ‘you're the expert…what do you think?’" She pauses. "After decades of working in marketing, photography, print, all of it. And I'm happily not called ‘just a photographer’ anymore."

The path to publishing wasn't linear, which if you know Amy matches her personality. She started college in forestry, drawn to something at the intersection of science and the outdoors. Then she moved out west and pivoted to art school, before coming home, working in design, going back for her undergraduate degree and eventually her MBA.

"I've always been a bit of an outsider," she says. “Maybe it’s because I’m a natural observer."

Photography was the thread that ran through all of her pursuits. As a kid, she spent her allowance on Popular Photography and read it cover to cover. She was absorbing camera equipment before she owned a camera. She wanted to be a National Geographic photographer—and a race car driver. Her father, she recalls with amusement, was not at all surprised by the second one.

When she left the corporate world and started her own photography and videography company, she kept one foot in marketing strategy and consulting. She'd worked in print long enough to know how

“There are plenty of artists that might have more raw talent than I have. I’ve survived because I had that combination of business acumen and determination.”

visual and editorial language work together. What she was building, even then, was something that required the whole frame.

Her approach to photography carries the same philosophy she brings to publishing. “I shoot nouns,” she says simply. People, places, things. But she prefers people as subjects. “They have an endless amount of presence in a still frame,” she notes.

Especially when they're not looking at the camera.

"Some of the best shots are the candids," she says. "I'm still shooting even when they think I'm not. That's when the honest emotion comes through."

To get people to that place, she's been known to say a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar with no punchline whatsoever, just to watch shoulders drop. For years at events, she was known simply as the dancing photographer: she'd pack a dance floor, hand it back to the DJ, then step away and shoot.

Connection first. Image second.

Unique nods to art history run through Amy's work. One Bat Mitzvah client had a theme of “the four seasons.” Amy pitched putting four images of the girl in an homage to Magritte's The Son of Man— inside a multi-colored Warhol-style grid. The client loved it. It became the main art of the party.

Then there was the farm shoot outside Royal Oak. Touring the property, she spotted a shed, two old barns, and the right kind of couple, and quietly asked if they'd be open to a wink at American Gothic. They were. She found shovels, located something close enough to a pitchfork, and took the shot. It made our cover.

She approaches the magazine the same way she approaches every photo: what’s in the foreground, what's in the middle, what's in the back. That vision holds every issue together.

In June, Royal Oak City Lifestyle will celebrate our first full year of publication. I ask Amy what she hopes readers feel after picking it up. Her response: “proud, inspired, moved, connected… better.” She wants the magazine to become our city’s resource, for finding out about events before they've passed, for introducing neighbors who've lived on the same street for ten years without meeting, for celebrating the human beings behind every business in town.

"Every issue that comes out," she says, "more people reach out saying it makes them feel like they love their city."

She spends most of her day out in the community, meeting with business owners, asking two questions: How can I help? What are your pain points? The stories that light her up fastest are the humanitarian ones: people doing under-the-radar

good in the city. The kind where you look through the foreground and find something worth staying for.

"What's good for one in the community," she says, "is good for everybody."

She still considers herself a photographer first. The publishing role has made a certain kind of anonymity harder: she’s recognized now, known as “the publisher,” less able to move through a shoot as simply the person behind the lens.

But what she's built now comes from her approach to every shot she’s ever taken.

Royal Oak in the foreground. Its people in the middle. And in the background, the stories behind the stories.

Royal Oak City Lifestyle is distributed monthly throughout Royal Oak and surrounding communities. Find it at citylife style.com/royaloak and on social @RoyalOakCityLifestyle

RUSS SIMON BEAUTY STUDIO

Beauty Redefined

Celebrity Makeup Artist and Lash Guru, Russ Simon is a true leader in the beauty industry. With his unrivaled, timetested techniques, Russ innovates with every brush stroke.  At the all new Russ Simon Beauty Studio, Russ continues to offer Xtreme & Mink Eyelash Extensions, waxing, full makeup services, and eye brow

design in an upscale and modern boutique.   The studio also hosts a collection of his favorite makeup brushes, colors, skincare, and tanning products for retail.

