I have to admit that I am not a Harry Potter fan. I have an 8-year-old and we’ve already seen the first movie and I am sure the others will come in time. I will set and watch them like a good mom, but it really isn’t my favorite as far as movie genres.
But, I have a lot of respect for author J.K. Rowling. She has said her home life was not easy when she was growing up, she was refused admission to Oxford University, and her mother suffered from multiple sclerosis for ten years before dying from the disease. Rowling’s first marriage to Jorge Arantes ended a little over a year after it began (amidst rumors of abuse) and Rowling was left a single parent of her daughter. She had started writing the first novel in her “Harry Potter” series, but she was a jobless, single parent. She felt like a failure when she found herself so poor that she had to sign up for welfare benefits. Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression and said she even thought of suicide.
Despite all the odds against her, she finished “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” in 1995 – on a typewriter! It was easy street after that. The Harry Potter brand (which includes seven novels) is now worth an estimated $15 billion worldwide and Rowling never has to worry about being poor again.
This week, she has found herself unceremoniously removed from the billionaire list for one rest – her generosity. She has given away so much of her wealth – an estimated $160 million – that now she is no longer a billionaire. She has donated around $16 million alone to a multiple sclerosis research clinic to help fight the disease that took her mother from her. She also established the Volant Charitable Trust, which helps fight poverty, in 2000. She is president of Gingerbread, a UK charity that supports single parents and she helped found Lumos, which helps underprivileged children throughout Europe.
I especially love Rowling’s quote about giving back – “I think you have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently.”