10 years ago today the final Harry Potter (The Deathly Hollows) book was published. I was in Moscow and was DESPERATE to find it in English so I could devour it on my insanely long plane ride home. I walked all over the city checking bookstores (I did not have a functional cell phone and had limited internet access – remember those days ?!? and YES I did get lost. more than once) and I. was. determined. Finally, I saw the book in the window (in cyrillic of course) and ran inside and there it was. In English.  I will never forget the feeling I had picking it up, holding it to my chest, inhaling that new book smell, and knowing that what I held in my hands was the end to an era. That as desperately bad as I wanted to read the end of the story, how heartbroken I would be to read that last sentence — the word that would close the chapter to my childhood.

I will never forget how Harry Potter found me. In grade school, once a week we had a library day where we had to check out a book. I loved this. However, I had a very good friend who was not into reading (hey Salina!! 😉 ) and she grabbed a book because she had to, then handed it to me asking if I wanted to read it. It was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I shrugged and took it, and I would never look back. I read that third book first and although yes, it was a bit confusing, I was IN LOVE. I quickly checked out the first two and finished them in the same week. But what now? There were no more! This started my love affair with fantasy. I read SO many other series waiting for each Harry Potter book to come out. The list is staggering.

Up until that muggy summer in Moscow in 2007, Harry Potter was an integral part of my youth. I could not imagine life without the anticipation of the next book. I cracked that book on the plane and had to slow myself – I was reading SO fast and my heart was racing. But I had to slow down, I had 10+ hours and was stuck in the middle of an approximately 7 person aisle. I took a deep breath and  read every sentence and every word as if it was giving me oxygen. I still finished it on that plane before I got to Chicago. I felt a deep sense of sadness. The way you feel when your favorite tv show comes to an end after 7 seasons (cough cough Gilmore Girls) or when your child has his last day of preschool (waahhhhh he starts KINDERGARTEN next month!).

I cannot put into words what this world of magic did for me during those pivotal years of my life that I spent feeling out of place and unsure of who I was. It was a world where nothing was as it seemed and kindness and courage mattered more than anything. It encouraged love, inclusiveness, condemned racism and lauded perseverance and differences. It taught me that I could find beauty and magic in the world around me (“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.”)  That I was lucky beyond words to have my family and the kind of inherent love that many did not. To be kind because you never knew what the person next to you had experienced or the battles they were fighting. Most of all, it taught me that I could be whoever I wanted to be if it was important enough to fight for.

I have never stopped fighting to be that girl, and I never will <3