Guiding Force

Surrounded by the community’s adversity and anguish, Cynthia Long Lasher serves as a guiding force for those coping with one of life’s more delicate matters —loss, something each of us will face during our lifetime.

On Lasher’s office wall hangs a memory blanket made from cloth of her father’s frequently worn khaki pants and blue oxford shirt alongside memorabilia from his favorite football team. A poem written by her 9-year-old niece sits in a frame. These decorations serve to honor Lasher’s father, who died from cancer less than two years ago. She peers up at the blanket and begins to smile.

“We were very close,” she says. “My father taught me to be self-sufficient and independent.”

Lasher and her father explored religion together. This exploration provided her with a path of learning and service that ultimately led to her work as a grief specialist in Harrisonburg.

After studying religion at Eastern Mennonite University and completing seminary, Lasher began serving as a Lutheran minister at age 26. Her main responsibilities in the church were to work with the sick and the shut in, many of whom, she says, she would eventually bury. She saw sorrow daily.

“I dealt a lot with grief and loss issues,” she says. “I was ready to do it, and I found I was very good with people who were broken.” Lasher quickly became passionate about helping others, and extended her care to hospices and grief camps for children.

“I served several churches,” Lasher says. “The area that I felt strong and gifted in was with people in crisis.”

Enthusiastic about helping people in times of emotional need, Lasher wanted to jump-start a grief center for Shenandoah Valley residents. She began networking with counselors, funeral directors and other professionals who regularly confront individuals coping with grief. With initiative and drive, Lasher realized her vision in Harrisonburg by extending the Family Life Resource Center to include the Shenandoah Valley Grief Center. There, she meets with those who have encountered loss and she holds support groups in which they can feel comfortable with their emotional state. The groups provide specialized attention to particular issues of loss. Some sessions help people cope with the loss of a loved one; others help children deal with their parents’ divorce or separation. One of Lasher’s groups supports the caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients. During all of these sessions, individuals can be true to themselves and their emotions — they don’t have to hide how they feel or be ashamed of their pain.

“You don’t always have a safe place for that,” Lasher says. “And the point of a support group is to give people an opportunity to express however it is they are feeling.”

Through this open expression, people can talk about their thoughts and identify with others going through similar pain. Eventually, people open up and overcome their adversity.

For many, it’s hard to fathom how Lasher prevents such emotional devastation from affecting her well-being. But she explains, “I have empathy. I feel their pain, but I don’t take it from them and take that pain upon myself.”

Aside from the grief center, Lasher extends her work into the community. She visits a high school in Waynesboro, where she meets with students dealing with a death. Right now she is working with several teenagers who have lost someone to suicide. She also holds seminars to educate the community about loss.

Lasher’s expertise with grief extends even into the classroom at James Madison University. Lasher teaches Sociology of Death and Dying (SOCI 303). Her students examine practical, legal and spiritual issues concerning death. During college, many students don’t think about death because it seems so distant. In fact, it could happen to anyone at any time.

“It’s one of the classes in college that’s real; every human being has to deal with death,” Lasher explains. “It prepares you for loss.” Her teaching methods are a bit unconventional; rather than textbooks, her students read books that help people cope with dying. She also invites speakers to her class, but these individuals speak from their hearts and their experiences. Speakers have included a couple who lost their son to suicide and an attorney who provided information about legal issues regarding death.

Senior Sharon Hoffman enrolled in Lasher’s class last spring and at first was surprised. “I like the class because she teaches it in a way that takes some of the fear out of the subject.” Hoffman says. “Because death is inevitable for all of us it is a hard topic to deal with, but she presents the class in a way that makes me feel more comfortable with learning about it and talking about the different facets of death.”