The Grief Toolshed: Telescopic Tree Pruner - find your sharp people

#148.  How can a metaphorical telescopic tree pruner help us with grief? Let's find out.

This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around grief, asking if hope can be found in 101 different types of permanent loss.

Welcome to my brand-new series of episodes - The Grief Toolshed.

In this series, I’m visiting the garden tools shared by our Let’s Chat guests (from my metaphorical toolshed) and turning them into practical, supportive tools we can use when we face grief. One per episode. Together, we’ll unpack them and explore how to actually use them when grief shows up.

And in this episode, I’m looking at how a tree pruner (given to us by Jared Altic, in his Let’s Chat episode about being a Police Chaplain, can help us prepare for, and get through, grief.

Think of it as building your own toolkit - ready for whenever you need it most.

Listen to Jared's full episode, Let’s Chat… Police Chaplains, here:
https://www.thesilentwhy.com/podcast/episode/79748b98/lets-chat-police-chaplains-with-jared-altic

If all this is new to you, and you have no idea what’s going on, listen to the episode I put out introducing this new series, ‘Introducing… The Grief Toolshed’:
https://www.thesilentwhy.com/podcast/episode/7dad62e8/introducing-the-grief-toolshed

If you want to hear more from Jared, he was also Loss 56 of 101, talking about dealing with loss, grief and death daily in his role as a Police Chaplain:
https://www.thesilentwhy.com/podcast/episode/4b8bb873/loss-2101-loss-of-both-parents-to-dementia-katie-elliott

Plus, he has a fantastic podcast called 'Hey, Chaplain': https://heychaplain.buzzsprout.com/

Transcript

Welcome To The Grief Tool Shed

Claire 0:00

Hello, I'm Claire. This is the Silent Why Podcast, exploring all kinds of grief and loss, and welcome to my metaphorical tool shed, where I'm exploring the tools that my Let's Chat guests have shared with us over the last few years to help us navigate grief. If you're not sure what any of that means, then check out my Introduction to the Grief Tool Shed episode for a full explanation of this series. So, what was the fourth tool that I was given to add to my shed? Let's go and find out. Come with me into my tool shed.

Jared 0:55

I want to suggest my favourite tool, my favourite tool is a tree pruner, it's a cutting mechanism at the end of a long pole, usually a long telescoping pole.

