‘Why are you reading those, they’re just children books’
I once said to my late friend Bex Lewis about 7 years ago, and then I sat with her and watched a scene of one of the films, one with dementors in, I think. Fast forward a few years and my daughter Anna proposed that we watch the films as part of what was a family tradition then, movie night. I think I fell asleep in some of them, maybe all.
At the age of 43 I have just finished reading the Harry Potter books for the first time.
It was as if I wasn’t ready to see what I needed to see in them.
At the weekend I finished reading the last book of the Harry Potter series. Its taken me 18 months to read them all.
On one hand Harry Potter has accompanied me through the time of the Pandemic, so far. It has also accompanied me as I have processed significant family abuse and also the death of my grandmother last year.
I remember once reading that JK Rowling grew up as Harry grew and developed in her own writing of the novels, to me there is no doubt that Harry undergoes significant internal processing and healing throughout the books, in a way that I didn’t encounter in other mythical hero stories such as Lord of the Rings or Narnia.
What I saw in Harry was a boy who struggled to express the truth in the face of his abusers – and yet when he was able to it was no relief, it was exhausting.
What I saw in Harry was a co-dependent child who suffered physical and neglectful abuse – who was desperate to please, and had instincts to be the hero – a default that those who were evil could manipulate.
What I saw in Harry was that not everyone experiences Trauma the same, I think the Boggarts in the wardrobe is a fascinating section.
What I saw in Harry was someone who understood what it was like to grow up alone, and to have to grow up fast in that space.
What I saw in Harry Potter was also stuff about friendship, power, structures, rules and community.
So it isn’t ‘just’ a children book – but you all knew this already.
Its a myth, a parable, a story, its a healing story that I believe could only be written by someone who had experience of abuse, from family, and relationships, someone who describes what narcissistic behaviour looks, and feels like
The air felt cold and lifeless, as if it had everything sucked out of it
I thought reading Harry Potter would be the relaxing read to partner with reading the self help books and undergoing trauma therapy. What it was actually was, was a story that revealed what I needed to heal from.
Maybe its me and that I struggle to stop thinking – or maybe its that I identified with Harry from virtually the first page. It wasnt far into the second book when the extent of the emotional neglect I experienced as a child was beginning to be revealed to me. I could see myself as Harry in a way that I had never identified with the Hobbits, or Edward or Peter as they looked in the wardrobe.
I wrote in a previous pieces about how I began to feel that the universe was calling and directing the process of healing in me, especially in being open to see them, some of those healing particles were discovered in the Harry Potter series.
David Macadams writes that we adopt stores to live our lives by, setting ourselves into a narrative that causes us to have purpose and identity.
Karen Armstrong writes that we are mythical beings and that the literary writers of the last 150 years have been those who have engaged our mythical nature in a way that the religious stories of our historic past have been reduced to moral making.
I wouldn’t say that reading Harry Potter was a healing experience, by the time I finished the last one I was drained and exhausted. But what it did do was help me see. There is great power in story, as it weaves its magic wand to reveal its mysteries.
I was reminded about how fearful some parts of the church were/are about Harry Potter. Its unlikely that the reasons for this were from a position of having not read it. For, its not the magic that evangelicals should fear, its that churches and structures are revealed in the story to be manipulated, controlling and abusive. Its the magic that overcomes, a deeper magic. Its a book about revealing the truth, about revealing abuse.
But its also a book that reinforces the view that children are still alone. Adults fleeting offer a combination of support (Mrs Weasley) , fun (Hagrid), wisdom (Dumbledore, and in a lesser way McConagall), paternal substitute (Sirius) , but in the face of the many struggles to overcome, none are ultimately comepletely effective, responsible, true, or fair. Maybe that is the point, maybe that’s the reality, but it does cause me to question where children and young people might find, and see models and examples of responsible, protective, emotionally healthy adults in their lives. They see glimpses of it in Harry Potter, and clues are given away by those adults to offer glimpses, but in the main the three (and the other supporting children, Ginny, Henry, George, Luna, Seamus, Neville etc) are those who have to put the complete jigsaw together, and have the agency on them to overcome. Then again, if there was such a character, there would be no need for Harry, Ron and Hermione to have to do what they had to do.
At times reading Harry Potter I felt extraordinarily emotional. I think I cried on a number of occasions, I was also triggered at times too. All of that is a good thing. Stories have the power to reveal, and to heal.
What fiction has done for me during the process of healing has continued to open up my heart. Thats the power of the story. I might be able to intellectually understand the abuse I suffer from reading the books and the case studies. This is undoubtedly helpful. But Stories, like Harry Potter, and also Matilda have been as instrumental too.
References:
Karen Armstrong: A Short History of Myth, 2018
David MaCadams, The Stories we live by, 1996
The Harry Potter Series, JK Rowling, Bloomsbury Books.
James Ballantyne 