GET IN TOUCH

Tel: 248.385.1395 | rsbeautystudio.com

2022 Hazel St. | Birmingham, MI 48009

ARTICLE BY MARSHALL ZWEIG

Color Me Seen

For a long time, Dee Pineau didn't want to be noticed.

An engineer in corporate America, Dee found herself looking at herself on Zoom during COVID, and thinking, I don't look great.

"I was wearing a lot of black," she says. "I wanted to fade into the background. I was just kind of unhappy with where I was. ‘Don't look at me’."

It's a feeling she hears from clients every week now.

Dee bought House of Colour in Royal Oak by serendipity. She'd finally booked a color analysis, the kind she'd been hearing about for years. The woman who did her colors happened to be selling her franchise.

Dee had already been asking herself the big questions, about her career and her life. And suddenly the answer was right in front of her... wearing the perfect shade of raspberry.

"It was artsy, it was fun, it was helping people feel good about themselves," she says. "In a time when a lot of people weren't feeling good about themselves."

Dee’s Royal Oak roots go back 30 years. Her studio is right across from the Royal Oak Music Theatre (and she remembers when it was a dance club on Friday nights).

The roots of color analysis trace back even further. In 1928, Swiss-born Bauhaus artist and educator Johannes Itten was teaching color harmony when he noticed his students were choosing colors that showed themselves "as they are.” That led him to formulate the seasonal framework: spring, summer, autumn, winter.

Image consultants have been around since 1940s Hollywood, when color film was exploding. Studios suddenly had to understand why actors looked luminous in some costumes and washed-out in others.

CONTINUED >

“I was wearing a lot of black. I wanted to fade into the background. I was just kind of unhappy with where I was. ‘Don’t look at me’.”

Clients arrive at House of Colour without makeup, hair pulled back. Dee drapes them in a series of precision-dyed fabrics. Warm versus cool. Depth versus brightness. The skin either comes alive or recedes. The mirror doesn't lie.

The consult has to happen in person, with no phone screen shifting the undertones. "When we held the drapes up on video during training," Dee says, "the colors looked different on every screen."

She's quick to tell clients when they look anxious, "We're not talking about weight. We’re talking about the actual shape of your face, the width of your shoulders—what actually exists. And how to honor it."

She calls her approach a tool, not a rule. The goal is to hand someone factual information about themselves so that getting dressed in the morning doesn't feel like a pop quiz they keep failing.

Most women, she observes, have never really been taught. They've absorbed messages: black is slimming, match everything, stay neutral. And those messages calcify into a wardrobe full of clothes they never wear.

"We just gravitate toward black or gray," she says. "And sometimes that's because something isn't right and we don't want to be seen."

She pauses when she says things like that. She knows the territory.

When clients finally see themselves draped in their actual colors, the reaction is almost always the same. Not what I expected... but I see what you're doing. And then, often: I have a dress in that color.

"Of course you do," Dee tells them. "Deep down, you knew."

Her new clients tend to be at turning points. A woman who'd lost fifty pounds and wanted to "get it right" before buying anything new. A client going through cancer treatment who didn't feel great — and then put on red lipstick and smiled so wide her teeth looked white. "She loved it," Dee says. "Just that big, huge smile."

When someone comes back a year later, bringing their mother or daughter or girlfriend, Dee reads it as the truest kind of testimonial.

"They feel lighter," she says. "More uplifted. They want somebody else to have that experience."

The style work goes deeper than color. Dee also conducts style analyses—drawing, of all things, on the personality archetypes of famed psychiatrist Carl Jung. The premise: who you are should show up in what you wear.

The woman who runs a yoga studio and drops kids at school should not be handed a blazer and four-inch heels. A person who loves bold prints should not be sentenced to neutrals because someone once told her she was "too much."

"It's like personality with clothing," she explains. "You can let it shine through."

Asked what it means for a woman to be truly seen, the woman who once wanted the opposite gives me a philosophical answer.

"It's like a personality test," she says. "Some people are great at inventing things. Some people are great at solving problems. To be truly seen is like, Where do your real talents lie? And the way you show up in the world, with your clothes and your hair, should reflect that."

