Content warning: This article discusses depression and suicide.
SIX YEARS AGO, Christopher LeMark was in a dark place. On the brink of turning 40, he was faced with a midlife crisis brought on by a dead-end sales job, a failing relationship, and an unsuccessful stint as a hip-hop artist. Underneath all that, he packed away years of childhood trauma and abuse, which led him to bounce between group homes. It wasn’t the first time he had contemplated suicide.
On his way to catch the train to work, he walked into a Starbucks, sat down, and started sobbing uncontrollably. He came to his breaking point, and knew he couldn’t survive much longer without getting help. For LeMark, that came in the form of therapy. “It was a mental and emotional breakdown with a moment of clarity,” LeMark tells Men’s Health. “I didn’t want to die, but nobody taught me how to live.”
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After a few sessions, he began to understand that all of the trauma and abuse he experienced was not his fault. That’s also when LeMark realized he had a mission greater than his own personal healing. In 2019, he founded Coffee, Hip Hop & Mental Health, a Chicago-based coffee shop that’s doing so much more than serving coffee—it’s changing the way that Black and brown people, especially men, approach mental health.
What started as live events in a few pop-up locations across Chicago has turned into a full-fledged 501(c)(3) organization with multiple layers: a flagship coffee shop, a scholarship program that provides free individual therapy, and daily programming like community therapy, yoga, meditation, journaling, and live music. To date, the coffee shop has raised nearly $1.3 million to support these mental health programs and provide a judgement-free space for customers.
Ahead, LeMark spoke to Men’s Health about the importance of men seeking therapy, the life-changing community he’s built, and what’s next for Coffee, Hip Hop & Mental Health.
Men’s Health: You went through so many personal struggles throughout your life. How did you find the strength to start an organization around healing others?
Christopher LeMark: I realized that if I felt this deep pain and frustration so many others [may have] felt the same way, and if I could benefit from therapy, maybe they could too. So I started brainstorming. I wrote down [the word] “coffee.” I had that moment [in Starbucks] to fall apart and make a decision that would ultimately save my life. I wrote down “hip-hop.” Despite not being a successful artist that tours the world, I knew that I could still go back to writing music to help me with my feelings. And then I wrote down “mental health” because I knew that Black men, my friends, my community as a whole, weren’t taught to talk about your feelings. When you’re living in survival mode, there’s no time to think about your feelings or safe spaces to really be that vulnerable.
So you had these incredible events at the coffee shop, and then the world as we knew it changed in March 2020. What happened next?
Covid-19 happened and then the Breonna Taylor situation happened and then obviously George Floyd. People were angry. Although I don’t condone [the rioting], I understood [it] because poverty is violent. I remember [the city] started closing grocery stores on the south and west side of Chicago. I started looking for volunteers to help feed these families [who no longer had grocery stores to go to]. With everybody at home, we really maximized the potential from an online standpoint, talking to people, putting up notes, constantly encouraging them and getting other people to share stories.
[I was doing this] while I made plans for the physical coffee shop. It was going to be our way of paying for people to go to therapy, our way of fundraising. I wanted this model, [which didn’t require relying on grants], because I understand that nonprofit businesses usually have to wait for people to give you grants. And while that’s a beautiful thing, that’s also hard because you’re constantly competing against other people who are either doing the same thing, or someone who may present themselves as a better [organization].
So, I opened a pop-up coffee trailer in the Boxville neighborhood of Chicago in September 2020, but I knew very quickly that wasn’t sustainable. I was essentially opening a coffee shop in a food desert. A volunteer suggested I do a pop-up in the more affluent Chicago neighborhood, Lakeview. I originally ran the coffee shop with all volunteers. The coffee was terrible, but people packed the place because they understood the mission. Eventually this was not sustainable so we started reaching out to local coffee shops to learn how to make coffee and run a real coffee shop. Places in the community donated their product and time to help us hire baristas and make this feel like a real coffee shop. We now have 13 paid employees across the organization. It’s pretty incredible.
Christopher LeMark, founder of Coffee, Hip-Hop & Mental Health.
