Sandy Hook: A mom marks a decade since her 6-year-old's death by helping ease others' pain

Scarlett Lewis wanted the memorial, and even took part in planning it. But she doesn’t need the memorial to fathom what she lost 10 years ago, on Dec. 14, 2012.

“Every day," she said, "is a day without my son."

Still, she made her way past the firehouse in Newtown, Conn., whose roof holds six large metal stars and 20 small metal stars, an artist’s constellation of grief. It went up in the weeks after 20 kindergartners and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the nation’s deadliest school shooting.

There's a newer memorial now, as permanent as Lewis' grief at the loss of Jesse, her 6-year-old whose thoughts had been filled with Christmas on that December day a decade ago.

“I went to the memorial the other day, and there were there were three busloads of kids there,” Lewis said. “I absolutely loved that because we need to have the courage to honor and remember. But it is also a testament to our failure to keep those kids and those adults safe.”

Those kids included Jesse McCord Lewis, who stood up to his killer, an act that cost him his life but saved nine of his classmates.

The building where the shooting took place was razed; a new school rose to replace it. The memorial is not far away, in a clearing across the parking lot. Its design is simple: a sycamore tree on an island in a circular pool ringed with granite, the names of the dead etched there in remembrance. Paths meander to the memorial. There are benches for quiet contemplation.

And 26 names.

The children. Charlotte and Daniel and Olivia. Josephine and Dylan and Madeleine. Catherine and Chase and Ana. James and Grace and Emilie. Jack and Noah and Caroline. Jessica and Avielle and Benjamin and Allison. And Jesse. And the adults. Rachel and Dawn and Anne Marie. Lauren, Mary and Victoria.

“Ten years has a tremendous amount of significance, not just for the victims’ parents and the community, but also for all of us,” Lewis said. “What happened at Sandy Hook has become our normal. We expect it.”

On May 24, 2022, the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was a near carbon copy of Sandy Hook. A lone gunman, an elementary school. Nineteen students and two teachers who went to school and never came home.

It’s like we’ve learned nothing, Lewis said.

Her grief was difficult enough. Then conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of "Infowars" began calling the Sandy Hook killing a hoax, telling his followers that the families were simply actors playing a role.

In August, a Texas jury decided Jones should pay Lewis and Jesse's father, Neil Heslin, $4 million in compensatory damages and $45 million in punitive damages for his falsehoods and what they wrought: threats and intimidation from Jones' followers. A judge last month said the Texas law capping punitive damages should not apply in this rare case, because the emotional damage Jones wrought was so extreme.

In October, a Connecticut jury said Jones should pay nearly $1 billion in damages to several Sandy Hook shooting families. An additional $473 million in punitive damages was later added to the judgment.

Earlier this month, Jones filed for bankruptcy.

'Turning pain into purpose'

In the week before this significant anniversary, Lewis was wrapping up a whirlwind of a fall that has taken her to India and Hawaii, California and Chicago.

She’s out with a new book, her fourth, “Choosing Love: A Pathway to Flourishing,” which gathers the social-and-emotional-learning lessons she has coalesced into a curriculum offered free to schools in the hope of building more resilient children, able to weather trauma and hurt.

The book, the trips and the curriculum all stem from a note that Jesse scrawled (in his own brand of spelling) on their kitchen chalkboard: Nurturing, healing love. In the dizzying days after his death, Lewis began to see it as a sign.

“That was a message that was marching orders for me,” she said. “Here I am, 10 years later, doing this 24/7. I couldn't be more grateful for my purpose that I've found in my life, turning pain into purpose. We can all do it. In fact, we have to."

Unprocessed trauma

The root cause of mass shootings, she said, is trauma that has not been processed. And learning to process trauma and hurt can be taught, and learned.

Lewis calls from Highland Park, Illinois, where she’s meeting those affected by another mass shooting; a gunman opened fire on a Fourth of July parade, killing seven.

"Any shooter, what they're doing is horrific and they are responsible and they should be punished to the full extent of the law, 100 percent," Lewis said. "But I also believe that until we realize that these are human beings in pain, until we find the courage to look at it, to take responsibility for what is going on in our own backyard, in our world, in our country, nothing will change."

Choose Love Movement

Which is why Lewis has been on the road, from Lucknow, India, to Kailua, Hawaii, telling students and parents about her Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement curriculum, a social-emotional character-development program that has components for schools, home and the community.

"Kids are not born school shooters or mass murderers or wanting to hurt themselves," she said. "If you can learn to hate, you can be taught to love. We can teach kids how to thoughtfully respond with love."

And it's not just for kids, Lewis said. She has brought her Choose Love Movement to prisoners in New Hampshire.

'Brave breaths' and 'brave poses'

Here's the way it works for kindergartners, children who are the age Jesse was on that day 10 years ago.

"I talk about how difficulty has a purpose," she said. "When you get your feelings hurt, when you are challenged by something in life, there's a reason for that. It helps you grow. It's not something that you resist or avoid. It's something that you have the courage to face."

To navigate the hurt, she tells the children, they need to get between what's happening to them and their response to it, so they can "thoughtfully respond with love."

She talks about "brave breaths," taking a breath to help access their logic and reasoning brain to think clearly.

She talks about "brave poses" (think Superman or Wonder Woman, feet apart, chest and chin out, a power position) to help them feel braver to face challenges.

"I talk a lot about courage," she said. "I talk about being grateful for the things that you have and for the little things and how that strengthens you to be able to face the challenges that come in your life."

She also talks about forgiveness, and "how it is a superpower to be able to let things go and how it makes you feel good."

And then, the woman who helps people deal with and process trauma, who has known trauma herself, talks about what her son gave her with those words on the kitchen chalkboard and what it set in motion a decade ago.

"I talk about how it's really important to help other people," she said, "because when we help other people, we help and heal ourselves."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: On Sandy Hook 10th anniversary, a mom turns pain into purpose