Julia Baird found grace in the last place she expected – a hospital while battling cancer-related illness for the fourth time

Julia Baird found something unexpected in the hospital room where she battled a cancer-related illness for the fourth time. It’s something the whole world needs.

Acclaimed broadcaster and best-selling author Julia Baird discovered grace in probably the last place she expected to find it – a hospital room while battling cancer-related illness for the fourth time.

The Drum host’s latest book Bright Shining has been described by critics as just what the world desperately needs now, a guide to seeing “moral beauty” in a society seemingly awash with vitriol.

When she set out to pen the follow-up to her pandemic smash hit Phosphorescence, all about finding the awe in everyday life, Baird concedes she didn’t fully grasp what grace is.

“I think people get it wrong a lot of the time,” Baird said of defining grace. “Or they kind of define it by their absence.”

While tricky to describe, grace is something that people know when they see it, and even though it might feel lacking lately, she said it’s all around.

It’s in the shared acts of forgiveness, generosity and bravery that embody our shared humanity, and Baird portrays the experiences of others, and her own struggles, alongside scientific evidence of the benefits of grace.

It’s certainly something that helped her navigate yet another serious health battle recently.

Julia Baird’s new book has been praised as “what the world needs right now”.

“It was towards the end of last year and I was quite sick and had to have surgery, which was really tough,” Baird said.

She saw it in the selfless acts of care shown endlessly by the health workers tending to dozens of patients around her, and in one nurse who went out of his way to make her laugh.

“On one level, I wanted to rage at the universe, and then on another level I was looking for the quick glimmers of light.”

It was also writing the book that helped her to be “mentally strong” during the turmoil of illness and the “really long recovery” from surgery.

“In the media, we’re really good at portraying the horrors of life but we often miss the things that get people through, which is often buried in the middle of terrible circumstances.

“There can still be humour and there can still be connection, there can be things that hold someone together when everything else is falling apart. That rings true to me, and I think it does to a lot of other people as well.”

Even though it doesn’t seem like it, Julia Baird insists grace is all around us.

Where we’re definitely not seeing much, if any grace is in public institutions, she said.

“We’re seeing leaders who play to our fears and anxieties and insecurities, amplifying what Paul Keating called the darker threads of us instead of the golden threads,” Baird said.

In a political environment where winning, exploiting an opponent’s weaknesses, and building as much political capital as possible are the main priorities, Baird said there’s not much space or time left for grace.

“But in the day to day, and all around us, we see it all the time.

“You see it in aged care homes, you see it in hospitals and in emergency rooms, you see it with teachers, and you see it in neighbours who do decent things for each other.”

Grace can be hard to define but people know it when they see it, Julia says. Picture: Alex Ellinghausen

Australia – and the world – saw a lot of it during the Covid pandemic, with Baird pointing to one poignant example that came out of Brazil.

Two nurses in the city of Sao Carlos created makeshift “hands of love” comprising latex gloves filled with warm water, placed in the hands of seriously ill patients in intensive care.

It was a small way of providing comfort to those who couldn’t be surrounded by loved ones while they fought death.

As well as providing emotional support, it turned out the hands of love had practical health benefits too – preventing cold hands, which can produce false blood oxygen readings on monitoring machines.

Another extraordinary demonstration of grace closer to home was that of Sydney parents Danny and Leila Abdallah, who found forgiveness amid the most devastating circumstances.

Julia Baird hosts The Drum on the ABC.

Their three children, eight-year-old Sienna, Angelina, 12, and Antony, 13, as well as their niece Veronique Sakr, 13, were killed when a ute driven by Samuel William Davidson ploughed into them.

He was drunk and under the influence of drugs.

In the aftermath, the Abdallahs chose to forgive Davidson, which Baird remarked was a stunning show of grace.

Danny and Leila Abdallah chose to forgive the man who killed three of their children and their cousin.

Finding grace and showing grace often requires a certain amount of sacrifice – pushing past one’s feelings or embracing the uncomfortable and the unknown.

“It’s not being sweet and compliant and nice. It’s not fluffy clouds and daisies. I think it’s fundamentally something that’s undeserved and unmerited. It’s mercy – it’s not merit.

“Grace is recognising the humanity of another person, and therefore our own, and understand that we’re all capable of making mistakes and bad decisions.

“It’s about not defining someone by their stuff-ups, which I think we tend to do a lot these days. It’s giving people the benefit of the doubt – not letting them off the hook, not having an absence of justice, but applying a gracious kind of understanding.”

Julia Baird’s last book Phospheresence was an international best-seller.

Baird believes society “100 per cent” needs to find a way to embrace grace for the sake of our survival.

“A divided community and a fractured community is a weaker community.

“If we start to really lack trust in each other, then that is a fundamental fraying of our social fabric. If we shut ourselves off from each other, do we start to believe stereotypes and dislike or distrust each other?

“We’ve simply got to learn to cut each other some slack. That starts with grace.”

Bright Shining by Julia Baird is out now

Originally published as Julia Baird found grace in the last place she expected – a hospital while battling cancer-related illness for the fourth time