While you figured out the coffee component, you were also trying to launch scholarships for people to go to therapy. Tell me more about that.
In January 2021, we started our campaign called “Normalized Therapy University,” which is now called Coffee, Hip Hop & Mental Health University. The reason I started doing this is people would reach out to me and say, “Can you help me find a therapist?” I’d ask them what kind of therapist they wanted, and I would go to Psychology Today. That’s how we started, but then we decided to make it more of a formal program.
We now have a growing list of therapists who work with us and we pair them with who would be a good fit based on their application versus me just trying to search the Internet to help. The coffee shop and retail merchandise helps fund this program. We are now able to offer scholarships for 10 free individual sessions per person. Five-hundred-sixty-three people have signed up for the program since January 2021, and 198 have already completed the sessions from their scholarship. The goal is to remove the financial, systemic, and emotional barriers to help make therapy more easily accessible for the Black community.
Why do you think it’s so difficult for men, especially Black men, to seek therapy?
How many men are walking around thinking, I gotta be the provider. I have to be “the man” all day? People [often] don’t ask men how are they, they ask them, “What do you do?” We were told to walk with a certain level of pride and we were told that we had to be providers and we were told that you’re nothing if you don’t have a house, if you don’t have a car…that’s why I felt like I didn’t have anything. Most men are walking around every day holding this inner child that’s wounded and it’s affecting our adult decisions. So, I I took my very fragile and shameful and embarrassing story to build this organization because I knew that was going to help a bunch of people who also felt fragile and lost and guilt-ridden.
Why was it so important for you to have a coffee shop as part of the model?
The coffee shop model is really beautiful because it allows for people to be seen. I tell my staff that when someone walks in to ask how they are doing. If they see they are in a rush but want to sit for a minute, tell them to take a seat and we will bring the coffee to them and they can pay at the end. Our to-go cups and coffee bags all come with a note that says “you’re brilliant” or “you’re beautiful.” But what it really says is, “I see you today. You are validated.” And that’s important.
Within the coffee shop we also offer a ton of different ways for people to connect. We do group therapy sessions, but not every form of therapy has to be therapy—that’s why we also offer yoga, meditation, fitness, and music. We pull people from all across the community of all races and genders. We recently launched a group on Fridays for men to talk about their issues with a licensed therapist.
The 50th anniversary of hip-hop, which I know is very important to you, is approaching. Are you doing anything to commemorate the anniversary?
Hip-hop was and still is the Black community’s first form of therapy. We’re working on a big 50-year hip-hop celebration mural installation and discussion called, “I Was Fathered by Hip-Hop” in August. The installation is about paying homage to the artists who created, managed, and pushed hip-hop to the levels we see now. We hope seeing this mural of artists will inspire others to change the lives of their neighborhood and families.
What’s next for Coffee, Hip Hop & Mental Health?
We plan to launch an app where we can offer more resources and a place for people to look up therapists in [other areas]. People wear our Coffee, Hip Hop & Mental health gear all over the country, so we want to let them also experience the resources of Coffee, Hip Hop & Mental Health University we offer virtually or in person in their cities. The longer term goal is to build a three-story coffee shop on the South side in Englewood where I grew up. The first floor is a coffee shop, the second floor is a recording studio, and the third floor is a yoga and meditation studio and offices for individual therapy.
We are gearing up to launch our Food for Charity dinner series as an additional way to raise funds for our programming, and we have our annual 5K coming up in late May as well. We are also working on offering youth and after-school programs, and getting the right people in place for that. We will resume giving out free meals to the community weekly starting in May.
While taking care of others, how do you take care of yourself?
Therapy. That’s a lifelong decision. And then I surround myself with mentors and advisors. Because of the success of the organization, I’m surrounded by therapists who are now friends. Building your community is everything. You need a good community who’s going to keep you accountable, who’s going to call you out, and who’s going to fill you up.
If you or someone you know is struggling, contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free and confidential support 24 hours a day.
Samantha is a freelance writer who covers health, wellness, food, and more. Her work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, Real Simple, AARP, WebMD, and other national publications.
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