my name is Scarlett Lewis and i am the
founder of the jesse lewis choose love
movement i started this organization
following the shooting death of my
six-year-old son alongside 19 of his
classmates into first grade classrooms
and six teachers and administrators in
one of the worst mass shootings in US
history directly following the shooting
I had his funeral obviously and and I
got up and spoke and i said i believe
that this whole tragedy started with an
angry thought in the shooters head and
the shooter's name is Adam Lanza and I
picture him as a little boy having angry
thoughts without the tools and nurturing
environment to deal with those thoughts
we know that every thought we have
impacts us on a cellular level and so he
went through his life having these angry
thoughts that turned into rage that
turned into mental illness and actually
caused the tragedy and I said the
amazing thing to me is that an angry
thought can be changed so i asked
everyone that day because of course
everybody was saying what can we do for
you and I said there is something that
you can do for us
you can think about what you think about
because everybody has between 60 and 80
thousand thoughts maybe not you guys if
you guys are more consciously aware but
the majority of people had sixty to
eighty thousand thoughts broiling in
their minds on a daily basis and
research shows that up to eighty percent
of those thoughts are angry and
non-productive and so I said just think
about what you think about and if you
could actively consciously change one
angry thought into a loving thought
every day you will cultivate a safer
more peaceful and loving world and fill
the response that I got from that was
amazing that it changed people's lives
they've never
thought about that and so I thought hmm
i think that i think that this is part
of the solution so i'm going to talk to
you about my personal journey of
learning to live a life of integrity and
i'm also going to give you the
foundational character values that are
required to do this in the form of a
formula for choosing love and courage in
every situation I had an experience a
few days after jesse died I had gone
home to my mom's house she lived across
pounds and I was sitting on her couch
and for the first time in my entire life
not needing to be somewhere wanting to
move and I remember sitting there and I
i just looked at my arm and my skin at
one point and i thought other blood
pumping under my skin and i'm taking a
breath taking air in my lungs but i
wanna live but I feel dead
that was how low I was you can imagine
you know i was just in deep mourning and
words really can't describe how bad I
felt and then and then at one point I
had this other feeling and it was more
like a lightness of being it just
happened all the sudden and it was like
like I came it was a weird experience
and I was like wait a minute i feel so
bad and i'm experiencing this yet i have
this almost relation
what is this dichotomy and all the
sudden I realized for the first time in
my life I was completely devoid of fear
I have lived through every parent's
worst nightmare and I wasn't afraid to
die
and despite what I was going through
this fearlessness was actually a pretty
good feeling and and then i looked at
what was going on in the world around me
and I realize how fear-based a whole lot
of what's going on is and and I add I
would it was like I was given a life
review and I looked back over my life
and so all the choices that I had made
and so many of them were fear-based and
at the same time I had complete and
utter compassion for myself because I
understood why I had made those choices
in that moment but I also knew that if I
had made my choices based in love that
it would have not only benefited me in
the long run but it would have benefited
the world so I made the conscious
decision right then and there I set the
intention to make all of the choices
that are possible based in love
from then on because really there really
are only two foundational components
that we base all of our decisions on and
that's fear and love and the decisions
that we make based and fear or based in
love look very much different fear is
more like a knee-jerk reaction and love
is more like a conscious and deliberate
choice like a fear-based decision and
and think about how you make your
choices little ones and big ones
so a little choice that you make on a
daily basis is you know taking vitamins
you take them because you're afraid of
getting cancer or getting sick or do you
take them because you want to be well
driving the speed limit
somebody mentioned that if you drive the
speed limit because I because you're
afraid of getting into an accident or
because you loved everyone and you want
everyone to be safe and a bigger choice
that that i paid many times is if your
profession what do you do in life you do
it because you're afraid you can't make
a living and you just need to get money
or you do because it's something that
satisfy your soul and you really want to
do those are those are just example so a
little less than a week after the
shooting I went back to my little
farmhouse where I raised my two boys as
a single mom and I found a message that
Jesse had left on my kitchen chalkboard
up shortly before he died he wrote three
words I remember he's six years old
nurturing healing love now I
