Losing Your Child in a Mass Shooting
Sitting in a Panera and crying into my bowl of soup wasn’t quite what I’d bargained for. But that’s exactly what happened as I turned the pages of Nurturing Healing Love: A Mother’s Journey of Hope and Forgiveness, Scarlett Lewis’ emotionally engaging story of losing her 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on December 12, 2012. Losing your child in a mass shooting is an act of utter tragedy.
There is no doubt in my mind that this precious boy was a prophet in disguise. His wisdom was far beyond his physical age. That he could even come up with a divine message–Norurting Helin Love–much less, have a knowing that he was going “home” proves this.
Losing a child is the hardest kind of loss there is. And those who experience it are changed forever. It doesn’t matter if their child was six hours or six years old, sixteen or sixty-two.
But the real story isn’t the tragic loss. Rather, it’s what happens in the days, weeks, months and years that follow. And that is the true testimony of the shape their grief story takes.
Scarlett Lewis is a mother first. And like any mother whose child is brutally ripped from her life, she was angry, depressed and afraid. The difference is, she chose not to stay and stew in that toxic sludge.
Instead, she chose forgiveness. She chose love. Inspired by her little boy’s three-word message scrawled on their kitchen chalkboard hours before he died. I’m sure it took every ounce of strength she possessed to move forward on the path of love. But she chose to live the truth of Albert Einstein’s words: “You can’t solve a problem by the same energy that created it.”
The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation is Jesse’s legacy–to teach children the power of love.
Read this book and open your heart to its message. I promise you it will change your life–if you choose love. As Jesse and Scarlett did.
Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com
I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for review purpose.