AARP Purpose Prize Fellow Scarlett Lewis

We offer a unique program based on love for schoolchildren, their parents and communities so everyone can develop their emotional and social selves. I learned the importance of these

often-ignored skills after my 6-year-old son, Jesse, was killed by a troubled young man at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Our free evidence-based programs have reached more than 3 million

children in some 11,000 schools across the world.​​ THE PROBLEM I'M TRYING TO SOLVE​ ​Children and teens are suffering such pervasive mental health crises that the U.S. Surgeon General

and pediatric groups have called it a national emergency. Gun violence, substance abuse, suicide and other so-called diseases of despair are surging. These actions are often sparked by

uncomfortable emotions like anxiety, anger, loneliness and fear that sufferers don’t know how to process.​​ I’m convinced that if 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, had been

taught the skills we’re teaching, he would have been able to grow from his traumas and my son, two dozen other children and teachers, and Lanza himself would likely be alive today.​​ THE

MOMENT THAT SPARKED MY PASSION ​​I came home after Jesse was killed and spotted the words he had written on our kitchen chalkboard a few days earlier: “Nurturing Healing Love” (although

with the adorable spelling errors of a first-grader). I immediately knew this was the solution. At Jesse’s funeral, I shared how the tragedy began with the pain that Adam suffered and did

not know how to manage in his head, but that all his negative thoughts stemming from a difficult life could have been shifted. I asked people in the congregation to ponder and change their

own troublesome thinking.​​ Soon, I started hearing from these people that they hadn’t realized how angry or fearful they were, and that addressing this was changing their lives. I knew we

were onto something. I consulted with psychologists, trauma therapists and others to develop the Jesse Lewis Choose Love for School program. Many dear friends raised the initial money so we

could launch it.​​ WHAT I WISH OTHER PEOPLE KNEW​ ​Numerous steps are required to keep our kids safe, but too much of the attention is focused on the last step, preventing a planned attack,

such as by hardening schools. Yet the first step is a proactive and preventative approach that focuses on the grievance, and nobody had a systematic education program to tackle that before

we did. Feeling pain is part of the human condition. But it has purpose: To help us grow. When we become curious about what its lessons are, we stop fearing difficult situations as much.