The Grief Toolshed: Baby Bio & a hand fork - a dual-pronged attack

#151.  How can metaphorical Baby Bio and a hand fork help us in 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 hand fork and Baby Bio (given to us by Lis Whybrow, in her Let’s Chat episode about end of life and grief coaching), 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 Lis' full episode, Let’s Chat… End of Life and Grief Coaching, here:
https://www.thesilentwhy.com/podcast/episode/7c8f94d8/lets-chat-end-of-life-and-grief-coaching-with-lis-whybrow

The blog I mention: 'We all have triggers, but did you know you have glimmers too?':
https://www.thesilentwhy.com/post/triggersandglimmers

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 Lis, she was also Loss 25 of 101, talking about the loss of a professional accreditation:
https://www.thesilentwhy.com/podcast/episode/7b4d6c4b/loss-25101-loss-of-a-professional-accreditation-lis-whybrow

Transcript

Welcome To The Grief Tool Shed

Claire 0:00

Hello, I'm Claire, and 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 fifth tool that I was given to add to my shed? Let's go and find out. Come with me into my tool shed.

Lis 0:43

One was Baby Bio, which isn't really a tool at all. And there was also, I think I ended up with a little handheld fork.

Claire 0:53

Baby Bio and a handheld fork. Two tools.

Meeting Liz And The Two Tools

Claire 0:57

Yes, in this Let's Chat episode I spoke to Lis Whybrow about end-of-life care and grief coaching. We explored the difference between coaching and counselling, fear of death, how coaching can help when facing family death or loss, either for yourself or for friends and family. What is a death dooler? And what does a coaching session actually look like? Plus lots more. And at the end of the episode I asked her what tool she would like to add to my metaphorical tool shed that could help other people going through loss. And she wanted to add baby bio and a handheld fork. Two tools, for two subject areas, I guess. Perfect.

What Baby Bio Really Does

Claire 1:32

So I did a Google to see if Baby Bio was something that people outside of the UK would be aware of, and apparently it is an international brand, so that's good. It's actually renowned as the UK's number one houseplant care brand with a 70 year history. If you're struggling to picture it, it's got a traditional black bottle kind of bulbous at the bottom with a thin neck and a yellow ribbon wrapped around it, and there's a flower kind of rosette type logo on it. You'll picture it if you've seen it. But what is it? Well, Baby Bio is a liquid plant fertilizer that's used to improve the overall health and appearance of indoor plants, but also to support healthy ones through their life cycle. Gardeners, and those of us who just try to fight to keep houseplants alive, use Baby Bio to nourish all kinds of everyday houseplants. And what is in this magic black-looking potion? Well, all the kind of nummy things that plants love. There's nitrogen for healthy bright green foliage, phosphorus to build and strengthen roots, potassium to encourage vibrant blooms and fruit and to fight against disease. And yes, I did have to Google all that, I didn't just know it off the top of my head. So there you have it.

Why A Hand Fork Matters

Claire 2:40

And then we've got a hand fork. Well, hopefully you can picture one of these. If you can't, what planet have you been living on? But if you are still struggling, think of a very squat, very fat, normal fork with three prongs. Actually, I think officially they're called tines on a fork. It's the kind of handy little thing that's perfect for breaking up compacted soil around shrubs and plants. It's actually probably one of the first gardening tools most people have. It's often paired with the trowel, they're your classic little gardening partnership. It's a small, indispensable garden tool that, according to the internet, is used for cultivating, weeding, loosening, and aerating soil in tight spaces. Its three to four sturdy tines make it ideal for breaking up compacted soil, breaking up stubborn soil clumps, and lifting weeds by their roots. Key uses of a hand fork might be weeding, so it's highly effective at getting underneath weeds to remove them completely, including the root, which prevents them regrowing. The cultivating and aerating breaks up soil around plants and shrubs, which allows for better air, water and nutrients circulating to the roots. Planting, you can use it for prepping small holes and loosening soil for new plants and transplanting seedlings. Soil preparation, ideal for mixing compost fertiliser or other amendments into the soil. And tidying, useful for levelling soil around borders and removing debris. And if you've ever done anything like this with a hand fork, then maybe, like me, you can actually hear the noise of a fork brushing over soil to level it up. I just feel like I can hear that. Hand forks are typically made of stainless steel or carbon steel for durability and can be found with specialised features like comfortable grips or lightweight materials for easier handling. And in my experience, they often bend really easily in an annoying way if you use them in soil that is too hard. So all of mine are slightly leaning back at a weird angle.

