Harry Potter and The Girl Who Lived

I’ve had a deep love of stories ever since I can remember. Growing up in an abusive home where I felt alone and ostracized almost 100% of the time, books were a way to whisk myself away into a far off world where my worries ceased to exist. I would be confined to my room for hours upon hours, and I would spend that time turning pages like they were too hot to touch. Not one story I’ve read has ever touched me more than Harry Potter. 

I liked Harry before it was mainstream to like Harry. My mom bought the first edition of the Sorcerer’s Stone from Sam’s Club with the audio tape reading when I was in the 1st grade, 1999. I was only 6 years old, but my mom was always getting whatever the magazines told her was the next popular thing. Little did I know that she was handing me one of the most important possessions of my life.

Of course I didn’t start to read it then, the material was too heavy. When my third year of school came, and I was grounded to my room for something I didn’t do. I wasn’t allowed outside of my room without express permission, all of my toys and entertainment were removed, and I was left with nothing but darkness, my lamp from my desk, and my books. I picked up Harry, and I never put him down again. 

For years afterwards I was told how ‘beyond my age’ I was to read a book like Harry Potter when I did. But Harry made me feel understood; here was another kid around my age being abused and treated like a pest by his family members, being either shunned or the topic of conversation at school because he was different, all while dealing with traumas and psychological turmoil that none of his classmates could imagine in their wildest nightmares. I may have not been being hunted down by Voldemort, but I certainly knew a thing or two about psychological abuse. 

The first movie came out in 2004, the day after my 10th birthday. I begged and begged my mom for a Harry Potter themed birthday party and she obliged, taking me to Bed Bath and Beyond to get fancy bottles for potion making and a new Harry Potter pillow for my bed, and on that Friday November 14, my mom and I, and a few of my girlfriends went to see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I remember seeing Harry receive his birthday cake from Hagrid and thinking how damn cool it was that we were turning 10 almost at the same time. To me, it felt like destiny, that Harry Potter and I were intertwined somehow. It was the best birthday I ever had, only topped by my husband surprising me with a skydiving trip over the Grand.Canyon a few years ago.

I continued to read the books voraciously, gobbling them up chapter by chapter. My mother supported my reading habit for a few reasons. She always wanted me to have a ‘studious but preppy’ image. Everything was always about the way I looked, which was a direct reflection on how she looked, so me not only reading but reading such a popular series was a positive image point for her. I remember by the time the 6th book came out, it was so popular I had to wait almost 2 nail biting months to get my hands on it because every bookstore was sold out. I didn’t make that same mistake with the 7th and final book, and I preordered it the day that it was announced.

I remember the day I received The Deathly Hallows in late 2007. I thought it was so cool to be getting the book before anyone else, on the day of release, and the Barnes and Nobles label on the shipping box in my hand made me rattle with excitement. 

Y’all when I tell you guys that I read 607 pages in a little less than 3 days, I’m not exaggerating. I barely slept, I stayed up all hours of the night unable to peel my eyes away from what was unfolding next. I remember laying in my bed at 2am, darkness outside my window, as I read the scene where Harry and Hermoine visit The Potters’ graves in Godrick’s Hollow on Christmas Eve. I remember reading the description of Hermoine conjuring the wreath around the headstones, and the deep loneliness and pain Harry felt. By this point I had lost my relationship with my dad due to arguments with my mom about visitation and child support, and my mom and my stepdad were going through a pretty nasty divorce. I certainly felt like I knew what he was feeling, and I had never felt that much solidarity with a literary character before.

I can still see myself sitting on the long, curved pink couch we used to have huddled around a glass table. It sat in the nook outside of our kitchen at the base of a big bay window looking out over the backyard pool. The sunlight was shining through and into my lap as I came to the part in the story where JK cruelly convinced us that Voldemort won, and Harry had died.

I damaged the pages of my beloved book due to the amount of tears I cried, deep sobs as I thought that this beautiful journey I had traveled with Harry had come to a brutal and abrupt end, like so many other things in my life at the time. 