Humans Aren’t Naturally Healthy

Reaching What You Can’t See

Find Sharp People For Help

When Grief Hides As Guilt

Don’t Stop The Tears Too Soon

Prune To Bloom And Harvest Fruit

Questions To Ask Yourself

Listen To The Full Let’s Chat

Claire 0:58

A telescopic tree pruner. Yes, in this Let's Chat episode, I spoke to Jared Altic about what it's like working as a police chaplain. Jared has 25 years of experience serving and counselling military and law enforcement families and working with police in areas of wellness. And he's not only a voluntary police chaplain at his local police department in Kansas City, but also a full-time pastor. And we explored all the types of situations a police chaplain might be able to help with, why it's important to have chaplains in a job like this, and what Jared has had to put in place himself to avoid compassion fatigue. And at the end of the episode I asked him what tool he wants to add to my metaphorical tool shed that could help others going through loss, and he wanted to add a telescopic tree pruner. Another very practical tool for my shed. So let's see how this tool can help us with our grief work. So, tree pruners. Now, if you're not a gardener, you may have heard of pruners and be picturing something like a giant pair of scissors at this point. But Jared spoke specifically about tree pruners, which are a little different. Tree pruners can take different shapes, as Jared mentioned, so I pootled on over to Google to find out how many types of these things there are. The amount of useless gardening information that I'm gathering and sharing with you during this series is rapidly mounting. The first thing I found out is that they can also be called pole pruners, and they can be anything from 6 to 18 feet long. And in very basic terms there are two different types, one with a rope and a pulley system that operates a cutting mechanism, a kind of a saw, and then the electric-powered ones. And they're basically designed to help you safely cut and trim high, hard-to-reach branches, and twigs and foliage on trees, because you can use them while safely standing on the ground, rather than precariously balancing on a ladder. Although I'm sure there are some daredevils amongst you that have tried to use both. So why would you use them? And at this point I just want to stop to say that I am painfully aware that one of our most faithful listeners and supporters of the podcast is a professional gardener who works at places like the Chelsea Flower Show. So, John, please forgive me for any wrong information I convey during this or any of my episodes and any analogies that I miss. So, back to it. Why would you use these kinds of tree pruners? Well, safety. You're on the ground, you're not climbing a tree with a giant pair of scissors. You can improve the tree health. You keep trees healthy when you remove diseased or overcrowded branches, because it can improve how the sunlight comes through and air circulation. Shape and control. Apparently it's essential for shaping young trees and controlling growth to keep them structurally sound. Plus, it helps you reach deeper into thorny bushes. And I know from watching my husband at our last churchyard gardening tidy up event, that if one of these contraptions is in the vicinity of a male, there is a high chance they're itching to have a go with it. Such a powerful feeling is to be had from chopping branches fifteen feet in the air, apparently. Now, in the Let's Chat episode, Jared said this was one of his favourite tools, and that he'd learnt the importance of taking care of tall, mature trees on his property from his dad. He said that often trees get broken branches or diseased branches, which become dangerous to anyone under the tree. So you have to carefully remove them, making sure to jump out of the way yourself when it falls. And he felt that's what it was like being a chaplain. He helped people identify problems they might not have seen yet to help them sort them out. Hopefully, while it's still small and before it gets too big or someone gets hurt. Then he said something that immediately stood out to me for this episode. Trees aren't just naturally healthy. And that made me stop and think. And I'm going to use that today as a heading for helping us in grief. Because humans aren't naturally healthy. If you could name a human that is naturally healthy in every aspect, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I would probably give you a doubtful narrowing of the eyes and move on with the conversation. Don't get me wrong, it's possible to be healthy in all those areas at once. But I would argue not naturally. Because we all face things like setbacks, grief, pain, frustration, abuse, illness, betrayal, and the rest of a very long list, and all of those things leave a mark. All of those things shape us into who we are, and they can either shape us in a healthy way or in an unhealthy way. And in my experience, to let them shape you in a healthy way takes a lot of work, and experience, knowledge, perseverance, counselling, understanding, self-help, self-work, self-awareness, and many, many other things. Humans aren't naturally healthy. We have to work at it. There will always be things that need to be chopped out, pruned, reworked, reshaped, seen from a different angle. And just when we get one area sussed, something else is going to come along to start the process all over again in a different area. Grief itself is a natural, healthy thing, but it doesn't mean we are going to deal with it in a healthy way, or that our reaction to it is going to be healthy. It would be lovely if it was. But life isn't that simple, boys and girls. So how can a metaphorical tree pruner help us in our grief? Well, it's not a common everyday kind of tool, so I think it's there to help us with issues that aren't your everyday kind of issues. It's not like weeding where you can just do it every day. This is more specialized, and sometimes in life and in grief, we need something more specialized. In this instance, what needs to be pruned is hard to reach. Therefore, the usual pruners that we have in our sheds probably aren't going to be able to help us