Pulling Up Griefweeds Early

Claire 4:27

So how do these two tools help us with grief? Well, how I'm expanding on them is actually very similar to how Liz initially added them to the tool shed. And I'm summing it up like this. The hand fork is used to help us clear, the baby bio is used to bring us cheer. Yeah, you like that, don't you? Bit of rhyming. And it works out so well that both of these tools came together. The hand fork is the chunky squat tool that we can use to clear things away that are not helpful, like weeds. Or in our grief metaphor, let's call them griefweeds. I really wanted to mesh those words together to make one core word, but it just makes the word greeds, and that's already a word. And I'm really not sure that weefs is going to do it somehow, so griefweeds. So gardeners are always pulling up weeds in their gardens. But why are they doing that? It's because they want to stop unwanted plants from stealing vital water, sunlight, and soil nutrients from other, more expensive, probably carefully placed plants. They also want to get them early. They want to get those weeds before they settle down and root and spread. There's probably many other reasons as well, depending on the specific plant you're protecting and the weed that's encroaching on it, but I am not going to go into more detail here. Mainly because I can't. And pulling up a weed before it takes root can be vital in our lives as well. So what might these weeds be? Well that's fun to say. Weeds be. So what might these weeds be? It might be an unhealthy emotion, a feeling or a thought, or it might be a habit, might be a relationship or a personality trait. There are many things, but stopping them early if we recognise that they are stealing life and energy from other good things is vital. For example, having a glass of wine to cope with something a bit difficult might feel like a harmless thing to do. But if this becomes a habit, and you notice it's stealing time, energy and focus away from other healthier things, then it is best to rip out that wine weed let's try that again, then it's best to rip out that wine weed sharpish. Because the end of that road for some people could be an addiction to alcohol. What about starting a relationship with someone that you know is not a good person, where you know that they are taking away good parts of you or damaging you in some way? That's another weed you might want to kill off quickly. Not literally, of course, but ending that relationship before it leads to something more poisonous or abusive is definitely a good thing to do. In grief, it might be a coping habit that we've developed, or it might just be an unhealthy emotion that we're feeding, like anger, unforgiveness or hate. Emotions that steal from things that want to feed us, like joy, love and peace. Every now and then we need to take stock of our grief garden. What weeds are starting to settle that need to be uprooted in your life? What has already taken root that we might actually need bigger tools to get rid of, but that's for another episode. Clearing unwanted or unhealthy things from our life is vital before we plant new things, while we're tending to growing things, and when we're clearing the soil after things have died. So what small weeds have started to take root in your life, or your grief? What do you do or rely on that you know is not healthy or is stealing from other more healthy things? I've found that with the grief of childlessness, I've had to battle hard to not let bitterness take seed. That weed is constantly trying to nestle into the soil and start to grow, and it's a constant task to spot it and rip it out. What does this look like in real life? Well, it's catching those thoughts that you know aren't healthy, and stopping your mind from ruminating on them or developing them further. For example, I'm less interesting or valuable or successful because I'm not a mother. I missed out on something really special as a woman by not giving birth. Now that one might be true, but it has the potential to become bitter if I dwell on it in the wrong way. Yes, grieve it, but don't let it taint your world of yourself or others in a bad way. Other people will never understand how lonely it is to be a woman without children. This could very quickly isolate you, and believing this discounts all the lovely people that do understand and want to help you get through that. These sorts of thoughts need to be uprooted the minute they settle, or they lead to a very bitter, angry woman who isolates herself from society with the assumption that no one understands and everyone else is just having a great time. They're dangerous thoughts and most of them aren't true. So grab that fat fork and fling them into the compost pile immediately. Although apparently you're not supposed to put weeds straight in the compost pile because then they root in the compost pile, but anyway, let's just, for the purpose of this, put them on the compost pile. And sometimes you need to sift through what you pull up. It's complicated with grief, and among those weeds there might be bits of grief that you need to grieve, but also uproot. Like I said earlier, it might be true that I missed out on something special by not giving birth to our children. It's not a healthy thing for me to dwell on, but it does need to be grieved. And it's important to work out for yourself what you might need to grieve while you're uprooting things. So the fork clears the way for us to have a new, healthy patch of soil that we can plant new things into. But it also helps us protect the things we've already planted and not let the weeds take vital resources from them so they suffer. For example, if you've worked hard to have a healthy family dynamic, and this plant is doing really well. It's weathered some storms, but right now it's looking healthy. And then you hit a really hard patch at work, and you reach for the gin or the chocolate or whatever. What might that weed look like if it starts to take root or if it becomes an addiction? Chances are it's going to start to affect the healthy plant that you had, your family. That's why we take out weeds quickly near healthy plants to protect them.