2 chapters later, of course, it’s revealed to us that Harry is alive and he will, in fact, triumph over Voldemort. I was beside myself with joy, and it reinstalled in me the idea of hope, and that I could also persevere and triumph through the tumultuous events I was experiencing. 

Three months later, that house with the big bay window would foreclose. My mother put everything in our house up for sale on Craigslist. For weeks I watched stranger after stranger walk through our almost million dollar home and pick out the paintings on the walls, the rugs on the ground, the knick knacks on the shelves, and even the little pink couch that I adored so much. 

This chapter of my life closed, and I didn’t feel emotionally connected to Harry Potter in the same way again. I remember being frustrated with the movies, as good as they were. I hated how commercialized he’d become, and I didn’t feel emotionally inspired by the movies in the same ways I did when I read the books. But I think by that time in my life (my mid to late teens) I had already begun numbing those feelings that made me feel connected to Harry in the first place. 

I ended up leaving my mother's abusive home at 18 in a blaze of glory. I never looked back. Over the years she gave me some of my possessions back that I’d left behind, a little at a time. She brought all of the childhood books I’d collected over the years. But she never gave me what she new I wanted more than anything: my first edition Harry Potter books. I’m not sure why she kept them. Maybe to spite me or maybe because she couldn’t give me something that now has so much monetary value. We ended our relationship 3 years ago, so I’m sure I won’t be seeing those books again. But hey, who knows what time has in store.

Now I sit here and type this at 29 years old, many years after first reading those wonderful books. I watched all of the movies in order with my 8 year old daughter for the first time a few months ago, and she fell in love. She went to her school library the next day to find the books, but the librarian would not give them to her and said they were above her age level. Her Christmas letter to Santa a month later was filled with “Harry Potter toys, Harry Potter clothes, Harry Potter movies, Harry Potter books, and all things Harry Potter”

Little does she know that she’ll be unwrapping her very own set of Harry Potter books on Christmas morning. I can’t even put into words how much joy it brings me to be giving my daughter this gift, to share these stories with her. A healing balm for all of the years I spent feeling like the boy under the stairs. 

This was taken in October 2021. I didn't know that
a little less than a month later, I would leave this job
that I have loved for the last 5 years. I've confronted
so many parts of myself over these last several months
and the part of me that connects with Harry will always
be with me, reminding me what I'm capable of

This was the first time I had watched the movies since I was a teenager and it was a much more emotional experience than I expected. Adult me who has gone through years of therapy, healing and acceptance could see so many more similarities between Harry and I, similarities I didn’t see my first time through these stories. 

When Harry loses Sirius at the end of The Order of the Phoenix, I cried like a baby. I didn’t react that way when I was younger, and I think that’s because younger me became very used to losing people, it was nothing new. And that realization and acceptance just made me cry more. 

Harry was abandoned over and over again, until he became his own hero in the end. There were so many moments where he expected other people to step up, have his back, save him in a way. And every time he was faced with loss, and put back on his own laurels to figure it out. He made his own family out of the friendships he forged. He found his own strength to overcome Voldemort every single time, whether there was help available or not.

Living in an abusive home felt like living in that constant state of survival. Harry felt like proof that I could persevere. That my roots and the traumas I’d suffered would not hold me back. 

Maybe J.K. Rowling is a fantastical mind that came up with this story all on her own, but I have a feeling there’s more to the tale. Stories like Harry’s that transcend time and relevance because of their timeless themes of love, friendship, and good vs evil, I believe are direct gifts from another spiritual realm. The writer is simply a conduit for a story that is meant to be brought to this earthly plane, meant to touch millions of people around the world who are in desperate need of hope and solidarity. I mean, J.K. first had the idea for Harry Potter when she was napping on her train ride home, and she dreamed the ending. 

However it came to be, the story of Harry Potter touched downtrodden people everywhere. And the teenager who was resentful that so many people loved the story she felt possessive over, now feels so deeply touched and elated that it is celebrated all around the world. 

Happy anniversary to a literary piece of art that carried me through some of the darkest times of my life. You will always serve as my reminder of where I came from, what I’ve conquered, and just how much of a powerful warrior I am ⚡️

My daughter's 2021 Halloween costume. ❤️