with this. We might not be able to see what needs fixing, but even if we can see it just about, it doesn't mean even with the right tool we necessarily know how to go about sorting the problem. So we're gonna need special tools outside of ourselves to help us get to these issues. And that's where chaplains, counsellors, therapists, friends, maybe even family can help. They can be the long pole on our pruners. A tree can't see for itself what needs to be chopped down, because it's very hard to see what needs to be done to a tree without standing back and taking in the whole tree. Which a tree can't do for itself. And I'd argue that maybe humans can't either. So we often need help. Or poles. Not Polish people, but something that helps us reach what we can't see as a problem and what we can't reach. Someone from the outside can see the whole shape of us, not just the issue that we're struggling with in that moment, but also the situations and environments that we're in, work, family, friends, relationships, things we're going through, dealing with and not dealing with. Only when you can see the whole tree or person can you truly see what might need to be pruned or dealt with. You can also see if the tree can cope with it. If 80% of the branches are broken, you might have to reassess whether the tree could cope with losing all that in one go or maybe do it in stages. You can also see if you need to remove other healthy branches to balance the shape of the tree. These are all things a tree can't do on its own, and we can't either. Sometimes we need people outside of ourselves to help us identify what might be looking a bit damaged, dead, or diseased in our life. Apparently that's what you're trying to get rid of when you're trimming a healthy tree, you're getting rid of the three Ds, dead, diseased and damaged branches. So what do we need to prune a tree? Let's see what the Royal Horticultural Society website advises. Firstly, it says you need sharp blades and the right tools. It's no good hacking at a branch with blunt blades or trying to poke the tree with a hoe. You'll either do nothing, make a fool of yourself, or make the situation a whole lot worse. For us in grief, this means you need to make sure you find the right people to help you. Not just any people, sharp people. The right people. People who are switched on, who either know us really well or have the skills, experience, or training to deal with this kind of thing. I think we all know the pain of chatting to someone about something we really need help with. It's deep, it's hard to reach. Only to find that the person we're talking to responds in a way that hurts us more, minimizes what we're experiencing, or doesn't know how to help us and just changes the subject. In this situation, it's a bit like someone coming at a tree with completely the wrong tools or blunt instruments, and waving them around all over the place, probably not even touching the stuff that needs work and maybe actually damaging the good growth instead. We need to be wise, we need sharp people who have the right tools. Especially if we're going to deal with some of those more hard-to-reach issues that we need help with. Don't let blunt people cut your branches. I might sell that as a motivational poster. What else do we need to prune a tree? You need an idea of what you're trying to achieve. If you don't know what you want to achieve, then you're probably not in a good place to start chopping away at things. The same is true in life. You don't want to go messing around with things for the fun of it. You need to be strategic in what you want to identify and deal with in your life. And be in a place to deal with whatever comes up. If you go for therapy, hopefully you're going because you want to achieve some breakthroughs and tackle some things you're struggling with or stuck in. There's no point going if every week you're just going to say, I don't know, and disengage with the session. You need to know what you want to achieve and be willing to work towards it. The next step in tree pruning, once you have all the right tools, sharp blades, idea of what you want to achieve, get to work. Make sure you're in a safe place. This is both important for not getting squashed by a tree branch and for opening up the bigger issues in your life as a human. And then you can start to cut out the things that you've identified need to go. And this isn't easy work, in both the tree and the human way. This is why you need wise, skilled, experienced, sharp people with you. Because opening up issues that are a bit further from the surface are usually deeper or higher for a reason. If we've pushed things further away, we've probably done that for a reason. Maybe we're worried about something. The pain, the memory, the trauma, the effect on us. It could be many things. And as these issues come closer, it can be scary. But again, that's what the professional is for. Not only do they help you see it, reach it, and bring it down, but they can also help you break it into smaller pieces and show you how to dispose of it eventually. Or start to at least. Then the last step in the tree pruning process, which might take minutes or hours for the tree, but could be years or decades for the human, is to stand back and assess. Take a look at your handiwork, appreciate the beauty of what pruning can do to encourage new growth and see the sun or maybe the hope shining through the branches. Feel proud of yourself. Pat yourself on the back or on the head, or pat your sharp person on the head, maybe get their permission first, or buy them a poster that says, Don't let blunt people cut your branches. That'll confuse them. In Howard Moss's poem The Pruned Tree, he said this. "Sean" [Okay, that's not a boy's name, it's S-H-O-R-N. So I'll start again.] "Shorn, I rejoice in what was taken from me". But what could this actually look like in a real situation? Let's say someone you loved very much died. And attached to the death is a guilt of some kind that you've pushed way, way into the back of your mind, because it's too painful. In fact, you don't even recognise it as guilt anymore. Over time you realize that life is starting