A Chicago coffee shop that focuses on mental health wants to make sure its customers have a place to “talk about hard stuff.”
“I just couldn’t stop ... So I went to therapy,” LeMark, a hip-hop artist and performer, told TODAY’s Carson Daly. “After some challenging sessions, my therapist sat up in his seat and he said ‘It wasn’t your fault you were abused.’ And now, for the first time, I heard it. I had been feeling like it was my fault, because that’s what happens. It’s so much shame that comes with being abused.”
With that, LeMark opened “Coffee, Hip-Hop, and Mental Health,” a non-profit organization where every hip-hop inspired drink sold helps fund free therapy sessions for individuals in need. LeMark said that initially, he wanted to sell enough coffee and merchandise to send 250 people to therapy. One woman, public school teacher Faith Overall, was among those first helped by the program.