Indira’s Tree – A Compass Special airs on ABC TV Plus Sun 7 August

While grief can be a traumatic time for most people, there is lightness, and reward, to be found if we are able to grieve well. When broadcaster and author Indira Naidoo suffered an immense loss when her youngest sister took her own life at the beginning of Melbourne’s first lockdown in 2020, she sought solace in nature.

Indira, the eldest of three sisters, explored her grief by turning to the natural world she had access to around her urban home in the middle of a lockdown – the clouds, the stars, the weeds, the ants, and the trees. On her daily walks, she found a wise old sage in the form of 150-year-old Morton Bay figtree in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens and visited it regularly as part of her journey to reconnect with nature’s cycles of growth and renewal.

With the help of a series of “nature guides” she learnt how to find the beauty and healing properties of nature in her immediate environment. This notion that the natural world – even if it is just a city park or plants growing between the cracks in our pavement – can aid our mental as well as physical wellbeing is known as Biophilia. This reconnection with nature and the journey she took in writing her book The Space Between The Stars, enabled her to find moments of joy and warmth within the grief for her lost sister Stargirl.

Airdate: Sunday 7 August 2022 at 7.30pm on ABC TV Plus.