Biography

Dr. Cynthia Long Lasher, D. Min.

Dr. Cynthia Long Lasher coordinates LFS Shenandoah Valley Grief Services, serving as a grief support specialist and facilitating support groups, conducting workshops and maintaining a grief resources library at the program's office at Grace Lutheran Church in Waynesboro, Virginia.

A native of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and a Lutheran pastor since 1991, Long Lasher founded the Shenandoah Valley Grief Center in Harrisonburg in 2005, which was a community initiative of Family Life Resource Center. When the opportunity arose, Lutheran Family Services adopted the initiative in 2007, renaming the program and moving it to Waynesboro.

Long Lasher is an adjunct faculty member at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, where she has taught the sociology of death and dying since fall 2004. She has written a book on how to help children embrace their grief when loved ones have died, which was published and is available at CSS Publishing Company in Lima, Ohio. The title is Death is No Stranger: Helping Children Grieve.   Read a review from the Staunton News Leader. Or listen to the podcast Conversation with Chris Graham and Dr. Lasher on the Augusta Free Press website.

She received a doctor of ministry degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1998, with a project that explored how to help children grieve. Long Lasher is certified as a Grief Counselor with the American Academy of Grief Counseling, a division of the American Institute of Health Care Professsionals, Inc.   Long Lasher has been a volunteer at three children's grief camps, served as a Big Sister for four years in Pennsylvania and has done disaster relief work in West Virginia and Louisiana. She also found time to coach cross country at Wilson Memorial High School in Fishersville, VA, for three years. Long Lasher and her husband, John, live in Waynesboro.

For more information about our services, contact
Dr. Cynthia Long Lasher, D. Min.,
Grief Support Specialist and Program Coordinator
540-383-2902
clonglasher@lfsva.org