Love Letters to Sacred Death

As it has always been.

{TW: talk of suicide starts shortly after the * symbol, drugs, overdose, death}

My name is Hannah Haddadi and I’ve been writing, singing, screaming, crying, and laughing letters to death my whole life. It’s a story that I have been retelling for a long time now that it often feels like an old, annoying narrative that needs to be put to rest. The moment the words come out of my mouth, my internal self gives an eye roll - but the truth is, it is extremely important to the foundation of my work as a death worker and spiritual practitioner. So, let us go on a journey together, via our first love letter to sacred death about great loss and living fully.

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Death work started for me as a child. The dead would visit me at every opportunity, like taking laundry down to the basement, they would throw bundled up socks. Passing by a mirror, skeletons would wave. Going to sleep, a perfect world for them to visit in my dreams. Moving around the house, they would shuffle and knock items off my mothers desk. Sitting on the couch while watching a movie they would sit next to me and their expressions would seem to say, “Can we chat now?” Crawling into bed, they would sit and leave seat marks on top of the mattress. I laugh now, thinking of them dangling their feet off the sides of the bed, like excited little kids ready to tell me about their day, but as a young child with no guidance around these experiences, it was all really jarring and scary. It might sound a little silly, but movies like The Sixth Sense and Casper actually really helped make sense of some of my experiences. Some of the dead taunted me but most assured me they were there for protection, looking for support, or just wanted to be acknowledged. It’s still like this, but thankfully I have a lot of boundaries with the dead now as an adult. If my metaphorical “open sign” isn’t on and they show up, I tell them to get an appointment because we’re just not doing this right now, especially while I’m on a date, writing poetry, or trying to watch a sappy movie. Okay, ya’ll? I can’t exactly say I’m completely innocent in all of this though, as my interest in all things paranormal, unusual, unexplained, and magical most definitely fed my experiences. Growing up I only read books about ghost stories and haunted lands, and this made my beacon of open-ness to the paranormal world much more apparent to beings beyond the veil. Thankfully, I got really lucky when it came to my parents when it came to all of the strange as neither of them sent me away or to a psychiatrist after I told them about the ghosts and skeletons visiting me on a daily basis. They tried to understand for a little while, but then left it at that and I was back to moving through the liminal world on my own. This was, until my mid-twenties (more on that later).

I grew up in a semi-religious household with my mother being sort of Christian and my father being a devotee to Islam. Neither of my parents forced their beliefs on me, but being raised with their influences, I believed in their versions of God until I didn’t anymore. What has stuck though is that since I was a child, I have been praying to Death regularly. I didn’t realize until adulthood that I have always believed Death to be the most powerful entity in existence and little did I know, I would come to believe later into my work as a death worker, that the foundation for life has always been death, not the other way around. As a kid, I would pray to Death for clarity and understanding, talk to Death like a friend, but most of the time I was praying that the mighty one with a scythe would take me with them. I didn’t want to be on earth anymore and never really did. As a premature baby who swung between life and death from inside the womb to the NICU, I sincerely felt like I never truly chose to be here but that modern medicine had made me stay. Everyday that I would wake up to the rising sun again, I would curse Death. Why do you keep me here? I thought it cruel to worship Death and then feel like they were constantly abandoning me by not giving me my wish - something similar to the way my dad felt at times about his God concerning his own personal wishes.

It wasn’t until my 20’s that my true reckoning with dear ol’ Death happened - in fact there were a few. My great death and rebirth started around the age of twenty-two when I fell in love with a woman for the first time, realized that I’ve been queer my whole life and got out of an abusive relationship, one that left me with trauma and memories that would haunt me for almost a decade later. Then, one of the most significant people in my life died around the time I turned twenty-seven, a man named Ty Lawson, who up until this point had been like a true brother to me. I remember that night, the message I received over Facebook and the phone call shortly after. “He died due to an overdose. He didn’t want you to know.” The last time I saw him he was doing well. He was out of rehab and planning on going back to school to help others who had struggled with addiction. That would be the last time I got to hug him.

He didn’t want you to know. It rang in my ears like a headache. I hadn’t known that he went back to using and I was certainly unaware he had moved onto heroin. I also hadn’t known loss like this before and it destroyed me for a long time. I would cry myself to sleep while talking to him. I would sob unexpectedly: on the bus, in the school library, in the shower, and in random elevators. I couldn’t believe my other half wasn't on this plane of existence anymore, at least not in the same way, flesh and blood and all. I only had a few of his things, items he had left over the years that I had sworn I would give back to him. At that moment, the night I was notified of his death, I praised my habit of procrastination because now it felt like those pieces of him that he left, they were delicate shrines to his memory that I would never let go of.

