Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Nandini Murali.

In spring 2017, Nandini Murali, a South Indian journalist and author, returned to an eerily quiet home and an unfathomable reality: T.R. Murali, one of the most prominent urologists in India and her beloved husband of 33 years, had ended his own life. “Space dissolved,” writes Nandini. “Time stood still. The axis of my life heaved, cracked and split.” It was the beginning of a spiraling journey that would plunge her world into darkness and the unique bereavement process for survivors of suicide, with its subtle and overt forms of social blaming and shaming. But in the wake of her overwhelming loss, Nandini refused to succumb to the paralysis of shame. Drawing upon her spiritual training and feminist consciousness, Nandini charted a path to change the conversation around suicide, cultivating awareness instead of stigma to break the taboos, shame, and secrecy through public campaigns and sensitization.

Below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out for me ...

• “There is no light that cannot pervade you.” To this day, Nandini does not know who left that life-giving note scrawled on a scrap of paper for her to find in the days following her husband's death.
• The dialogue with Nandini was bookended with two verses from the Baghavad Gita, which Nandini recited for us. Those verses sparked shakti, divine power, for her in a dark time.
• "Stop asking 'why me?'. Instead ask, 'why not me?' Advice from her guru helped Nandini steer clear of a victim mentality, or at least not dwell there too long. A series of childhood illnesses had surfaced this lesson for her as well.
• Nandini shared about her "previous life", before her husband's death. "The old Nandini died on April 17, 2017, along with my husband."
• Hearkening back to lessons from early life health challenges, including spinal surgeries, Nandini identified a profound link (paraphrasing): I had been so cut off from my body before. Illness helped me learn how to embody my experience. Which in turn helped me grieve more fully.
• "It became obvious to me that the grieving was well beyond my mind." Many somatic expressions and symptoms for months.
• Grief also "came in paroxysms." "Like getting ambushed by a predator."
  
• Suicide tends to be viewed through a moral lens--as a crime or sin--and not as a public health issue.
• A context of suicide being much maligned (and further cultural context of women "left behind" all too readily receiving critical or blaming gazes) makes the grieving process that much more difficult. A painful question surfaced: “Should I tell people what really happened? Or should I invent socially acceptable reasons for the death?” As we know, the world is richer for Nandini having chosen the way of truth.
• Still, there is much discernment in the process of telling the truth, how much of it, when, to whom. Nandin shared: it deserves to be a very conscious decision, give it a lot of thought. Ask myself: what am I really doing, and why am I doing it?
• In aftermath of suicide loss, common to blame oneself, and/or for society to blame for not having been able to prevent the suicide. A tough lesson emerged for Nandini: even in a deeply intimate relationship like marriage, still one can only be responsible for oneself.
• Ultimately Nandin learned to abdicate responsibility for her husband's death. Through feelings of anger, betrayal, abandonment, and many more.
  
• Correspondence with her uncle became an indispensable support for the grief process, and planted seeds that would ultimately blossom into her book, "Left Behind."
• In one line, her uncle wrote her, “The unconventional woman in you, needs to comfort and repair the conventional woman in you.”
• In another: "The deeply wounded heart responds the same way. Folks out there are trapped in stifled response to grief. You might be a beacon for them." Encouraged to write, Nandini began journaling--even that point taking about a year of grief process to reach.
• Along the way was a very challenging journey. "My whole journey has been about reclaiming my authenticity." "I was a former doormat, a classic people pleaser." The process of reconstruction was "one microstep at a time."
• On a road trip with her uncle to the Grand Canyon, a 5-hour conversation, if recorded, "would have been the audio book of 'Left Behind.' :) Noting with conviction, "the book is already there, you just have to put it into words," her uncle began scribing for her. The day after Nandini returned from the U.S., she began the process of writing, still staying in close correspondence with her uncle. "He held the space for me; without him, the book would still be a journal."
  
• Later in the nonlinear journey, Nandini started SPEAK. "It's deeply meaningful for me to reach out to a dier circle of people, as a way to honor Murali [her late husband]."
• She noted another lesson: We need to remember our loved ones for the way they lived their lives, not the ways they died.
• And many more insights during the Q&A....