Before a client leaves, Dee gives them a fan. It’s a small, foldable palette of their seasonal colors. You walk into

Nordstrom, you open the fan, you stop standing in the dressing room hating yourself.

"I want them to feel confident going to a store," she says, "and picking out clothes they'll actually wear."

Style, she'll tell you, should feel like you. Not the version of you that's fifteen pounds lighter, or ten years younger.

The actual you. Right now.

House of Colour Royal Oak is in downtown Royal Oak. For color analysis, style analysis, and wardrobe edit appointments, call (248) 571-4294 or email dee.pineau@houseofcolour.com

“I want them to feel confident going to a store, and picking out clothes they’ll actually wear.”

THE GOOD STUFF

The furniture Amanda Burgess-Proctor restores has history. So does she.

ARTICLE BY MARSHALL ZWEIG PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY GILLESPIE

When it's dark outside and the lamps are on, that's when it feels right to Amanda Burgess-Proctor. That's when the 1923 bungalow on 14 Mile returns to what it's always been, the word she goes back to time and time again in our conversation: a home.

“Now I research things that don’t break people’s hearts. And don’t weigh on mine.”

This is Dee Dee's Fine Vintage, where everything has a past… and some things, Amanda will tell you, have a way of following her home.

For twenty years, Amanda was a criminologist and university professor - a national expert in domestic and sexual violence, an advocate for women, and a social scientist who published, worked with legislators, and drove research at every level of policy she could reach. It was work that mattered to her.

"I don't think anybody completes a PhD and earns tenure if they don't feel called to it," she says.

Then in 2018, her middle daughter Maya was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That brought months in the hospital: chemotherapy, surgeries, the whole terrible apparatus of a child fighting for her life.

Amanda took family medical leave and showed up, every day, in every way a mother can.

"Having a child with a life-threatening illness fundamentally changes a person," she says. "Just period."

Maya recovered. Amanda went back to teaching. Then COVID arrived, and with it a particular cruelty for families who had already lived through medical isolation. The hand-washing, the fear, the sealedoff world — it was all too familiar. "That was just so uniquely traumatizing," she recalls.

Add that to the ordinary weight of parenting through a pandemic, an older daughter struggling with her mental health, and two decades of research that required her to hold the worst of human behavior in her hands every day.

Something gave.

"I had a breakdown," she says. "I took a one-year leave of absence. I had every intention of going back." But during that year, the old Amanda was “reassembled as a new version," she says.

It began when she started fixing up furniture in her garage. "It was therapeutic," she says. "One thing led to another."

A name appeared in her mind, then an idea for a logo. Her mother-in-law, a seamstress, offered to make pillows. She held an open house in the garage… and sold out.

Her husband suggested she look at a house on 14 Mile in Clawson she'd overlooked. She walked in and got goosebumps head to toe. "I just get feelings," she says. "I've never been led astray by that."

Dee Dee's Fine Vintage opened in November of 2021. By February, she'd resigned her faculty position.

"It was the single most terrifying decision I've ever made in my whole entire life," she says. "Because I knew it was permanent. No university is going to be like, 'Oh, she left a tenured faculty position to go paint dressers? Let's hire her back.'"

The shop is named for her mother Diane — Dee Dee to those closest to her. She passed her love of antiquing down to her daughter... along with the gift of making people feel at home.

"When I was in high school and college, if somebody was going through something, they always felt at home at our house," Amanda says.

It is, word for word, what she hopes people feel when they walk into the shop.

A former colleague visited to tour the space not long after Dee Dee's opened. As Amanda described what she did — the provenance research, the history of each piece, the stories she'd tell customers about where a table came from and who had eaten around it — he stopped her.

"He said, 'I think you're telling people's stories, sharing them with others so those stories can be heard and understood.'" She pauses. "I had never thought about what I was doing that way."

The criminologist's eye is still there. She gravitates toward pieces with documented histories. She spends hours tracing manufacturers. She's identified people in antique-shop photographs and tracked

“It was the most terrifying decision I’ve ever made. Because I knew it was permanent. No university is going to say, ‘She left a tenured faculty position to go paint dressers? Let’s hire her back.’”

down surviving family members to return them. She carries a black light flashlight everywhere she goes, hunting for the glow uranium glass gives off when you find it.