I those words are not in the vernacular
of a six-year-old their phonetically
spelled because he was in first grade
and just learning to write but those
three words are in the definition of
compassion across all cultures and I
knew immediately that he had a spiritual
awareness that he wasn't going to be
with us for very much longer and I knew
that he wanted to leave a message of
comfort for his family and friends but I
also knew it with more than that I knew
that this was where we had to move
towards towards nurturing healing love
in order for our society to survive and
to thrive and i knew that i would spend
the rest of my life writing this message
nurturing healing love actually makes up
a profound and powerful formula for
choosing love nurturing means loving
kindness and gratitude healing literally
means forgiveness and love is compassion
in action when you practice those three
character values in that order
you're choosing love it's like a rope
that you let down to yourself in the
well however deep it is and you start by
being grateful practicing gratitude and
there's only something to be grateful
for your breath and soft and his
beautiful song and then that gives you
the strength to be able to forgive and
that's for giving yourself and others
and we'll talk about that a little bit
more in a minute and then once you've
done that you are able to step outside
of your own universe of pain and help
others that is literally choosing love
and of course it takes a tremendous
amount of courage to do that because it
takes courage to be grateful when things
aren't going your way
it takes courage to forgive especially
when the person that hurt you isn't
sorry and it takes courage to be able to
step outside of your own personal story
and
Jane whatever circumstance here in and
being service to others so jesse is an
incredible example of courage and
actually the the ultimate form of
courage when the gunman came into his
first-grade classroom he continued his
killing spree and his gun ran out of
ammunition and it was during a short
delay that Jesse called to his friends
and told them to run and they said that
it's because he told him to run that
they ran and he was able to save nine of
his friends lives before he was gunned
down right next to the side of his
teacher this is the open-pit arm of
courage laying down your life for your
friends and hopefully none of us in this
room will ever be called to do that but
courage courage is that is we all have
the courage within us that it takes to
choose love because in life as we always
know we can't always choose what happens
to us so we can always choose how we
respond and we can always respond and
love I have a great quote by CS lewis
i'm going to redo the whole thing every
time you make a choice
you're turning the central part of you
the part of you that chooses into
something a little different than it was
before and taking your life as a whole
with all your numerable choices all your
lifelong you're slowly turning the
central thing into a heavenly creature
or a hellish creature either into a
creature that is in harmony with God and
with other creatures and with itself or
else into one that is in a state of war
and hatred with God and with his
fellow-creatures and with itself to be
the one kind of creature is heaven that
is it is joy and peace and knowledge and
power to be the other means madness for
idiocy rage impotence and eternal
loneliness each of us at each moment is
progressing to one state or the other
just underlines the importance of
choosing love because when you choose
love you're not
the impacting yourself but you're
impacting the world I want to talk to us
a little bit about forgiveness i didn't
mention forgiveness in my title because
if i had you guys probably would have
chosen this time to take a bathroom
break because forgiveness is is really
not that popular a topic you don't talk
about it often we certainly don't teach
it
I grew up in a traditionally religious
church and all I knew was that you
forgive so you're forgiven I didn't know
anything else about it but I learned so
much after my experience and I learned a
lot about what forgiveness isn't so we
say forgive and forget right well that
makes it an immediate impossibility for
me because not only can i not forget I I
travel the world trying to make people
not forget and to remember and could be
part of the solution forgiveness of the
minute you can don't know what the
person did
I'll never condone with the shooter did
what he did was obviously wrong and it
also doesn't mean that you don't hold
the other person accountable because
we're all accountable for our actions
and our inaction usually when I describe
it i give a visual so I felt like I was
attached to adam lanza with an umbilical
cord and this cord ran out of my side
into his and all of my personal power
drained out of me in the form of anger
through this cord into him and I was
dragging him around with me everywhere
because I was angry this is in the
beginning and and forgiveness with a big
set of fizzers that I cook and I cut
that cord and immediately by forgiving
felt all my personal power flow back
into me and of course
forgiveness is a conscious choice in the
beginning but then it becomes a process
because it doesn't mean that you don't
get angry again this is important to
