Life Coach, Facilitator, Author, fiction
Nandini Murali, PhD; is a person with diverse professional interests and engagements. She is an author, columnist, independent researcher in Indic Studies, certified life coach, mental health promotion and suicide prevention activist, and a communications and gender and diversity professional. She compiled, translated and edited the world’s first signature edition of the Bhagavad Gita.
Her areas of professional interests include LGBTQIA+ issues, mental health, resilience and well-being, trauma literacy and education, suicide prevention and postvention interventions for survivors of suicide loss, sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), gender, masculinities, and gender-based violence (GBV). She has developed a set of 12 life skills module for LGBTQIA+ youth and affirmative approaches to counselling LGBTQIA+ clients: A resource manual for counsellors.
Her lived experience of suicide loss, inspired her to establish SPEAK, an initiative of MS Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation, Madurai, to change conversations on suicide and promote mental health. An ardent advocate of building and fostering resilience, she, and Kate Keisel, US-based trauma therapist, have launched Bounce Forward, a cross cultural coalition led by individuals with lived experiences that works towards a radical global change in healing of trauma and fostering of resilience.
Passionate about wildlife photography, she likes nothing better than wandering through the forests with her camera. Eager to share her love for the wild with young people, she initiated Voices of the Wild, a group of Madurai-based school children, who discover nature and conservation through wild life photography. @terravyoma
“Until suicide happened to my life, I was immune to it. I was limited to news. One dear friend of mine committed suicide whose family refused to talk. I refuse to play victimhood mindset. I work with the marginalized community and LGBTQ labourers. I saw their pain closely. That's why I am very aversive about this victimhood. The question "why me?" must reverse to "Why not me?". I can’t control the situation around the suicide of my husband. I was not responsible, but I could control how I would react. The transformation didn't happen overnight. I felt very vulnerable, but for me, it was strength. My journey was to owe my venerability and explore my strength. The book's name came from an incident when I was wandering around the seashore of the southern village; a fisherman came to me and gave me oysters that have pearls. It inspires me to be on the shore. Pearls come from oysters' irritation, and that's how life works for us. Pearls of wisdom that I have gained were very transformative. I have been interested in writing since childhood, so writing was never a challenge for me. After the tragic incident, my uncle encouraged me to write, and I started a journal where I wrote whatever came to mind.”