Glimmers That Feed The Nervous System

Claire 10:04

But what about the baby bio? Well, once we had some healthy plants growing, and that might be a family, a marriage, your work, friendships, health, etc., we need to protect that. But we often need to do a bit of feeding as well, to keep it strong against things that might seek to affect them. I did a blog a little while ago now called We've All Got Triggers, but did you know that you have glimmers too? I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to listen to it in full. In the blog it goes into more detail on Deb Danner and her book Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, as much as I could on a topic like that, but one of the chapters in her book is called The Triggers and Glimmers Map. Of course, the internet has taken glimmers and made it into a thing without any context of where it originated, but we're going to park that for now. Her book refers to glimmers as small moments when our biology is in a place of connection or regulation, which cues our nervous system to feel safe or calm. She says in the book, we're not talking great big expansive experiences of joy or safety or connection. These are micro moments that begin to shape our system in a very gentle way. You feel something happen inside. There's an energy that happens around a glimmer, and then your brain then marks it as well. And these glimmers can be found in many different places and senses. Some examples might be a smile from another person, or a recognizable and loved voice. In nature it could be plants, trees, stars, beaches, mountains, soft breezes, warm sunshine, the stars, again, or the moon. Animals, pets, watching wild animals, connection or comfort through furry fellas around us. Maybe music, a song, a tune of something you love or connect with, church bells, musicians or something on the radio. They're all pretty unique to us, and occasionally I'll post on my Instagram story a glimmer that I found in my day. Anyway, back to my baby bio. I think baby bio, which is a small drop of something that helps plants flourish, is like a glimmer in our lives. It's a small shot of something that helps us smile, and that can actually turn into something that's not so small after all. A true smile or a hug from a friend when you're in the middle of grief or a bad day can be everything. So yes, baby bio helps plants grow stronger, but I think as humans, glimmers are what make us flourish. You'll all know the feeling of being in a hard place, but then something small and wonderful happens. And I could give you lots of examples, but the chances are only you are gonna know what consists of a glimmer to you. Sometimes it's unexpected. Sometimes it's something we've sought out. Sometimes it's something that others have sought out to give us. Sometimes it's divine and supernatural, sometimes it's just a basic aspect of nature, or someone else's human nature. But I'm gonna say something that I feel like I bang on about in everything I do. You might even know what I'm about to say if you've been listening for long enough. Maybe you could say it with me. It's three words. It's a just hit my headphones. Let's start again, I'll give you more time to think of it. It's a choice. As with everything, there's a choice to let these glimmers in, to choose to look for them, to find them, or allow them to bring you joy and hope. Adding baby bio to a plant is a choice. It costs money, it takes time, it takes planning, and then it blesses the plant. Allowing yourself to feel, know, and see glimmers around you, it takes time. It costs you putting other stuff aside sometimes, maybe hurtful stuff that you've been dealing with or sadness. It involves not looking at the world through black tinted glasses. Although I suppose they would be sunglasses which aren't that bad, but you know what I mean. Sometimes we're at a place in life, especially in grief, where we don't want to see the good because it hurts. Because it highlights what we don't have, because it highlights what those we've lost can't have. It's so easy to then live a life that is devoid of love, joy, peace, and glimmers because of that which is really sad. But that is also a choice. Everyone we've spoken to on the podcast has made a choice to allow hope into their lives or back into their lives. No one has really just said they always had hope, it never wavered, and it always just returned. It wasn't always easy to accept hope, or to choose to allow hope back into their lives, especially after grief. At the right time, and that's not always straight away, we need to make time to look at the landscape of our grief, work out what weeds need to be pulled up, and choose to see that there is good out there. Choose to believe that life will get better, that spring will always come. Hope is always possible, and that love, even though it's often at the root of the worst pain that we can go through, is always worth fighting for.

Choosing Hope And Listening Next

Claire 14:53

To listen to the full Let's Chat episode with Lis, click on the link in the show notes or go to our website, www.thesilentwhy.com, and click on Let's Chat to listen to any of our Let's Chat episodes in full. 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 work through grief.