The author, an incarcerated journalist serving his 16th year for manslaughter, reflects on the Nov. 17 suicide of 55‑year‑old civilian imam Abdallah Hadian at a New York correctional facility. Inside, deaths are often normalized, but the suicide of a staff member prompts deeper reflection about why people hold on. A gratitude-tree project led by educator Nicole Cooke produced 82 paper jars—46 listing “family”—revealing shared sources of hope among inmates and staff. The piece argues that prisoners’ coping strategies offer practical lessons for suicide prevention.
Inside Prison During the Holidays: How a Gratitude Tree Revealed Reasons To Keep Living
On Nov. 17, Abdallah Hadian, a 55-year-old civilian imam, entered a New York state correctional facility carrying a firearm and later died by suicide in the administration building. News of his death moved almost as quickly as the shot that ended his life.
Inside prison, reports of self-harm or fatal incidents among people in custody are often met with little outward surprise. Stabbings and overdoses are frequently shrugged off or met with nervous laughter. Outside the walls, these deaths are commonly framed as part of a broader mental-health crisis in correctional facilities—a narrative that can reinforce stereotypes of inmates as violent or unstable and that often fuels tough-on-crime politics.
When the person who dies by suicide is a civilian staff member—someone who left their family each day to work inside the same prison where Robert Brooks was murdered—the reaction is different. It prompts a deeper, uncomfortable reflection: what are we doing wrong? And it raises a question for people living outside who may be considering suicide: what might they learn from those inside about reasons to keep living?
I write from inside: I am serving my 16th year for manslaughter. In 2009, a drunken argument with my girlfriend escalated into a deadly confrontation. She stabbed me; I stabbed her. She died. I immediately tried to take my own life.
I survived. I spent time in the hospital recovering from a collapsed lung and later endured the shame and guilt of having killed someone I loved—emotions intensified by reliving the episode in court. I would be dishonest to say I hadn’t considered nearly every method of suicide. I believe I lived through that period to be held accountable—to the victim’s family and, less sentimentally, to myself. The pressures that once felt unbearable proved, over time, bearable.
Working as a journalist from inside prison gave me purpose. Reporting on people who have endured darkness helped me develop as a writer who looks for the humanity tabloids ignore. In interviews I connect shared experiences to universal themes—parenting, addiction, and the recurring sensation of the walls closing in. Yet the experience of isolation is not uniform.
Like many facilities, Eastern New York Correctional Facility offers no holiday cheer during what is often called the “happiest time of the year.” There are no presents or decorations—only yellowed suicide-prevention memorandums tacked to bulletin boards. Some men live under the weight of life sentences and have been separated from family for decades. Others haven’t had visits in years but still find reasons to get up, put their feet on the floor, and sometimes even smile.
I admire the resilience of the older men here—some have outlived every family member and have spent more years in custody than I have been alive. They keep life simple: Scrabble or spades, trash talk, and slow, cane-assisted steps from one place to another. Their coping strategies—rituals, small communities, and routines—offer important lessons about surviving extreme isolation and despair.
The Gratitude Tree
One day this season I overheard several GED students tell the prison’s acting educational supervisor, Nicole Cooke, that they felt they had nothing to be grateful for during the holidays. She didn’t like that reply, and it sparked an idea.
Cooke painted a bare tree on a wall and distributed photocopied jar-shaped drawings labeled “I’m thankful for.” She asked anyone who wanted to participate to write what they were grateful for inside the paper jars, which would stand in for leaves on the tree.
The gratitude tree hung for about a month. When the jars were removed, Cooke kept them in her drawer. When I finally asked for them, she handed me a stack of 82 slips. Alone in the academic library, I read every one. Forty-six simply read “family” or “mi familia.” Some contained only one or two words—“mom,” “Ms. Cooke.” Holding those nearly weightless slips of paper, I felt their tremendous emotional weight: people and things that gave our community a sense of purpose and reasons to live.
“Rarely is suicide committed through reflection.” — Albert Camus
I was struck to find that a handful of jars had been filled out by staff—people who, like Hadian, go home at the end of the day. Seeing staff and prisoners’ notes side by side was a reminder that gratitude and reasons to hold on are not confined to one side of the bars. In a place that often feels designed to break people, small acts of connection can be powerful lifelines.
Prisoners’ coping mechanisms—community rituals, modest pleasures, meaningful work, and opportunities to connect—can offer insights for broader suicide-prevention efforts. If anything, the gratitude tree showed me that even in the bleakest settings, people find reasons to keep living. That collective will matters.
