Indira Naidoo's The Space Between the Stars is a tribute to love and nature

"I'm overwhelmed by the urge to flee - to throw open my apartment door and just run and run, not to anywhere in particular, just away from myself," she writes in her book The Space Between the Stars.

A fierce wind blows straight off the harbour as she heads up Macleay Street, down the McElhone Stairs, to Cowpers Wharf Road where a greedy cackle of cockatoos feast on pieces of stale bread near Harry's Cafe de Wheels. At Mrs Macquarie's Road, she cuts through a grove of wattle, rolling ripples from a boat's backwash lick against the bush rock, as she gets further into the Royal Botanic Garden, a spider's web between two blades of grass catches her eye.

She looks up and a wash of warm light breaks through the leaves. She's under a towering Moreton Bay fig, its canopy stretches out over her. Muscular limbs radiate from its sold trunk, its roots scaly and reptilian.

"I wander over and gently stroke its bark, marvelling at the gnarly texture of the deep ridges and grooves, and how grounded and permanent it feels in contrast to my ghostly presence. And then I see the significance of this startling encounter. It's no accident I have found myself here. Trees were our first refuge from danger. They were where we sought safety from predators and the elements.

"Here with this tree, secluded in this wedge of nature, I sense I can sit alone yet not feel isolated. I can draw on this tree for a unique form of solace.

"Can this tree and the fragments of urban nature around me lead me out of my grief? Could nature be my saviour?"

This is the question Naidoo asked herself again and again during her grief. The book was never intended to be a grief memoir, as such. Her publishers wanted a book on biophilia, the hypothesis that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature. Naidoo is an advocate for the environment, issues large and small, she has always been drawn to nature, whether it be championing climate change action alongside Al Gore or urging us all to plant herbs in pots on our apartment balconies.

But in the midst of her heartbreak she began to really pay attention to the little things, puddles, resilient weeds, pale vanilla clouds.

"Sadly, it usually takes a really big event in our lives for us to stop, a tragic thing, where we can't help but to take a big breath and go, oh, and be still," she says.

"It's where we start to feel a lot of other things which have probably been going on, and it all piles up, and then suddenly we find ourselves under a tree and that's where the meaning comes."

She talks about the grief process, denial, anger, bargaining and acceptance.

"Acceptance is one thing, especially with a sudden death, it's hard to find acceptance, but if you can move to the next step and find meaning that's where the healing process begins."

She said being still in nature, watching the cycle of life in nature, something we often ignore in the city, can be healing.

"It can be as simple as noticing the leaves falling off the trees, that's a sign of death, new buds, it's renewal, it's pretty obvious but we're just so distracted, we don't see it happening.

"So when these events happen in our lives we think it's seismic rather than a pattern of life and death, death is a part of life."

She knows it's not that simple. Get out in the fresh air, look at the clouds, you'll be fine. But the healing powers, if that's the word to use, of nature are well documented. She talks to experts over the course of the book, scientists, doctors, gardeners, each providing an insight into why exploring nature has its benefits. But it's more about what worked for her.

"Writing the book was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," she says. She started on the book only six weeks after her sister's death.

"I couldn't hide from myself, I couldn't pretend to be a know-it-all journalist or a researcher, I had to go really deep into my heart, which hurt.

"It takes so long to find the vocabulary, you think you have it but then you can't find the word. We just don't talk about grief, there are no words for it, it was almost like learning another language before I could write the book."

It is a magical book. Lyrical, wondrous, reflective. The hard parts are interspersed with beautiful recollections of their childhood, three sisters, Indira, Suraya and Manika, Stargirl she's called in the book.

Manika, a mother, a wife, a Walkley Award-winning journalist with a master's degree. In May 2020 she walked into her own suburban backyard and took her life. No note. No explanation. How had it come to this? Naidoo asks. In the end she wasn't really concerned with the why, more the what next.

"Everyone's grief is different," she says. "For me, it was really important to put it in perspective, that's something I try to do with everything I go through.

"I had to find a worse grief, obviously it's hard to find a worse grief than suicide, but if you think what you've been through is the worst thing, you're stuck.

"Look what's happening in Ukraine at the moment, here I am standing in a beautiful park, under the trees, in the sunshine, and there people are being killed, homes are being destroyed.

"This is the hard thing with grief because there are moments when you are feeling good and happy but you know that there's someone else's grief that is just so much worse and terrible and you go into that place."

She says we need to talk about grief more. With professionals, with family, with friends, sometimes even with strangers.

"One of the things I'm realising is by sharing my grief so many more people share their grief with me. People I've known for ages have been telling me things they've never told me, they feel more comfortable now the conversation has been started."

She has no idea what drew her to that tree that day. "I've done that walk so many times, it's a beautiful tree but nothing about it has ever particularly called to me. But on this day I stopped and, I don't know, suddenly I felt so serene, it was quite a spiritual feeling."

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In one chapter of the book she goes foraging with Diego Bonetto, Sydney's most famous edible weed forager. They retrace much of the walk she did that first morning - the first morning without Stargirl - finding weeds along the way.

"If your love of life is faltering, a weed will certainly set you straight," she writes. "I've seen life sprouting in places I thought it would be impossible to survive. The story of weeds is one of survival, determination and resilience. Their domain in the city may be within the cracks, but cracks are also how the light gets in."

She wants us to remember that. And she wants to remember Stargirl.