During the frightening and stressful early days of the pandemic in early 2020, Indira Naidoo was working the graveyard shift, hosting Nightlife on ABC radio on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights from 10pm to 2am.
Based in Sydney, she was fielding calls from distressed listeners, particularly in Melbourne, struggling to cope with the impact of lockdown. What callers didn't know was that Naidoo herself was in a state of deep distress.
"My national audience was in horrific anxiety and was relying on ABC radio to get them through because they were so isolated and needed that connection," Naidoo recalls.
"We were getting a lot of Lifeline calls to my radio show because Lifeline couldn't keep up with the demand. I was seeing an extreme version of grief and anxiety and at the same time as I had this national broadcasting responsibility was going through a very personal grief."
Just a few weeks before, Indira Naidoo's beloved youngest sister, Manika, a Walkley-award winning journalist and successful communications specialist, killed herself after years struggling with her mental health.
The shock and loss were compounded by COVID restrictions which made it difficult for Naidoo, firstly, to even travel from Sydney to Melbourne and, then, to actually gather with family and friends for support – at the time, only 20 people could come to the funeral.
On top of the heartbreak of losing someone you love, Naidoo says suicide brings a heavy layer of tormenting wondering.
"It's a type of grief that is probably like no other grief," she says.
"You go through a lot of blame and guilt when you are close to someone who has ended their life. In that moment, you feel absolute devastation and then you feel 'what more could I have done? Why couldn't you have fixed it? Why couldn't you have stopped it from happening?' And that exacerbates your grief.
"But if you go through the right grieving process and counselling you realise that, in the end, we are all responsible for our own lives — which is really hard to accept when it's a younger, kid sister who you adore, are very close to and all your life has been about looking after and protecting this person – you realise you aren't super human, you can't save people and you did as much as you could.
"Remembering the years that I had with my sister, the great times we had, what a brilliant, creative soul she was, rather than looking at it only in terms of loss, did help me with the 'what if' questions. I really do feel for people who have to struggle with this, particularly parents. Suicide affects a lot of young people and I think it's so much harder for a parent to lose a child this way than for almost any other member of the family.
"I have spent quite a bit of time with people who have lost loved ones through suicide and it can be something that you never really get over. Suicide death is a death where there are those unanswered questions that you just have to accept you'll never know the answer to."
After the funeral, Indira Naidoo returned home, bereft. A grief counsellor suggested she start journalling. Then she found a tiny bit of solace sitting under a big, old fig tree overlooking Sydney Harbour.
She returned to the tree on regular walks in the gardens. Being in nature was replenishing. Writing her journal was cathartic. The culmination of both was a book, The Space Between The Stars, which celebrates her sister and explores how nature can heal us in our darkest days — themes Naidoo also explored in an episode of the ABC TV's Compass, the program she takes over hosting in 2023.
"Intellectually, I thought there is a need for a book like this, but I wasn't sure whether I could write it and it was a very difficult process," she says.
"I've found from talking to a lot of counsellors that we don't talk about our grief enough and it's so important to make people realise that they're not alone in their grief, that other people have gone through what you've gone through and, most importantly, other people have survived it.
"When you've gone through quite a big loss, you think you're never going to get over it, never going to recover, never be the same but when you hear other people's stories of going through terrible things you can find your way through it, what helped me may help you, and I think that that is such a gift to give someone else — to give them that sense of hope that they can get through it."
Whether it was the "shimmery light" breaking through a green canopy, the cheerful chirping of birds or the persistence of a weed thriving in a footpath crack, nature reconnected Naidoo to the beauty and joy in the world and reminded her about resilience and renewal.
"I think when I allowed myself to be still, to sit quietly under a tree, that stillness and slowing down allowed me to see life happening around me in a way that I probably had not noticed for a very long time," she says.
"The cycles of life and death became very obvious in a way that we just don't see in our busy lives – the dropping of leaves from a tree and feathers from birds, ants picking up deciduous bits and pieces – that, for me, really helped that sense that I'm a creature of nature and part of the cycle of life and death.
"We will all die, and it doesn't have to be this terrible traumatic idea. It can be reassuring that something else will replace me, my nutrients will nourish and nurture something else and it can actually be a very comforting idea. I think that's what nature taught me that there is a season for everything."
