BY ALLISON LEE
I came across Grace Olson for the first time when I watched The Yorkshire Vet, Channel 5’s documentary series that follows the lives and work of veterinary teams in Yorkshire, as they treat a wide variety of animals in both rural and urban settings, and I was immediately interested in her work as a sheep therapist.
Grace is trained in deep tissue massage and lymphatic drainage which is a specific treatment for removing excess tissue fluid. This treatment can benefit people with cancer so Grace was very lucky to get lots of referrals from oncologists when she first started her venture into animal therapy. Grace tells me that her work grew to be very focussed on terminally ill people which was very rewarding and, she says, it helped to grow her as a person.
When Grace had her daughter, she suffered from prolonged post-natal depression and decided to take up horse riding again, a pastime she had enjoyed as a teenager. Grace explained how horse riding helped her enormously and she ended up having a session of equine assisted therapy which, she says, was incredible. Watching how the facilitator and her horses uncovered and released deep-rooted negative belief patterns, helped Grace with her own depression and enabled her to start to feel genuinely happy. Grace’s experience led her to gain her own qualification in equine facilitated coaching and she subsequently got her own horse, shared a field with friends and set up to do equine therapy.
However, it was when a friend asked her if she would take on a couple of bottle-fed lambs that things started to change. Grace knew that the sheep would be a benefit to have around as they would eat the weeds and help to reduce the worm burden of horse pastures. However, she didn’t bargain for how friendly they would be and, she says, she loved them instantly.
It was during one of Grace’s therapy sessions with a very depressed lady that the sheep chose to get involved and Grace says it was eye-opening to see, how just being with a sheep, helped this lady to laugh. Over the course of a few sessions with various people, Merlin the lamb kept choosing to be involved with the therapy, and Grace began to realise that he knew what he was doing. Merlin knew that his presence was cheering people up.
By this time, Grace had ended up with a few more sheep and so, over time, she has been able to observe what they do and she told me she has come to the following conclusions:
- Sheep are either eating or chewing the cud which means that their parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is active. Even if something scares them, they quickly recover and return to grazing or digesting. The PNS is what helps all animals to feel calm and relaxed.
- All animals (including humans) have mirror neurones in their brains which do as the title suggests – they mirror. So, if we are interacting with someone or with an animal that is authentically relaxed, we will go into the same mode and then our PNS will trigger deep relaxation. Grace uses the word ‘authentic’ because, she says, ‘humans can fake being relaxed but if they aren’t truly relaxed, they will still be emitting stress hormones. Sheep and horses never lie. They are on the inside, what they present on the outside.’
Grace’s passion for what she does is obvious when listening to her story but it is not without sadness. Working with terminally ill people brings new challenges and Grace feels the grief enormously when someone passes, however she enjoys helping others and her work makes her feel truly happy.
Grace told me she loves seeing how just cuddling the sheep can help people to feel calm enough to be able to think clearly about what they need to say and do in order to improve their lives. ‘They bring such joy to so many people experiencing a wide range of issues,’ she says.
Grace explained that years ago she felt that it was her duty to do as much as possible to help people to get well and that she ‘felt a failure each time someone passed away.’ With time, however, Grace has found the wisdom to realise that it is not her role to ‘save’ anyone however, what she can do is ‘help them find the place that resides within us all that is always at peace, regardless of what is happening physically.’ Fundamentally, this is what Grace considers to be the key to a successful life – being able to face our hardships with inner calm so that when it’s time to pass away we can float away with a smile instead of clinging on with fear, and I absolutely love her philosophy.
Grace does form deep bonds with the people she works with and she tells me she does cry each time someone passes, however she can be content that she has brought them a small degree of comfort and this is what matters to her the most.
Grace has a drive and passion which is obvious to anyone who knows her story. She uses this drive and passion in her therapy and it also served her well when, after writing a blog during lockdown to cheer people up, she ventured further afield and started to write her memoir, following her own journey about how she got back into the saddle. This resulted in her first book and, The Yard – How A Horse Healed My Heart, was born. Despite the book being rejected by every publisher she sent it too, she didn’t give up and, with true Yorkshire grit, she decided to self publish – something, she admits, was a scary but, ultimately brilliant, decision when the book sold out on the first day of publication and reached number 1 on Amazon – one in the eye for all those rejections she received!
Grace’s publishing success has led her to continue writing and she now has two further memoir-novels about how horses can help to health mental health issues, along with a four part series of sheep themed children’s fables specifically written to empower young minds. Grace’s stories instill values of empathy, self confidence, positive thinking and unity, wrapped up in beautifully illustrated tales.
Grace tells me that her ultimate wish is that one day she will be able to afford her own land and set up a therapy farm to help terminally ill people for free, if they don’t have enough money to pay. Grace explained that she ‘wishes that my books would sell in their millions so that they can be my income to fund this dream! I honestly believe my novels would make a great TV series which would then help me to fund my passion. So, if any scriptwriters are reading maybe they can help!’
Grace has already enjoyed some ‘fame’ on Channel 5’s The Yorkshire Vet, where she has featured with her sheep, Merlin, along with vet, Julian Norton and, she tells me there are a couple of lovely features coming up soon in the next series which should make a lot of people smile. The show also filmed the book launch of Grace’s first children’s book, for which she says she is extremely lucky, and very grateful.
For more information about Grace and her books you can contact her on https://www.graceolsonauthor.com/