Lisa Orris is a Covenant pastor whose story has been profoundly shaped by tragic loss, including the death of her son Billy in a motorcycle accident at age 26. Through her book, Never Apologize for Your Tears: One Woman’s Mission to Make Grief Normal, and the Grief Guide resource, she hopes to help people rethink how they understand and respond to grief. The Companion spoke with her about her journey and what she has learned about accompanying others through loss. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you tell us why you felt it was necessary to write this book and create the Grief Guide?
I’ve been in ministry for twenty years. When you experience tragedy and grief the way I have, the way you navigate it inevitably shapes how you understand God. For too long, the church has often defaulted to easy spiritual answers and familiar phrases that, while well-intentioned, may not always meet people in the depths of their pain. We sometimes reach too quickly for explanations when what people most need is presence.
Was there one definitive moment where you thought, “Something has to change”?
I remember being told, in subtle ways, “Lisa, this is going to make you a stronger person. This is going to make you a better pastor.” At the time, my honest reaction was, “I don’t care. I don’t want to be a better pastor.”
That experience set me on a different kind of journey. In the church, we sometimes carry an assumption that suffering must immediately produce growth, perseverance, or character. While those themes are certainly present in Scripture, grief does not always unfold that neatly in lived experience.
Over time, I found myself pushing back against the pressure to quickly assign meaning or purpose to pain. Many grieving people are not asking, “What lesson should I learn from this?” They are simply trying to survive what feels unbearable. The expectation that something redemptive must be extracted from loss can sometimes add another layer of burden.
What made more sense to me was recognizing that wounds do not need to be justified to be real. In Scripture, Jesus’s wounds are not explained away; they are carried, revealed, and ultimately transformed. If my own pain could be understood not as something to solve but as something to move through, that framing felt more faithful to the experience of grief.
You talk about making grief normal. What are some hallmarks of a community where grief is normal?
People who normalize grief are comfortable being around it. It becomes less about pressure to “get better” and more about a steady presence. A grief-informed community resists the urge to fix, advise, or prescribe solutions. Instead, there is an understanding that grief unfolds differently for each person.
There is also an awareness that grief does not follow a predictable timeline. It’s not, “It’s been a year. You’re doing better now, right?” It takes as long as it takes.
We can also run into problems when we try to fit everyone into tidy frameworks like the five stages of grief. Those models can be helpful, but they can also unintentionally suggest a form of progress or achievement. When people don’t fit neatly into those patterns, they may feel as though they are grieving incorrectly.
We often like to measure, quantify, and optimize, but grief does not operate according to those systems. It takes time to rebuild a sense of life, and there is rarely a clear marker for when that work is complete.
Each chapter of your book ends with spiritual practices or questions for the reader. What was your process for identifying these practices?
The practices emerged from my own journey. I attended many retreats, and a number of these practices were new to me at the time. Over the years, they became meaningful rhythms that helped ground me. I wanted to offer readers practical tools they could return to when words or clarity felt out of reach.
One of my favorites is called “Not Forsaken,” which includes meditative statements like “God does not hate me” and “I am not forsaken.” Grief can generate deeply disorienting emotions. Even recently, someone in one of my groups described feeling completely worthless after encountering a trigger. That sense of being forsaken can feel overwhelming.
We are often conditioned to tie our worth to productivity or performance. Grief disrupts those measures entirely. When sorrow already has you face down, the experience of feeling abandoned can run very deep. I wanted to create language that gently reminds people that feelings of forsakenness, while real, are not the same as being forsaken.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” We have sometimes reduced the idea of blessing to something sentimental or decorative. But when Jesus spoke those words, he was honoring the reality of grief. He was acknowledging that mourning is a deeply human and sacred experience and promising that comfort, somehow, remains possible.
In the church, we may know we need to do better with those who are grieving, yet we still struggle with knowing what to say. What are some helpful responses?
People often ask me that, especially when they’re preparing to attend a funeral.
My answer is simple: tell a story. Say the person’s name. Share how they shaped your life. Families rarely hear enough of those stories while their loved ones are still alive.
Hearing others speak about my son—remembering specific moments, recalling small kindnesses—brought me comfort. In a way, it even brought glimpses of joy. Sometimes people hesitate because they worry about making grief worse. But loss has already done its work. Meaningful words rarely deepen pain; they often deepen connection.
We often remind one another in our groups that we have grace for those who are trying to be present. Even if they feel awkward or unsure, their willingness to show up matters. And sometimes, of course, there simply are no adequate words. In those moments, quiet presence can speak more honestly than anything else.
One response I’ve heard repeatedly is gratitude that the book is not structured as a how-to manual. My hope with both the book and Grief Guide is to create space where people feel permission to inhabit their own experience without comparison or pressure.
Grief Guide exists to hold that space—a place where people can speak freely about what grief actually feels like. There are no formulas or prescribed paths. It is simply people accompanying one another, finding their way through loss together.