These kinds of big life questions are explored on Compass, which reports on faith, spirituality, religion, values and ethics.
One of the ABC's longest-running programs, it has been on air since 1988 and for most of that time was hosted by Geraldine Doogue. This year, the program will broaden its focus to newer forms of spirituality and investigate stories of social justice, an emerging scandal in the Catholic Church and the tricky interplay between sexuality and religion.
The first program highlights the growing number of women over the age of 55 who are the fastest growing group of Australians becoming homeless, telling the riches-to-rags story of celebrity PR executive Glen-Marie Frost whose successful life collapsed, leaving her sleeping in her car. It's an issue Naidoo champions as an ambassador for The Wayside Chapel homeless crisis centre in Sydney's Kings Cross.
She's thrilled to be taking over as host of Compass (combined with a role presenting ABC Radio's Evening program airing across Sydney, Canberra and regional NSW) and believes the program is needed now, more than ever.
"It's pretty overwhelming because it's such an iconic ABC show and I'm very excited to be part of it," she says.
"Compass has always been about helping us with our search for meaning. Historically, most of our search for meaning has been within the family, within the community, within our church structures. But, particularly in the last 20 years, we've seen a lot of huge changes in the way family is structured, how society is structured, and of course, the way that we practice our faith.
"I think Compass is a show that changes with our changing needs. While we might now be pulling away from structured religion we're not pulling away from the search for meaning and spiritual guidance. If the traditional church structure is not for them, people are finding it through art, music, nature, self-development, mindfulness and Compass explores those different ways of connecting with meaning.
"I think we are very fortunate that there are still quality programs like Compass with a remit that's enshrined in the ABC charter, that is funded and supported to go out and ask questions, some of them uncomfortable, but questions that need to be asked, to give people a more balanced view of the diversity of opinion that is out there and, hopefully, even in a very polarised community where the media, I think, plays a role in worsening that polarisation, Compass, helps us find the middle ground, the places where we agree and can use as building blocks to tackle the challenges we face at the moment."
Indira Naidoo joined the ABC at the age of 21 after securing a journalism cadetship. She's reported for and presented The 7.30 Report and ABC Late Edition News and World News Tonight on SBS. Of Indian heritage, she was born in apartheid South Africa and grew up in Tasmania, South Australia, England and Zimbabwe and says she draws from broad range of religious and spiritual influences.
"Because we moved around as a family quite a bit, I was exposed to various cultures and religions," she says.
"My parents grew up in Hindu families when they were living in South Africa, my mother was more tied to her faith, not strongly, but there were some Hindu practices that were incorporated into our general Christian lifestyle. The schools I went to in Australia were Catholic and Church of England, then I stepped into a traditional fundamentalist Christian society that also had traditional African beliefs when we lived in Zimbabwe and, for a short time there, I spent a few months in a Yeshiva and then Madrasa school, so I was exposed to Judaism and Muslim teaching for a while.
"Without realising it, I was surrounded by a lot of faith, a lot of spirituality and constantly different ones as well so I think that experience taught me that it is important to embrace spirituality in your life and accept that it can come in all shapes, sizes and forms. Even if it may look a little differently because of the way people dress or the shape of the building where they pray, I think the fundamental tenants of most religions are the same in terms of love, compassion and charity."
As she begins a new chapter in her career with Compass, Naidoo continues to talk publicly about her experience of navigating grief in the three years since Manika died. Most recently she spoke to members of the community in Bega, still traumatised by the Black Summer bushfires.
When she first decided to write her book, she thought perhaps it might be of use to someone, somewhere, but it's resonated far more deeply and widely than she could ever have imagined.
"I said at the beginning of [writing the book] that if I could just help one person, I would be more than happy with that but what I've discovered through the process, through the way the book has been embraced, that there have been a number of people who have been helped," she says.
"I get hundreds and hundreds of emails, text messages, social media posts and letters. People make embroidery and paint paintings about the effect the book has had. The Botanic Gardens now gets hundreds of visitors and had to actually print out a little map so that people can find the tree that I talked about in the book. It's become a lovely place of pilgrimage for a lot of people. It's been very touching that other people have been helped by my story and talking about suicide and I'm very grateful for that."
Compass, hosted by Indira Naidoo, returns to ABC TV and ABC iview on Sunday, March 19 at 6.30pm
