The Ingredients of Grace

There is a coffee and bakery shop downtown in Xenia OH, known as the “City of Hospitality.”

I found Coffee Hub the first week after I graduated and moved out of Women's Recovery Center back in February of 2018. WRC is a drug and alcohol treatment facility for women. That place saved my life, and this place that I’m about to show you made life more bright.

Now, allow me to introduce you to Cynthia “Cymp” Stemple.

First, before I give you guys some back story on how this coffee shop became a thing, and why it deserves to be recognized, I want to say that I will never be able to tell the story of Coffee Hub Xenia the way it deserves to be told. I will never be able to fully, and eloquently deliver the message of just how impactful and inspiring this coffee and bakery shop has been on our community, but I’m going to try.

“I knew I wanted to start a small business, I just didn’t know what, so I met with one of the city planners just to find out what was going on in Xenia. I thought it might be a restaurant, but I didn’t want to go into debt after opening one with the failure rate they have. So I just waited.”

Let me stop there for a second and touch on the 'I just waited'. Cymp is my friend, and she’s also one of my mentors. This woman’s faith in 'the waiting' is what first inspires me as a dreamer. She waited on God. She prayed for vision.

“Then one day I got a phone call from Steve Brodsky from the City Of Xenia, asking me if I’d be interested in opening a coffee shop that was connected to One Bistro.”

“I said, ‘let’s start the conversation’.”

One Bistro was founded by Executive Chef, Robert Adamson and his wife, Kim, in 2012 in Miamisburg OH. Then a few years later they opened a second location in Xenia. One Bistro was created to be a place where all are welcome to come just as they are, regardless of their ability to pay.

"When you dine in a ‘pay what you can’, ‘pay it forward’ community café, you are helping combat food insecurity in your neighborhood."

The first time I stepped foot into One Bistro, it was February, and February in Ohio is very cold, or hot, or springy, I mean it is Ohio, it will rain, snow, get warm enough to leave the jacket behind, and then there could be a tornado warning all in the same day. I had just left the YMCA and I was walking back to the transitional house I was living in at the time, it's called Sober Lotus. It was freezing outside, and I was hungry, so I stopped into this friendly looking place to get warm for a few minutes, and to grab a bite to eat. I didn't know anything about One Bistro, I just thought it looked trendy and like they might have a healthy salad on the menu. It was Mr. Adamson himself who offered me that meal for free. He said that it was 'already paid for'. Then he explained to me a little bit about their mission, and then I asked him if I could pay it forward. For someone like me, being where I was at at the time, paying it forward felt like such an accomplishment. I felt like I was giving back to the universe that has held me in such high favor for so long. When all I wanted to do was die so many times, the universe said, 'not yet'. Paying it forward felt like I was saying "thank you, God'.

When Cymp and her family decided that they were all in and this coffee shop business was going to happen, she wasn't really sure of the 'why'.

The Coffee Hub shares a building with a non-profit organization called Toward Independence, Inc. They're dedicated to helping individuals with developmental disabilities live the fullest life possible. At first, Cymp thought they might be her 'why'. Which was totally cool! Then one day Cymp received a phone call from Zach.

Now, allow me to introduce you to my wonderful friend, Zachary Dozier.

Zach and I met some years ago at a 12 step meeting. I fell in platonic love with him the first moment I heard him share. He, like all of us, has his own story of recovery. One day, Zach decided to give the owner of this trendy little coffee shop a call and asked if she would be willing to hire a recovering addict with barista experience.

Obviously she said yes. Zach eventually became a full time barista at Coffee Hub Xenia while putting himself through school. Today Zach is a licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor.

Over time Cymp started to notice a theme in the downtown Xenia area. Through Zach and other encounters, she was introduced to an active community of people from all walks of life, and of all colors and creeds. She started to build relationships within the recovery community, and I don’t know when the light bulb hovering over her head turned on, but when it did, she knew.

“This is our why”.

I can’t give you an exact number of how many people in recovery Cymp has hired to work in the shop or bakery. I don’t know how many lives have changed for the better because of her grace. I just know it has been many, and I know a couple ladies personally who had no idea what they were going to do after they finished treatment. I know what it’s like having to live one day at a time fighting an invisible disease that wants to kill you, on top of the stress of not knowing how you’re going to support yourself after you’re released back into the real world.

“How am I going to pay for a place to live? Who’s going to want to hire me? How am I going to take care of myself?”

When you’ve been only surviving for years on a daily basis, and spending every waking hour of most of your life chasing something to numb the pain of your past, you lose yourself. Treatment teaches us how to stay clean and sober. Treatment helps us reach deep down inside to find the root causes of why we want to feel numb. Treatment is the easy part. Reality is where it gets tough. Learning how to live is the hard part, and for some of us it’s the first time ever doing that.

Now, I would like to introduce you to my friend, and Manager of Coffee Hub Xenia, Missy Adams.

“I met Cymp about two months after I got out of Adult and Women Teen Challenge. I was looking at everything I had to pay off to get my life back in order and I knew that there was no way anyone would ever give me a job. On paper I was un-hireable.”

Missy, like so many of us in recovery, had accumulated so much debt in court fines, and all the other financial legal stuff that comes with making horrible decisions when your life is being controlled by drugs and/or alcohol. She had to pay something around $8,000 just to get her drivers license valid again. When you have to start over with no money, no job, and not a whole lot of options to choose from, eight thousand dollars seems impossible. That’s a lot of money to me. Missy has family who are frequent Coffee Hub customers that put her in touch with Cymp, and the rest is history.

She started out baking muffins, which led to working in the shop, which then led to a promotion in management.

“I had a dream while I was in Adult and Women Teen Challenge about opening a discipleship training residential home for women. It was a dream that sounded too big and too crazy that I kind of just put it away in the back of my mind and thought no more about it.”

“One day Cymp and I were having a conversation and she brought up starting a long-term discipleship residential facility for women who are re-entering society from prison and who are coming out of addiction. My heart hit the floor, and suddenly that God size dream flooded back into my mind and I knew that was it!“

Cynthia Stemple gave Missy a chance. She gave Missy an opportunity to reinvent herself. She gave Missy love and friendship. Missy Adams will be celebrating five years of continuous sobriety this coming Valentines Day. Today Cymp and Missy are business partners working on a dream they both share, and because of that, Hope Hub Xenia will be opening soon. I can’t wait to witness the lives that will be changed through the vision of these two women.

There was once a little girl, who had a big dream of being a small business owner. One day that little girl grew up, and not only did she own a small business, but she was inspiring an entire community of people to work hard, to dream big, and to be true to themselves.

I am not a well educated writer by any means, nor am I anything close to an experienced journalist. I just love telling stories that are real. I love to give credit where credit is due. This story far surpasses doing a few good deeds. I believe this story deserves to be heard. These people deserve to be recognized. This place deserves to be seen. Life is not easy, but there are some people, places, and things that make it so much more worth staying in.

Thank you, Cymp. Thank you for dreaming big, for praying hard, and for believing in us when no one else did.

Go follow @coffeehubohio on Instagram and visit coffeehubxenia.com for hours and locations

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @sober_charity