By Author’s Note: I wrote this many years ago on my personal, private, Facebook as a note. I posted it on this blog on November 13, 2019. Well before JK Rowling’s awful transphobic comments in June 2020. I still have all my Potter books and the movies I purchased before those comments as well. I love the Potter Series/movies, but I don’t condone her comments in any way. This blog is/has/will always be a safe space where everybody is valid, valued, seen, loved, and respected. ~Stacey
I was late to the Harry Potter party. I read the first novel in 2001. I asked for it for Christmas, that year and I couldn’t put it down. The reason has nothing to do with magic. I identified with Harry and Hermione so much. I identified, with Harry because I never felt like I belonged. I’m far from an orphan. However, I never felt like I belonged in my every school I attended. I was the weirdo, quiet and shy, who had a condition she didn’t do anything to get or want. I was very much like Hermione: smart and driven. Very few people took the time to really get to know me or ask questions. I was bullied, all the time, like Harry and Hermione. Like both of them, I had help from my friends, who became my family, too. We stood together. We still do. We ALWAYS will.
Whatever comes: We’ll get through it together. Together makes thriving much easier and probable. Over the years my chosen family has expanded to include more brothers and sisters who push my expectations for myself and for what we can accomplish together in the world. Every day with everything we do, in our in various vocations, I can’t help but remember Dumbledore’s words to Harry in the Goblet of Fire: “…[We] must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” My siblings help me make the right choice most of the time. When I don’t and/or I don’t ask for their help: they still love me. They encourage me to try again next time an opportunity presents itself. I do the same for them. We’re making the world better. Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We are…Together.