"Now I research things that don't break people's hearts," she says. "And don't weigh on mine."

She works harder at Dee Dee's than she has at anything in years. The difference? It doesn't drain her. Her daughter noticed before she did. Six months in, the girl looked at her mother and said: Mom, it's so nice to see you so relaxed and happy.

"When you're feeling this," Amanda says, "it just oozes out your pores."

She tells every customer who walks in with an old piece they can't decide what to do with: “Life is short. Use the good stuff.”

It was her mother's philosophy.

So if you ever see the lamps on at Dee Dee's Fine Vintage, just know someone who spent twenty years studying what breaks people is now focusing on what can be restored. And in that pursuit, she's right at home.

Dee Dee's Fine Vintage is on 14 Mile Road in Clawson. For more info, visit deedeesfinevintage. com or call (248) 780-1700.

ARTICLE BY KALI KASORZYK

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED

BECKY HILLYARD

From Side Hustle to Style Empire

The power of taste, trust, and the courage to “just start.”

She didn’t have a business plan, a media budget, or even a name anyone could pronounce. What Becky Hillyard had was taste, a young family, and the instinct to just start. Today, her lifestyle brand Cella Jane commands an audience the size of Vogue’s, she’s nine collections strong with Splendid, and she’s built it all while raising three kids — refusing to sacrifice one for the other. In an exclusive conversation for the Share the Lifestyle podcast, Becky shares what it really takes to build a brand, a career, and a life you love. Read the highlights below, then scan the QR code for the full conversation.

Q: WHEN DID YOU KNOW CELLA JANE WAS MORE THAN A HOBBY?

A: Two moments. Women started emailing me saying they bought something I recommended and felt amazing — asking me to help them find a dress for a wedding. That felt incredible. Then I looked at my affiliate numbers for one month and realized I could cover our mortgage. I thought, I can actually do this. I never set out to build a business. I started it because I genuinely loved it.

Q: WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST RISK YOU EVER TOOK WITH THE BRAND?

A: Designing my own collection. It’s easy to point at items on a website and say I love these. But to create something from scratch, put your name on it, and wait to see if people connect with it — that’s terrifying. I had an incredible partner in Splendid, and women loved the pieces. It was the biggest risk and the biggest accomplishment.

Q: HOW HAS INFLUENCER MARKETING CHANGED SINCE YOU STARTED?

A: When I started, brands didn’t know whether to take it seriously. Now it’s a legitimate line item in their marketing budgets — sometimes bigger than TV. Because what we’ve built is trust. People trust a real recommendation from someone they follow far more than a commercial. There’s no question about it now.

Q: YOU’RE A MOM OF THREE RUNNING A FULL BRAND. WHAT DOES YOUR DAY ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?

A: I try to get up at five and not hit snooze — that first hour before the house wakes up is the most productive, most peaceful hour of my day. Then it’s all hands on deck with the kids and school drop-off. After that I work — planning content, connecting with my team, editing. After pickup, the day shifts completely and it’s all about them. I’ve learned to protect both halves fiercely, because both matter.

Q: WHAT WOULD YOU TELL SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO BUILD SOMETHING OF THEIR OWN BUT KEEPS WAITING?

A: Don’t wait. Don’t wait for the perfect camera, the right strategy, or enough followers. We find every excuse to stay comfortable. Just start, be consistent, and be authentically yourself. The right people will find you — and they’ll stay.

This conversation is just the beginning. Becky goes deeper on the risks that almost stopped her, the design process behind her latest Splendid collection, and what she’d tell her 2012 self today. Scan the QR code for the full, exclusive City Lifestyle interview on the Share the Lifestyle Podcast.

“Trust is the only metric that actually compounds.”

