SHE’S BACK

With the support of her family and friends, Lake Bluff’s Cilla Stoll navigates her way through grief using the tools she’s spent years mastering—meditation and yoga.

ON DECEMBER 20, 2021, Cilla Stoll’s world was forever changed.

“We had been in Florida,” she recalls of her husband of more than 30 years. “Ryan flew back to Arizona to pack up our things for Christmas. We were going to meet our kids in Chicago to celebrate the holidays with our family.”

But the reunion never happened.

“Ryan texted in our family group chat that he was going hiking,” she continues. “By 4 p.m. that afternoon, I felt like something was off. I just kept texting him all night. When I didn’t hear back, I sent friends over to the house. When he wasn’t there, we called search and rescue, thinking maybe he’d broken his leg. I called my kids and said, ‘Dad is missing,’ and got on a plane to Arizona.”

She was midair when the news came: Ryan had died.

Stoll, a long-time Lake Bluff resident and the founder of Forever Om Yoga in Lake Forest, had spent her life guiding others through transformation and challenge. But nothing could have prepared her for the unrelenting grief that followed.

“Our grief was messy,” she admits. “The kids and I stayed in Arizona for a month. We had to retrieve Ryan’s belongings from the Grand Canyon and speak to the ranger. We didn’t know what we were doing. Our friends started arriving in waves. At first, I didn’t understand why they were there. I couldn’t even figure out how to sleep, let alone entertain. But they showed up in a way for me that I never expected.”

Once the funeral passed and the visits dwindled, reality settled in.

“I had a hard time functioning,” she says. “I wasn’t sure I even knew how to breathe anymore.”

But slowly, she began to piece herself back together. With very little professional help or any therapeutic guidance, Stoll leaned into the practices she had always believed in—but now with urgency and purpose.

“I hiked. I meditated. I’d walk eight miles just repeating my mantra: ‘I’m okay right now. I’m okay right now’,” she says, explaining that she cold plunged daily, worked out, got massages, and went to bed early. She tried everything. “I just… did things. I actually bought a van and traveled. I went on a fly-fishing trip Ryan was supposed to go on. It was me and nine men. I took a class in Denver called neurographic art. It was one of the only things I could focus on. Reading and watching TV—they were too hard, they still are. But this art, this mindfulness, it saved me.”

And eventually, she came home—to her studio, her students, and the practice that had always grounded her: yoga.

“When I came back to Lake Bluff last September, it was partially because the yoga [at Forever Om] is so good,” she explains. “In the depths of my grief, I didn’t feel like I was in my body. I was so confused. Everything was different. But yoga helped me get grounded again.”

At first, she couldn’t get through a class without crying.

“Yoga opens you up in a way to feel things deeply,” she continues. “But slowly I began to feel this shift. He’s gone, but I’m still here. This practice is healing me.”

It’s that healing that Stoll now shares with her community through Forever Om.

“Yoga is a moving meditation,” she says. “The way we teach it is about turning inward. We want our students to ask: How do you feel in this pose? Can it feel stronger? Can you go deeper? It’s about trusting yourself, riding this wave of movement—and suddenly, you’re in savasana.”

At Forever Om, everything is intentional—the heated studio, the language the instructors use, and the way classes are sequenced.

“Teaching is creative,” Stoll says. “It’s like painting a picture. What does the class need now? How do we add layers? We always teach to who’s in the room. And we train our teachers to speak about spirituality, which is vulnerable and hard—but vital.”

Sixteen years in, Forever Om remains a sanctuary for movement and meaning.

“After Ryan died, I thought about selling the studio,” she admits. “I wondered if I still needed to be part of it. But it’s such a creative outlet for me. It doesn’t eat up my life the way it used to. Anne Hill, my manager, and I share a brain. She has helped me so much. And our teachers are so devoted to this community. That allows me to teach when I want and give workshops when I feel called to. It’s so beautiful and grounding—for me and for the people who come here. Besides my kids—Kelsey, Drew, and Maggie—Forever Om is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. People are healing when they come. And I still want to be part of that.”

As for what comes next?

“I try to have zero attachment to the future,” she says, except for maybe getting a few snuggles in with her new grandson Ryan who was born at the end of June. “But I know yoga—especially the way we teach it—will never go away.”

To learn more about Forever Om Yoga, visit foreveromyoga.com.