What is a human life “worth?” This soul-crushing question has plagued man since we first saw our reflection. For many of us addicts and alcoholics, lack of self-worth brought us to our deepest depths. But redemption is seeped in the reimaging of the self and the reinvigoration of the soul. This is all too true when it comes to Hannah P.
The first two weeks of Hannah’s life were spent in Massachusetts, after which, she was adopted by her loving and devoted moms in Oakland. Although her family showered her with love, the feeling of abandonment she felt from her birth mother held a tight grip on her. When she was seven, she found out that her birth mother had had a son. “She kept my older sister and my younger brother, which created this sense of unworthiness.” For most of her adolescence, she chased that love and acceptance in all the wrong places. Always feeling like an outsider, Hannah was constantly bullied and found it incredibly difficult to make meaningful connections. “I didn’t love myself and was very uncomfortable with myself and that was reflected in all the relationships I tried to create.”
Once out of high school, Hannah sought to get as far away from her bullies as possible. So, she attended the University of North Carolina. Quickly upon hitting college soil, she started heavily drinking. Alcohol became more than just a social lubricant—it was her entire social life. “When you have a bottle, everybody wants to be your friend.” The perfect grades she once had started to plummet into failed classes. “I didn’t realize I was an alcoholic, but I remember being drunk and walking around yelling, ‘I’m an alcoholic!’ like it was cute. I didn’t comprehend it was a possibility…but I was getting blackout drunk from Sunday to Sunday.”
Summer break of freshman year, she went back home to Oakland and the guy she was dating at the time introduced her to cocaine. Suddenly, with the same ferocity she started drinking, she started doing coke. She dropped out of school and moved back to home.
Around this same time, she found out that her birth mom passed away. In the years leading up to her birth mom’s death, Hannah had started to build a relationship with her. “I wanted to build a deeper relationship with her, but I kept being like, ‘When I feel ready or when I am older, or when I know what questions to ask we’ll be able to build the bond I’ve been looking for. When she died, I felt like I had been abandoned again.”
That pain led Hannah to start taking Xanax. “As much as coke and alcohol were a problem, Xanax exploded my life.” On one faithful day, outside of a liquor store, Hannah spotted a girl that she found to be more beautiful than any person she had ever seen. So, she left her boyfriend and started dating her. This girl introduced her to prostitution. This lifestyle and relationship were toxic, to say the least. “I would have done anything for her. Xanax, cocaine, alcohol, and her. I was addicted to them all.” For two years, she lived as someone she doesn’t recognize today. With tears in her eyes, she remembers the assaults and the shame that came along with the drugs and the prostitution. It all centered around her love for this girl. They would fight and make up and fight and make up. After one fight, they didn’t speak for a week. During that week, her girlfriend was shot and killed. Her girlfriend’s parents blamed Hannah for her death. So much so that they wouldn’t let her say goodbye in the hospital or attend the funeral. “I don’t blame them. They were in so much pain. I would have done anything for her—I would have taken that bullet for her.”
The unprocessed grief from these two monumental deaths sent Hannah into an even more dramatic spiral. Eventually, her moms pushed her to go to treatment in Utah. She stayed there for three months…but she wasn’t ready and started to use again when she came home. After that stint of sobriety, she collected three years by going to 12-step meetings. “I had a sponsor and I did the steps.” When the words “the steps” left her mouth, she made sure to put them in air quotes. “I wasn’t completely honest and I wasn’t completely thorough because I was so afraid of being vulnerable with another person and allowing someone else to see me for who I was…or even allowing myself to see me for who I was.”
As it so often does, this compressed self-loathing burst and she relapsed once more. “Within three months, I was arrested in three different counties, crashed two cars, lost my job, and was back to prostitution. My life exploded before I even knew what was happening.” In the six months before she got to Beit T’Shuvah, she was blowing her savings, partying constantly, and living as a prostitute. “I always went back to prostitution because it was ‘easy.’” Again, she used air quotes. This time on the word “easy.” “It’s easy money, but a little piece of me died every time I gave myself to somebody knowing that I was going to use that money to buy drugs.” Her rock bottom revealed its trap door. “Deep down I knew I was worth more than that, but, when I am in that state of mind, the only thing that makes me able to get up in the morning is doing drugs. I hated myself and I hated my life so much…but I couldn’t stop because it was my only option.”
In January, she called Beit T’Shuvah. Before making it here, she was 5150ed, left the hospital, had a seizure, and Ubered to her drug dealer’s house. “I didn’t want to kill myself, I just wanted to be ‘deleted.’ I thought that if I was gone, it wouldn’t even matter.” Air quotes on deleted. In April, she entered the doors of Beit T’Shuvah—unrecognizable from the person she is today. To any normal observer, she was a self-confident person who didn’t need any exterior validation…but this is Beit T’Shuvah. We see right through all that. Her treatment team worked with her over the last five months to get her to be the woman she is today—a woman who, with tears in her eyes said, “I have become a person I respect—I have become a person that I love. I am able to be helpful to other people. People like Jamie and Mia saw my worth and potential when I couldn’t see it for myself.”
Hannah has gone from a child, terrified of being seen, to someone who opens her heart and soul to every person she meets—truly exemplified by how vulnerable she has been in this very spotlight. “I have never allowed people to love me. I have never been seen before. I walked in here and people saw who I was and the potential I had and kept telling me that, until I was able to hear them.” Today, she works in the clinical department as a program facilitator intern, is actively working an honest 12 steps, and is going to school to get her masters in social work. Her focus now is giving back—helping others who have suffered the way she has.
Look, answering the question “What is a human life worth?” might be too grandiose for one spotlight. Because the truth is, the price of a life, a life as beautiful and courageous as Hannah’s, is immeasurable. After everything she has gone through, endured—triumphed, I asked her what she thought her worth was today. Her response: “I am worth my dreams coming true. I am worth having authentic relationships with people. I am worth…everything.”
No air quotes needed.