Saturday marks 12 years since the Sandy Hook shooting, where 26 people were killed. One of them - a six-year-old whose mother has started a movement in his honor.
Scarlett Lewis, founder of the Choose Love Movement, said the movement started when her son Jesse heroically saved nine of his classmate’s lives before he was killed.
“Jesse yelled for his classmates to run, and he was able to save nine of his classmate’s lives before losing his own,” Lewis said.
“After the tragedy, I came home, and I found a message that Jesse had left on our kitchen chalkboard. He had written, sometime shorty before he died, three words: nurturing, healing, love. I saw that, and I realized that that was the solution," he continued.
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Lewis took those words and started a movement that’s reached millions of children and adults across 135 countries and over 16,000 schools.
“The formula is courage, plus gratitude, plus forgiveness, plus compassion in action equals choosing love,” she said. “You don’t always remember that you have a choice of love in every situation – that you can be your highest and best self all the time. We teach how to do that, and we go through some practices to reinforce those skills within us.”
The program uses the post-traumatic growth theory to provide essential life stills to children and adults.
“We usually focus on symptoms – we focus on the attack end on the pathway to violence, we focus on the war on drugs, we focus on the mental illness once it arises. But actually, the root cause of all of those things is pretty much the same…and it is pain that we have in life. It’s the inability to face life’s complexities and difficulties,” Lewis said.
“Really, we are fortifying these kids from the inside out, giving them the awareness that life is tough, you are gonna face difficulty, but that pain has a purpose. It’s there to get you out of your comfort zone and into your growth zone," she continued.
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Lewis, along with her eldest son JT who works for the nonprofit organization, too, are using their grief to spark positive change and prevent future tragedies.
“I always say that the Choose Love Movement started at Jesse’s funeral, when I got up to speak, and I said this whole tragedy started as an angry thought in Adam Lanza’s head. Adam Lanza, the former student of Sandy Hook, I pictured him as a little boy, having an angry thought, and he couldn’t manage that thought. That thought grew will bullying and neglect and turned into the Sandy Hook tragedy,” Lewis said.
“If Adam had felt good about himself, the tragedy would never have happened. It’s hurt people that hurt people. So I started a movement that would spread that very message," she continued.
To learn more about the movement, click here.