— Becky Hillyard

MAY 2ND

Royal Oak Tequila Fest

A SELECTION OF UPCOMING LOCAL EVENTS

Royal Oak Farmers Market | 6:00 PM

Be treated to samplings of over 100 tequilas, mezcals and cocktails from the finest varieties of premium and ultra-premium tequila brands, as well as tequila liqueurs, crèmes, infusions, mezcals and flavored tequilas. Enjoy live music, games, and shopping. Information including a complete list of tequilas available for tasting, information on taco vendors and more can be found at: RoyalOakTequilaFest.com

MAY 6TH

Candlemaking Workshop

Modern Supply: 28822 Woodward Avenue | 6:00 PM

Come for candle making with our friends from Detroit Rose, a community-driven brand that has been with us since the beginning. Led by Elaine Stojcevski, this hands-on workshop explores the art of candle making— fragrance to develop your own signature scent. Participants will create a custom hand-poured candle using the same processes used in studio. modern-supply.co for more info.

MAY 10TH

Royal Oak in Bloom

Downtown Royal Oak | 7:00 AM

This annual flower and garden sale, held annually on Mother's Day for the past 32 years, draws residents and visitors to downtown Royal Oak to shop for flowers, plants, landscaping items, and decorative elements for their lawns. Designed to help Royal Oak homeowners beautify their property, Royal Oak in Bloom is a Mother's Day tradition for many.

MAY 13TH

Sights and Sounds Concert Series

Royal Oak Farmers Market | 4:00 PM

The "Sights and Sounds" series in Royal Oak features live music and food trucks, occurring on the 2nd Wednesday of the month at the Royal Oak Farmers Market starting in May. Based on typical scheduling, the event often features outdoor performances from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Come and kick off the summer season with music and food!

MAY 25TH

Royal Oak Memorial Day Parade

Downtown Royal Oak | 9:00 AM

This long-standing tribute travels down  Main Street from Lincoln, followed immediately by a ceremony at the Veterans War Memorial in  Centennial Commons. One of the most prestigious parades held in Michigan, the high standards of this parade have held true for decades. The event reaches younger generations, teaching them to continue to honor our veterans with respect and dignity.

MAY 31ST

Royal Oak Beer, Wine & Cocktail Fest

Memorial Park | 3:00 PM

This unique event, set against the backdrop of Memorial Park Royal Oak, combines the excitement of a night at the ballpark with the opportunity to sample over 150 craft beverages. Attendees will be treated to a  diverse array of brews, wines, and cocktails from local and national producers, ensuring there’s something to please every palate.

Behind each of our 200+ City Lifestyle magazines is someone who cares deeply about their community. Someone who connects people, celebrates businesses, and shares the stories that matter most. What if that someone was you?

Or maybe it’s someone you know. If this isn’t the right time for you, but you know someone who could be the perfect fit, we’d love an introduction.

ROYAL OAK CORNER

ARTICLE BY MARSHALL ZWEIG | PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY GILLESPIE

Can you believe there was a time Amber Poupore didn't know how to cut an onion?

That's where her decades-long relationship with Royal Oak actually starts: January 2000, with Amber at the back door of Inn Season, hired for whatever they needed and willing to do anything.

"Really. I didn't even know how to cut an onion,” she recalls with a smile. “I mean, literally. That is how new to food I was."

Within weeks she was running the pantry line.

“Working at Inn Season really showed me what I wanted when I did open my own business,” she says, tearing up at the memory.

In our previous feature article about Amber [“The Café That Heals”], she talked about how the depression she'd carried for years—the dangerous situations, the relationships that hurt her— began to lift when she started eating real food.

She thought she knew where she was headed. She completed an international Waldorf teaching certification in her mid-twenties, imagining a classroom and children of her own. Instead she’s been hosting cooking classes at Cacao Tree for years. And the restaurant she birthed is about to turn fifteen in October.

Amber once did a cooking demo for teenagers in a mental health unit on a Navajo Nation reservation. Afterward, she got back in the car and told her colleague: I could die today and feel complete.

But she’s not complete yet. She lost her second restaurant, Clean Plate, in 2018, and cried almost every day for a year. The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program helped her find her footing, and led her to opening a new café in St. Clair Shores called Herban Grounds.

“It's the manifestation of my vision from my Goldman Sachs program and all the years I've been trying to do this,” Amber says. “I think this is really going to be the one that really unfolds."

The woman who didn’t know how to cut an onion has fed thousands, and taught hundreds how to feed themselves.

Complete? She’s just getting started.

Cacao Tree Café is at 204 West Fourth Street, Royal Oak — cacaotreecafe.com

micsb.com

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