Resilience And J.K Rowling

Resilience means knowing how to cope in spite of setbacks, or barriers, or limited resources. Resilience is a measure of how much you want something and how much you are willing, and able, to overcome obstacles to get it. Good morning/afternoon College Leadership Team, today I will be talking to you about J. K Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series and a resilient woman. J. K Rowling is resilient because she has overcome many difficulties throughout her life. She would make an excellent role model for our girls as she can relate to us as she has experienced mental health issues which are becoming more prominent is our society today. The three key points I will be discussing are, what challenges she faced, how she overcame them and how she has used her fame and fortune to help others. Hopefully this will convince you to consider asking her to come and address our college about her inspiring journey.

J. K Rowling has faced many adversities in her life. When she was a teenager, her mother was diagnosed with MS, a condition that affects the nervous system. Rowling said that this diagnosis has an enormous effect on her family life (Flood, A 2014). Anne Rowling then died in December 1990 when Rowling was 25 years old. This affected her greatly as she was very close with her mother and missed out on the opportunity to tell her about her idea for Harry Potter. Another difficulty that J. K Rowling has endured during her life is an unhappy marriage, which led to divorce from her husband Jorge Arantes. She described their marriage as “Short and really quite catastrophic'(Clifton, E, 2018). Rowling took custody of her daughter and had to live off welfare benefits. Rowling also became clinically depressed after the divorce and death of her mother, mainly due to her lack of employment and the struggle of raising a daughter alone. She describes in her speech at Harvard that, “I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless,” (Bausells, M, 2015). These are only some of the adversities that Rowling has faced throughout her lifetime, which have helped shape her into the strong, resilient woman she is today. She would be an inspirational role model for the girls at St pat’s because of her ability to cope with challenges and setbacks.

J. K Rowling has overcome many difficulties and was able to move forward and become stronger. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series, which became a globally read book series and was eventually made into an entire movie franchise When Rowling first wrote Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone it was rejected by 12 different publishers. J. K Rowling showed resilience when she continued searching for publishers, not giving up no matter how many times people said no. The book was eventually picked up by Bloomsbury and published in June 1997. The publication of these books helped Rowling earn money for herself and her daughter, Jessica. This ensured that she was able to stop depending on government welfare and support herself. J. K Rowling has shown resilience in the way she managed to survive her depression. “It is widely documented that Rowling based the terrifying Dementors on the feelings and effects that she experienced during her depression”. She created the dementors when she first became depressed, outputting her emotions into the book. Because of Rowling’s ability to overcome challenges and be resilient, she would make an excellent choice as a guest speaker for our school. J. K Rowling was able to overcome the many difficultie that she had faced in her life. This makes her resilient. J. K Rowling’s perseverance when faced with challenges makes her a role model to inspire the young women of St Pat’s.

By facing and overcoming adversities, J. K Rowling has proven herself to be a resilient person. She is a resilient and strong-willed woman. Rowling continued with her book series and became rich even after many people told her she would not succeed. However, she uses her money and fame to help other who are going through similar circumstances that she did. Due to all the challenges she faced when coming out of poverty into fame after the release of her books, she decided to give back to the less fortunate through various charity works. In her 2008 Harvard commencement speech, she said; “Poverty is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. ” Rowling faced poverty throughout her life and due to this she has gone out of her way to help various charities which deal with helping those in poverty. In 2004, she made the Forbes Billionaire List an dropped off it in 2012 because she had donated an estimate of $160 million to various charities. St Patrick’s as a community takes part in many fundraising and charity events, like the vinnies sleepout and our various house charities. I personally believe that Inviting J. K Rowling to one such event would be inspirational to the students, motivating them to take part in charity works themselves. J. K Rowling is also the co-founder of a charity; Lumos, which is a non-profit organisation that aims to end the institutionalisation of children.

J. K Rowling has proven herself to be resilient through the struggles she has faced throughout her life. She has dealt with many adversities, come out of difficult situations stronger than she was before them and has proved her resilience time and time again. Rowling has faced the loss of a parent, an unhappy marriage, and depression, and still demonstrates resilience every day. I believe that J. K Rowling would be an excellent guest speaker, and role model, for the young women of our school to look up to not only because of the success of her books, but for her ability to overcome depression, failure and setbacks.