talk about you you do get angry again
there are things that come up and and
that's memories and that's okay because
you just choose to forgive
and so it becomes a process and is
actually my key to my resilience
somebody asked me earlier during lunch
what's the number one thing that helps
you heal after the tragedy that was part
of the question and I said that have to
be forgiveness forgiveness is that if he
I want to learn the true meaning of
compassion sometimes compassion is
taught as empathy in schools at least
and and and compassion actually has two
components so compassion the first part
of compassion is identifying with
someone's paying and that is empathy and
as you all probably know now having
heard my story that painful and it
actually lights up the same receptors in
your brain as physical pain and so
teaching compassion and empathy is
really doing it a disservice because the
second part of compassion and and the
most powerful part is the action
component and that's when you actively
do something to help ease another's pain
that's when that's the miraculous
component when all the love and energy
that you give out comes back to you
it's when the healer becomes the healed
it's the when the line between the giver
and the receiver is learned and I
learned this important concept by how
the world reacted because they not only
felt empathy for us but they actually
actively did things to help ease our
pain by doing acts of kindness and
things like that but I also learned his
lesson from my other son JP JP was 12
years old at the time and as you can
imagine he and i were going through a
hard time initially there was in in my
mind there are a lot of people that were
trying to help but they weren't really
no one had ever experienced what we had
experience so i was really looking for
credibility and and everyone was going
through their own traumatic experiences
so so Believe It or Not JT and I were
kind of struggling and he hadn't gone
back to school and and I would go in and
I think today and he said no and I would
go
you know because i had sent one kid to
school and he didn't come home I really
didn't want to go so I wasn't being a
big help and so we were kind of stuck
and we have this incredible experience
where orphan genocide survivors from
Rwanda reached out to JT from all the
way around the world via live skype and
wanted to connect with him so this is a
picture of that experience in Katy's
room and they said JP we heard about
what happened to your little brother and
we're so sorry we we want to share our
experience with you we want you to know
that you're going to be okay and you're
going to feel joy again this was
incredible because you know where people
have said to us all you know time heals
all wounds oh you're going to be okay
and a little while these people had been
through something perhaps worse than we
had in 1994 there was genocide in Rwanda
where over 1 million species were
murdered by their neighboring who choose
within 100 days so they started sharing
their experience and amazingly it was
the same process of healing that Jesse
had left on the kitchen chalkboard so
they talked about after witnessing their
families being murdered right in front
of them one was buried in a shallow
grave alongside the the alongside her
family alive getting into an orphanage
they said they started feeling this
incredible sense of gratitude for their
safety for the food for the compassion
they were receiving and then they
realize they had to forgive and if they
didn't forgive they would be going down
the same path of anger and destruction
as as the people that had learned their
family and then they realize that they
could they could use they could find
meaning in their suffering by using
their story to help other people like
they did this safety and JT after this
experience turned around and started new
townhouse Rolanda and within a couple of
months he was able to fight back to that
group
and announced that he had raised enough
money he went to school the next day by
the way and started maybe bands and
started raising money and was able to
announce two to one of the orphan
genocide survivors that he had saved
enough money to send them to university
for four years and and and that makes me
feel so good
focusing on someone else's pain and and
by the way he JP doesn't do traditional
therapy he doesn't like it doesn't work
for him he doesn't like talking about it
but for the last three-and-a-half years
he has been doing this compassion and
action
he's helped build a fish pond a
self-sustainable fish pond for former
children folders in Uganda he helped
countless caves in the united states
that face trauma and healing by helping
heal other people it was really a true
it continues to be an incredible lesson
for me in the power of compassionate
action and service so I know what you're
all thinking does beaches love formula
work for everyone in every circumstance
so I've been to a few prisons and it's
interesting that you're starting a
prison program and this one day I
brought JP because we have the day off
he looked thrilled hand that it wasn't
one of the most incredible days of our
lives so I had sent my both two weeks
earlier nurturing healing love and some
that book up and then the plan was for
us to come up two weeks later to talk to
the to the 220 convicted felons about it
