Nurturing Healing Love

Subtitled 'a mother's journey of hope and forgiveness' and with a foreword by Wayne Dyer, this extraordinary book describes the events and aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre at the end of 2012. Scarlett Lewis lost her son Jesse, gunned down while urging other children to escape to safety. As she says herself, it is a story about 'how we can face, endure and survive the seemingly impossible, and find courage when we think we have none. It's about using love instead of anger, fear or hatred, and standing ground… It's about how all these choices can change your life and even the world we live in.' Following the tragedy, Jesse made his presence felt in a number of remarkable ways. And when Scarlett began to speak about her experience, she received an extraordinary response to the simple call that we can all help by turning an angry thought into a loving one. Shortly before he died, Jesse left a message on the kitchen board - nurturing healing love - which forms the leitmotif of book. Soon afterwards, the village received 500,000 letters from all over the world expressing sympathy and solidarity with the families. As you can imagine, her journey of grief was incredibly hard, even if the outcome was extraordinary in terms of the foundation that she has set up and the transformation of her other son through the support he was able to bring to victims of genocide in Rwanda, thus helping put his own suffering in context. The message reminded me of Desmond Tutu's book No Future without Forgiveness since one cannot live indefinitely with hatred and anger in one's heart as this will destroy you as well. See www.jesselewischooselove.org