In the middle of twenties, I decided to go back to school, starting work with my first therapist concerning trauma, and later would start the tough journey of figuring out life without Ty. In the midst of it all, I started working at Apothecary Tinctura, which turned out to be my saving grace. I was fortunate to learn from many different wise women, witches, spiritual practitioners, and community members throughout my time here. I met people who did not think I was a freak who saw dead people, but instead as a seer who had wisdom to share. I got to work with and learn from the plants and people who knew plant spirit magic well. I also was blessed to meet a dear mentor through this establishment, Dia Nunez. After I graduated college, I became a practitioner at the apothecary. It was such a gift to practice all I had learned and cultivated over the years, plus I got to perform my signature offering, Metaphorical Funerals, supporting people through their grand and holy death and rebirth cycles. I remember Dia giving me the most beautiful flowers I’d ever seen as a congratulations to my graduating college. She knew, without knowing my whole story, that it was a big deal. I felt like I had done something profound, not only for myself but also for Ty. I was now the one who had to continue on for the both of us, something that created not only a lot of confusion, grief, and new anger for me but also, new purpose.

I remember exactly what I was doing at the apothecary the day I got the call that Dia had unexpectedly died. I knew something was wrong once I texted her and she didn’t reply, and about five minutes later her mother called. I remember every word of that conversation. Taking the phone into the small hallway, when I hung up the phone my back slid down the wall and I held my breath in disbelief. She was one of the most magical people I had ever been lucky enough to meet and I would forever miss our daily phone calls. My list of beloved dead who I was trying to make proud was now growing and I was pissed. I paced the streets of Cherry Creek, taking deep breaths before opening my phone, playing one of her voice texts. I have always hated the duty of calling people to give death related news and although it is something that comes with being a death worker and death doula, it will probably always be my least favorite part. There had been a few people I had to call concerning Dia’s death and knew the news had to come from me. I cried and wailed and my lower lip quivered as the words spilled from my mouth, like a bulldozer destroying a thinly patched dam with every hello.

It was then in the same year, with Dia now cheering me on from beyond the veil, I left Apothecary Tinctura to venture out into a new cycle where I would be hustling my business, Mourning Light Divination, full time. The thing was though, I had finally found community and I wasn’t navigating my strange world alone anymore. By the time I left the apothecary, I had not only a living community but many members added to my ethereal spiritual team and list of beloved dead. I found people who wanted to hear more about my experiences as a child instead of showing signs of wanting to back away slowly. They were there for me while I continued to go to therapy and work through trauma and while I shed over and over, to become more of my true self. They were also there for me while I went through my toughest dark night of the soul in 2019. A painful unfurling that set a new journey with Death in motion, one that changed the entire way I viewed life and existance as a human being.*

(Sunset, September 2019)

It started when I sat in the treatment room of one of my trusted health practitioners. I sat with my legs crossed and fidgeted with a ring slightly too big for my middle finger. My whole being felt pessimistic about being there, as we were discussing my chronic health issues but oddly, I still felt optimistic enough that one day a magical fix would present itself. Somehow I’ve always remained hopeful enough to keep trying new protocols, supplements, and procedures. This particular day was not about medical innovations though, it was instead a prophecy waiting to be acknowledged. I remember us sitting in silence for a while. After all these years she knew me well but still, she needed to ask me an important question regarding how I felt about my own life to really understand where the bodily resistance was coming from. I don’t remember the exact words of the question, but I remember my answer clear as day.

I looked at the floor and said, “I don’t want to be here. I’ve never wanted to be here.” Immediately my eyes filled with ancestral waters I had probably been holding on to my whole life. I remember feeling like the wind got knocked out of me and like I couldn’t move. I had never said this statement out loud to anyone except Sacred Death. It felt like time stopped until in this little office room, the grim reaper joined us and showed his presence to me, finally, after all these years. I knew he had been around but I suppose I hadn't been able to say this for sure, until now. He laid a bony hand on my right shoulder as I gathered the courage to discuss in length how I'd never really wanted to exist. I told my trusted practitioner that even as a child I had prayed for death to take me and how angry I was that he never did. It was such a strange experience being in this room. On one hand I felt like a spotlight was on me and shame I didn’t know I had was oozing out of me. On the other I felt something like relief, because I never had a space to be understood in this way, to talk about my feelings and my experiences related to death and suicidal-ideations without judgement or fear. I am grateful for the space she created for me, as it was the rude awakening I needed to face. In never expressing my true feelings I in a way, hid from my full self and full experience. It caused me to never truly deal with not wanting to be here on earth, a narrative that had been eating away at my life for quite some time now. After that day, I contemplated life and death for months, in a real unhinged way I hadn’t before, but truly needed. Everyday I asked myself, was this the day I might choose to be my last? I thought because the grim reaper visited me in that room, it meant it was truly time to end my own life. What I came to understand later was that this wasn't about taking my own life, it wasn’t even about my own death, it was a reckoning. It was an initiation. A treacherous dark night of the soul and a challenge to further the death work I was always meant to offer the world. The reaper assured me, he was not here to take my life nor was I meant to take my own, but he was here to examine and tell me the truth of our relationship. He was here to tell me I needed to figure out how to choose life. Choose my life. He had been with me since birth, he said, and that the role I was to play in our work together was to support the living through their metaphorical death and rebirths so they could keep on thriving, in order so that he could take them when it was their time. We had made a pact, he said and I saw a flash back to little baby Hannah in the incubator. Indeed, the grim reaper had been in the corner, helping to make sure I survived as a 1 pound, premature baby. Sacred Death had been my cheerleader for life since my first breath. His visit to adult Hannah, that made me realize I needed to get serious about being alive because at some point, I would in fact die and it wouldn’t be metaphorical like this time.

