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The CHOOSE LOVE MOVEMENT
SCARLETT LEWIS
Sometimes things happen in life that we have no control over. This can make us feel powerless. And it’s true, things happen that are totally out of our control. But we can take our personal power back when we choose how we respond in any given situation. We always have the choice to thoughtfully respond with love.
I had to put this into practice on December 14, 2012, when the unthinkable happened. My six-year-old son was murdered in his first-grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School alongside nineteen classmates and six educators. It was one of the worst mass murders in US history. In the midst of the powerlessness, horror, and shock we all felt, nothing could change the fact that I could not control the former student who killed all those innocent people. The only way I could take my personal power back would be how I chose to respond to the tragedy. Ultimately, I responded by starting a worldwide movement to choose love through a nonprofit organization I created in honor of my son—the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement. Getting there was indeed a process.
Traumatized and beyond comfort at first, I was drawn to the words on our kitchen chalkboard that Jesse must have written the same morning he was killed. Perhaps with spiritual awareness, Jesse, in his best first-grade handwriting, had printed: Nurturing Healing Love. (He spelled them phonetically, as Norurting Helinn Love. After all, he was just learning to write.) I knew immediately that if the shooter had been able to give and receive Nurturing Healing Love that the tragedy would never have happened.
We felt comforted by his message and realized it was a prescription for compassion. Despite Jesse’s death, those three words reminded me of all that I still had. So I started with gratitude. Despite having lost one of my precious sons, Jesse’s older brother, JT, and I still had each other. We live on a small farm with horses, chickens, and dogs that we love. Because of the public nature of our tragedy, it seemed as if the world could feel our pain and everyone wanted to help us heal. We received cards from around the world, most from children, and all from loving people who wished us well. They told us they were holding us in their hearts and praying for us. As our friends and family gathered around us, I felt blessed and loved. We were thankful for the support, and we still are.
Intuitively, I knew that someone who did something so heinous must have been in a tremendous amount of pain. I tried to put myself in his shoes by learning about his life and the suffering he endured. That process helped me to come to a place of forgiveness. When I made the choice to forgive, I remember feeling what seemed like one hundred pounds of anger and resentment lift off my shoulders.
Forgiveness became a key to my ability to heal and be resilient, allowing me to think more clearly, positively, and productively.
I realized it has nothing to do with forgetting, condoning, or being able to hold someone accountable. Forgiveness is simply cutting the cord that attaches you to pain, and suffering, and anger. It is a gift that you give to yourself.
By choosing to focus on being grateful for what I did have and going through the process of forgiveness, I found the strength to step outside my own pain and help others. Instead of focusing internally on my personal situation, I chose to seek answers. I wanted to become part of the solution that could have prevented the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary and that would help prevent future tragedies. I found extensive research showing that learning how to have healthy relationships, manage emotions, and be resilient—in other words, social and emotional intelligence—was the number one indicator of a child’s future success. I created a program called the Choose Love Enrichment Program that teaches young people everywhere in the world these essential life skills and how to choose love for themselves and others.
The program is free and has steadily gained worldwide momentum as a movement. Choose Love has been an incredible adventure and has shown me how it is possible to heal myself by giving to others and how much we receive when we do champion peace over violence and love over hate. When we help others, we are ultimately helping ourselves. We call this compassion in action.
When the gunman entered Jesse’s classroom, his gun jammed. During the short delay, Jesse courageously directed his friends to run, and ultimately saved the lives of nine of his classmates while he remained at his teacher’s side, where he died. Jesse left us a powerful formula for choosing love in any situation:
Courage + Gratitude +
Forgiveness + Compassion
in Action = Choosing Love
When we thoughtfully respond in any situation, circumstance, or interaction by choosing love, we are happier and more resilient; we have better relationships; and we are more likely to make positive and pro social choices.
The Choose Love Movement started at Jesse’s funeral when I spoke to those in attendance. It is likely, I shared that day, that the whole tragedy began with an angry thought in the shooter’s head. The amazing thing to me is that an angry thought can be changed. I asked everyone that day to consciously change one angry thought into a loving thought each day. This, I offered, is how we become that small pebble of kindness that sends out a ripple effect, creating a safer, more peaceful, and loving world.
Change one thought a day, I repeated, and choose love.
People reported back that just by doing that one simple thing, their lives were changed for the better, forever, and our ripples continue to spread more and more around the globe.
Within us, we have the courage that Jesse showed in his final moments: the courage to be kind; to do what is right; to speak up; and to be our authentic selves. We have the courage to be grateful, even when things are not going our way; the courage to forgive, even when the person who hurt us is not sorry; and the courage to step outside our own pain and help others.
We all have the courage to choose love!
Scarlett, you define bravery and kindness. I had to start and stop reading this story several times. In all of our lives, every day, we are faced with a choice of how to respond to the things happening to us and around us—the mundane and the life changing. To say I am in awe of your commitment to live in a posture of gratitude, compassion, and nurturing and healing love is the understatement of my life, but I thank you. Your movement will save lives, and honor one very, very special one. Please visit the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement to join Scarlett’s mission to help the world live love a little better, every day.
