Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis - Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Lifes Darkest Hours

Praise for Choosing Hope

For anyone who has despaired at the human condition, at the horrors we perpetrate onto each other, Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis tells a story that shares our heartbreak and then, just as persuasively, offers us the only possible way forward.

AMANDA RIPLEY , New York Times BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF The Smartest Kids in the World AND The Unthinkable

Roig-DeBellis reveals one of the least known and most bewildering stories from the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. When she asked for a few common-sense accommodations for her traumatized first-graderssuch as a better door and a ladder [leading] out [of] a windowshe was told to stop asking. She didnt, and she decided she couldnt be silent about what mattered most. So she found a way to help all students nationwide with a new approach to teaching kindness.

JAY MATHEWS , Washington Post EDUCATION COLUMNIST AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF Work Hard. Be Nice.

Choosing Hope is an inspiring story of a young teachers triumph over the unimaginable tragedy of the Sandy Hook school massacre. It is also a cautionary tale about school administrators who dont listen. There are many more Kaitlins in our classrooms than we know. We must cherish them.

TONY WAGNER , BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF The Global Achievement Gap AND Creating Innovators

What a fantastic, straightforward, and authentic book. In Choosing Hope, Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis exemplifies the power of the five dimensions of crisis leadership by successfully confronting the critical questions that have long concerned those of us in the field of crisis leadership, such as controlling how deep into the emotional basement we fall and also how to ascend out of it. But all readersespecially teachers, parents, and those in emergency professionswill find much to stimulate their thinking in this book, which contains everything anyone needs to know about overcoming trauma. Ill be recommending it to all of my colleagues.

PROFESSOR ISAAC ASHKENAZI , INTERNATIONAL EXPERT FOR CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP , BEN - GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

A beautifully written book that demonstrates the power of the human spirit.

ADAM BRAUN , New York Times BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF The Promise of a Pencil

Stranded on an island of unfathomable tragedy and profound despair in the days after she and her students survived the horror of the Sandy Hook murders, first-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis looked longingly at life proceeding on the mainland of normalcy. Choosing Hope is her moving account of how she returned to that mainland by promoting generosity and accessing faith and positive thinking. Readers who themselves are grieving may find comfort in Roig-DeBelliss story and her design for moving forward.

WALLY LAMB , New York Times BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF We Are Water AND Shes Come Undone

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Copyright 2015 by Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis

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Scripture quotation taken from the Good News Translation in Todays English Version, second edition 1992 by the American Bible Society.

Scripture quotation taken from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version) 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

The Paradoxical Commandments are reprinted with the permission of the author Kent M. Keith 1969, renewed 2001.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roig-DeBellis, Kaitlin.

Choosing hope : moving forward from lifes darkest hours / Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis with Robin Gaby Fisher.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-698-19359-8

1. Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre, Newtown, Conn., 2012. 2. School shootingsConnecticutNewtown. 3. Mental healing. 4. Psychic trauma. 5. Roig-DeBellis, Kaitlin. 6. TeachersConnecticutNewtownBiography. I. Fisher, Robin Gaby. II. Title.

LB3013.33.C8R64 2015 2015015834

371.782097469dc23

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

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This book is dedicated to anyone who ever has gone, ever will go, or is now going through their own darkest hour and to those who helped me through mine. I am eternally grateful to each of you.

All glory comes from daring to begin.

E UGENE F. W ARE , from the poem John Brown