After Facing Two Heart Attacks And Cancer This Founder Launched A Health Festival For Black Men

At 42, Christopher Williams was active and fairly happy. Having created a routine of eating fairly healthy and working out 3-4 times per week, he was doing right by body. That’s why he was particularly shocked when his body betrayed him. “My first heart attack was October first of 2015,” Williams tells ESSENCE, who at the time of the crisis was still in his early 40s. “My body was definitely telling me something was going on. It started off feeling like indigestion, and then it got progressively worse.” After barely recovering from the first attack, he suffered another, and was then diagnosed with stage III appendiceal cancer just a few years later. Emotionally bereft, Williams says the health challenges changed his path and redefined his purpose entirely. “I would have to say it was a divine awakening,” Williams tells ESSENCE, admitting that the events were a signal of stress mismanagement and emotional internalization. Like many Black men, he says he wasn’t properly caring for himself from the inside out and it caught up to him in the most frightening way. According to the National Institute of Minority Health and Health disparities, Black men are four times likelier to die by...