Former Crystal Lake pastor offers free grief counseling: ‘Nobody is untouched by grief’

Oakwood Hills resident Lisa Orris has been helping people through loss and pain by providing support groups and retreats through her nonprofit Silver Lake Retreat since 2021. Earlier this year, she reimagined the organization and gave it a new name, Grief Guide, with hopes to make getting help as easy as possible.

“I’m not a grief expert. Nobody wants to be a grief expert,” Orris said. “But I guide people just like how a whitewater raft guide helps you. They’ve been down that river one too many times, as have I.”

Orris served as a pastor at Hope Church in Crystal Lake. In 2015, she was with her family when they learned that her oldest son, Billy, was killed in a motorcycle crash. Since then, she has made it her mission to normalize grief by giving permission and a space to feel pain.

“She has a way to make connections,” said Amanda Nehring, who has worked with Orris at Silver Lake Retreat and Hope Church in Crystal Lake. “Through the loss of Billy, she is able to hold space for other people’s loss.”

For the past eight years, she has hosted Blue Christmas services, the past three years at AROMA Coffee & Wine in downtown Crystal Lake. Orris said that this past year, the event featured standing room only with more than 100 people attending.

Orris was inspired to reenvision her nonprofit when she experienced loss again after her daughter-in-law died unexpectedly last year. She wanted to lower the barriers to getting help by providing free group sessions that don’t need registration.

“I let them have their own journey, their own experience,” she said. “I just take them through support groups to offer guidance and tools and practices to help them through their grief.”

But in order to keep her nonprofit alive, Orris is in need of donations and corporate sponsorships. Donations are accepted at the website mygriefguide.org. Grief Guide can be a tool for companies to help employees through tragedy and loss by coming into organizations with workshops and presentations, Orris said.

“I think, more importantly, it’s just to be able to say your dollar has helped one person get through a one-year cycle of the grief process,” she said.

Grief Guide hosts free sessions at The Other Side, The Break and The Pointe in Crystal Lake, with all times and locations listed on the website. There also are monthly gatherings called Sunday Serenity, Teens Talk Grief and Parenting Through Grief.

“Nobody is untouched by grief,” she said.

Orris hopes her free group grief sessions prevent prolonged grief disorder, also called complicated grief. It was recognized as a disorder by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2022. The disorder is described as intense and prolonged grief that causes problems and interferes with daily life, Orris said. The first six months of tragedy are the most important to get help and often the hardest.

“You’re just not even thinking straight. You don’t want to have to jump through five hoops to get help,” she said.

And the need is there. In about six months, the organization hosts 12 groups and about 50 to 60 people a month. When Orris presented at the People in Need Forum in January at McHenry County College, “the room was packed,” she said.

“That just began to tell me how much pain there is in the world and in people’s lives, but our culture does not allow for it,” Orris said. “We do not give permission for people’s pain, we don’t normalize grief.”

Her goal is to double the number of people served by the end of the year and have daily meeting sessions.