and first of all I was pretty sure that
convicted felons we're not going to pick
up a book called nurturing healing love
but I was happy to send the book anyway
and when we got there if you can see
everybody's holding their book it was
dog-eared underlined the guidance
somebody even written out entire
paragraphs in it and
and we're asking questions i was able to
share just an example of Jesse's courage
and really what courage means which is
not the big tough guy revenge type
courage but it is if the courage to be
kind and gentle encouragement to
practice those character values that we
do the choosing love and they had said
you know the only thing we've ever known
is anger and revenge and not feel bad
and I said that's true and and you can
make yourself feel good by choosing love
and at the end of the two hours
everyone had dedicated their lives to
choosing love and they had asked me for
a picture of Jeffy so that when they had
an angry thought they could look at his
face
remember his courage and she was the
loving thoughts men that are considered
non rehabilitated bubble when they're
given the option when they're shown how
to choose love
they wanted to choose blogs because of
the very core of all of us we all just
want to love and be loved
that's the basis for all the fear that
we see and so when they were given a
formula for choosing love of course they
wanted to practice that was really
beautiful
I want to talk a little bit about PBS be
post-traumatic stress disorder because
that was the first thought after jesse
died really it was like oh my god i'm
definitely going to be getting ppsc and
my fear was like how is that going to
manifest in myself am I going to be
institutionalized
how was my big fear and and what I
didn't know I and and what I wish had
been implanted in my head
ptg seed PTSD post-traumatic growth the
roughly three percent of the population
suffer from PTSD and everybody knows
about PTSD but not as many people know
about post-traumatic growth and
post-traumatic growth is when is what
the majority about experience
after a trauma it when we find strength
we never knew we had it when we gained a
new perspective it's only deepen our
spirituality
it's when we find a purpose only
strengthen relationships are weed out
bad ones and and the growth that that
comes from from Pope post-traumatic
growth is not resilience because
resilience is when you bounce back from
where you were i to back to where you
were
PPGZ growth is unlimited it's
exponential so I thought what if we
planted the seed of post-traumatic
growth and kids and said you know what
things are going to happen to you and
they're not all going to be good but you
know what
when something happens and it's
uncomfortable when it's when it's really
bad it's not something to fear it's not
something to avoid go around and
exercise yourself from actually it's an
opportunity for growth and you can sit
with it and you can look into it and you
can with curiosity ask yourself what are
the lessons in here for me wouldn't take
a lot of fear out of what happens in
life I I know that I know that I would
have come this way a lot quicker and I
had I new unknown about post-traumatic
growth of course the time is not after
something devastating like losing a
child happen you don't want somebody to
sit down next to you and say hey this is
a great opportunity for growth that's
not the right time to do it has to be
planted before so my mission is to get
Jessie's message of nurturing hailing
love in the form of this formula for
choosing love into schools I think about
what we teach in schools we have
state-mandated anti-bullying programs
state-mandated drug awareness programs
we have suicide prevention and sec said
those were the four that they tjp school
and I think about how that is such a
focus on the negative so we're saying
the kids this is what you can't do you
feel good and we're not giving them
the option for a positive way so
teaching how about teaching them to
choose love how about giving them tools
to rest and relax giving them the
responsibility for their own emotional
regulation would not be an incredible
society for the Jeff people's choose
love movement is developing a choose
love enrichment program pre-k through
12th grade that does just this and it's
going to be absolutely free all of the
resources will be free and that's to
fulfill my mission of making sure that
every child has access to social
emotional learning 21st century life
skills that I considered to be
life-changing and life-saving and I
think if the shooter in our situation
had had this wouldn't have happened want
to talk
wrap it up by sharing another message
that Jesse left on the same day that i
found the nurturing healing love message
JP went into his little office and he
found a note that was folded on his desk
and he opened it up and Jesse had left
him a message and it said have a lot of
fun and this is such a profound message
from a little brother to a big brother
but also i took that the message for all
of us because we're we're here to have a
lot of fun too and i think that we need
to remember that
so to live a life of integrity means to
choose love right and it means to
acknowledge your courage
it means to take personal responsibility
for your feelings and I think when you
do that you'll realize that you're
having a lot of fun thank you