to suffer in certain areas. Maybe you've distanced yourself from those that knew that person that you lost. Maybe you don't get close to people anymore, or you've put up barriers. You've changed into a more detached person. And either you recognize this and want to change, or someone you trust has pointed it out to you. So you decide to do something about it, but you're not sure where to start. So you book in for some therapy or counselling. You find someone you like that you connect with and feel safe with. After a few sessions, the topic of the death of your loved one comes up and the therapist notices the guilt. This is where someone is seeing you as that whole tree, and they spot a diseased branch deep in the middle high up that's causing other issues in your life now. And maybe you can't recognise it or see it. You can't see what they can see, but they have the tools to help you deal with it. And you decide to let them. Over time that branch will be looked at, assessed, named, explained, and as you see where and how it's connected to you, the damage it's done or is doing and could do to others, you allow the therapist to start to use their sharp tools to help to remove it with you. You see, for some things, a specialist is needed or a special tool. And when you engage one of those, the benefit to you as a whole and to others and to your relationships and your grief can be huge. It allows you to start to heal, change, and grow, and suddenly you feel able to let go of things that maybe you were keeping hold of that weren't good, that were damaging you. And this is how a long polled therapist can help you. I saw another point about pruning trees. It said that if pruning ends up with the tree bleeding sap, this is what it said, quote, don't bandage or bind the cut, as attempts to stop the bleeding are likely to be unsuccessful and may impede, rather than aid, healing. I think the same is true with us as well. Sometimes digging into a subject that's been out of reach for a while can cause us to bleed. Hopefully not literally, but it opens up the way for other things to pour out, one of which might be more grief, or a different grief. It also probably opens the floodgates for tears. Cutting something out that has been there for a while can be painful. It can hurt more. But if it does make you bleed other things, if it does cause you tears, I want us to use the advice of the tree people. Don't bandage it too quickly to stop the flow. Because as the tree website said, it might just impede the healing. Tears are healing. Whether you like crying or not, there is definitely something special that happens when we allow ourselves to do it. It's the strangest thing really. It's water coming out of our eyes in a way that doesn't really happen for any other reason. But how beautiful is it that we have a way to show sadness. It's not just a head hung low or a downturned mouth, we have this wonderful way to express grief. So don't ever be ashamed of it or stop it. And I'm telling this to myself as a British person as much as anybody else. When we cry, we self-soothe. It's such an important part of life, such an important part of parenting, allowing children to learn this vital skill. Humans need to be able to self-soothe. People aren't going to come in and sort your problems for you all the time. Someone isn't always there to soothe you. We have to learn to self-soothe. Crying also relieves pain and stress. It can enhance mood, and it has many other benefits that I'm sure might all have something to do with releasing good hormones. So if you reach the place of crying, of more sadness, don't stop the work and don't stop the tears. Tree pruners are used to manage tree height, to improve the structural health, to remove dead wood, and to harvest fruit. Pruning in our life is very similar. We can manage how the big things are getting in our life by pruning, especially if it's not a good thing, like maybe an overinflated ego or confidence. Or maybe just a giant hairstyle that's not practical for getting through doors. We can also improve the structural health of ourselves, because once bad stuff is removed, it allows other things to flourish. It's so important to remove dead wood, the things that we're carrying around that are weighing us down that need to go. Keynote speaker Susan C. Young said, "you must prune to bloom. If the dead weight is not pruned and removed, it compromises the quality, performance, and output of the vine". Plus, harvesting fruit. Initially, I had no idea how this fits in as a human, but then I thought, hang on, sometimes we're not good at seeing the own fruit in our own lives. And I don't think trees probably are either. So if you've got someone sharp, wise and skilled helping you with things, as well as helping you to remove stuff, they might also be great at pointing out the fruit in your life that you haven't seen. And they can help you harvest it, use it, nourish it, celebrate it. Someone once said to me when I was wondering if there was any fruit in some of the things I was doing, of course there is. Although often trees can't see their own fruit. So what areas of your life are a bit damaged right now? What are you carrying around that you shouldn't be? What are you struggling to cope with? Or what areas are you struggling to cope in? What are you not facing that you need to? What is there in your branches that shouldn't be there, but you don't know how to deal with it? My advice, if any of this sounds like something you need to address, is to find someone to help you do it. Find the big polled people, the wise ones with the sharp tools, the sharp people, and start to make some changes. I really guarantee you you won't regret it. And don't forget, don't let blunt people cut your branches. If you want to listen to the full Let's Chat episode with Jared, just click on the link in the show notes or go to our website, www.silentwhy.com, and click on Let's Chat, and you can listen to any of our Let's Chat episodes. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you've got something useful from this episode, and I'll see you in the tool shed next time for our next tool to help us through grief.