12-21-13 Topic: Nurturing Healing Love
Scarlett Lewis, mother of Jesse Lewis and founder of The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation and new activist for peace. She graduated from Boston University with a B.S. in Communications in 1990. She began her career at the Greenwich Times Newspaper in Greenwich, CT as an editorial assistant and freelance writer. She then worked at Greenwich Capital Markets in the Municipal Arbitrage department, eventually moving to NW Arkansas and joining Llama Company, an investment banking firm owned by Alice Walton (Walmart) trading bonds and doing investment banking.
She moved back to Connecticut to join OptiMark, a revolutionary start-up trading software company. Afterwards, she joined a real estate company and got her real estate license. When she became a parent for the first time, Scarlett wrote and published a children’s book, Rose’s Foal. Following Jesse’s death, Scarlett wrote Nurturing Healing Love, the story of her journey from personal tragedy to a movement that can change the world. An artist and avid horsewoman, Scarlett lives on a small horse farm in Connecticut with her son and animals.
Before my 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis lost his life at Sandy Hook School on December 14, 2012, he had written a message on our kitchen chalkboard: Nurturing Healing Love. The words “nurturing” and “healing” are a part of the definition of compassion across almost all cultures. Love is the foundation on which happy and healthy lives are built.
Inspired by Jesse’s words, we formed the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation. Our mission is to create awareness in our children and our communities that we can choose love over anger, gratitude over entitlement, and forgiveness and compassion over bitterness. Our goal is to create a more peaceful and loving world through planting these seeds of wisdom. We are currently developing a compassion- and wisdom-based curriculum to introduce into our schools and communities – inspirational and educational programs that will incorporate this empowering message and also highlight unforgettable stories of young people (including genocide survivors) who have overcome extreme hardship through choosing love over anger.
We believe that teaching our kids how to effectively deal with anger is crucial to a healthy society. Feelings of victimization and anger lead to self destructive and, sometimes, outwardly destructive behaviors. Our formal education system focuses on preparing children for college and careers but falls short in teaching children strategies for living happy and peaceful lives. Many people are never taught the simple and basic, yet extremely powerful, lesson that we all have responsibility for, and control over, our own thoughts and actions. We will teach kids that anger is a choice, and that it benefits them and all those around them to choose another way. If all of our actions are motivated by love and compassion for others – if we all live by The Golden Rule – the world will change for the better.
The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation is dedicated to working with any group or person who shares our goals, and the Board is dedicated to maximizing every investment in this partnership to further the mission of the Foundation. http://www.jesselewischooselove.org/