This period of my life, although desperately difficult, ignited my will to live. I was so raw that there were few things that brought sweetness to my life, but damn when I found them, they were so incredibly sweet. At this time I lived in Denver, in the nicest apartment I'd ever lived in. It was across from Cheesman park and I had a balcony for the first time - a dream of mine since I can remember. This specific apartment complex also had a rooftop that overlooked the park, the mountains and beyond. Twilight became the time of day I connected with the most, that special liminal space. I felt so liminal in my existence as well, wavering and floating around in the in-between. Nothing felt certain, except for the fact that the sun would indeed set every day and if I ran home after I got off from the apothecary, I could catch the explosion of colors in the sky and burn with the mountains until darkness covered us both. There was this ugly plastic lunchroom table hidden in one corner of the rooftop. Thankfully for me, I don't think anyone knew it was there because once I would get home I would drop my bag off, grab a cider, a coloring book and colored pencils, and run up to the rooftop to reserve my spot at the lunchroom and gaze at the fiery greatness of the sun going down. And then without fail, I would wail. I would talk to the sky, death, the moon and cry my bloody eyes out. I said things I'd never said out loud and I begged the night spirits for help. For guidance. For anything. I would talk to my beloved dead and ancestors, asking for strength. I felt all my feelings. I felt all my trauma and I shed my skin over and over, again and again, every day and every night. It was a lot, possibly too much without a therapist at the time, which I don’t recommend, but I did learn how to savor things. I was such an empty vessel that I could receive all the magic of the world and it told me to keep getting up everyday. That we all have so much more magic to experience. We just have to keep getting up.

It might sound strange, but I look back on this time fondly, because it was a turning point for me. I learned how to accept sweet gifts from the universe, approach my talents differently, and learned how to ask for help which ultimately connected me to my community in an even greater way. My love affair with myself and Sacred Death blossomed and most importantly, for the first time in my life, I chose to stay here. I wanted to give life a real, full chance, a feeling I never knew before, and something I never thought I would say after trauma and losing some of the most important people in my life. I used to write love letters to death asking for his scythe and now, I write love letters about grief, grand plans, wishes, joy and embodiment. The sad and scary songs I used to sing to Death about confusion, seeing the dead and my own departure became love ballads filled with intuitive knowing, healthy boundaries with the deceased, and excitement around the notion of living. The impossible became possible, all with the help of Sacred Death and facing my life: what had been, what was, and hopefully what would be. The way I move in this world now is a constant love letter to Death and to myself as we, I learned, have always been intertwined since the start.

Love, Hannah

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If you have felt the same or find yourself in a similar situation, there are helpful resources. I have some hotlines listed below, a text crisis line, and resources for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. There is no shame in asking for help, calling a hotline, finding a therapist, checking yourself in, or asking friends/family for help & support. I know that if I hadn’t taken advantage of these kinds of help, I might not be here today writing about my story, showing that it is possible to receive and find your life again. ♥ 

P.S. I don’t believe that Sacred Death has a gender per se, however in this essay you may have noticed that I used they/them and he/him pronouns for Sacred Death. Death has often (almost always) presented itself to me as a “he”, so I often point out Death as “he” but sometimes as “they.”

This Substack is a continued love letter to Sacred Death about the complexities of life, death, and the in-between from the viewpoint of a specific Persian Death Witch. Thank you for taking the time to read this love letter with me.

Next essay: That’s So Metal - An Ode to Ty Lawson. Coming Saturday May 6th @ 10:00am Mountain Time

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Hotlines:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255
*Hours: Available 24 hours. Languages: English, Spanish.

Resources for people who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, or have hearing loss: 988 Lifeline

A list of hotlines that may help you in whatever situation you find yourself in: www.pleaselive.org/hotlines

Text Crisis Line: www.crisistextline.org