Jason and I were friends for eighteen years. A friendship built over countless brunches......eggs and coffee, yes, but so much more than that. Listening. Joking. Showing up. Being heard. We were each other's committed listeners. We even had a name for it. Our man date.
We didn't always get it right. It wasn't perfect. And in the end, it wasn't enough.
He took his own life in January 2025.
I've lived with suicide my whole life. My sister took her own life twenty-three years before Jason did. In the end, neither of them had a room available to them. And even when a room exists, the table isn't always set with what someone actually needs.
That's what we're building.
Jason and I both had mental health struggles. I found a way through. He didn't. I will miss him the rest of my life. But I'm through the grieving piece now, and the numbers aren't going down......more people are depressed and isolated than ever. So this is me doing something about it. Getting the conversation going, making sure men know where to go, handing them the tools to actually have the discussion......not just hand a struggling guy a beer and hope for the best.
What kept Jason from asking for support wasn't the absence of people who cared. It was shame. The weight of looking like you've got it together when you don't. The story every man gets handed young......that asking for help and being weak are the same thing. The brunch is a room where that gets set down at the door. No judgment. No performance. Just men being honest with each other.
This isn't a replacement for therapy or counselling. It doesn't do what happens on the other side of that door. Part of it is asking a man where to start looking first, and what he's looking at when he finds it. I don't have all the answers. I know where a lot of them already are.
This isn't about me. It's about finding the men in every city who want to run their own monthly brunch, and backing them once they do. Any city that wants a room, I'll come. There's money in community funding across this country for exactly this kind of work. I want to go get it. One city, one room at a time.