Monday, July 13, 2009

The first quote

I am working through the 43 stories looking for useful quotes. This from "Ana".

This is all so speculative and unsubstantiated and, though I know that it is the only way to speak about what may end up being one of the most important things in this life, it still feels a bit funny at the moment.

Ultimately, this discovery has been very exciting and gratifying and validating for me. Thanks for being part of it and giving people the venue for expressing related things that must be expressed but that cannot necessarily be grasped cerebrally.

This kind of thing gets me out of bed in the morning. This what this book will be for - to put words to the Dream of the Womb.

So it begins...

Well, I have at last after seven years begun what I have come to call "The magnum opus" - the Great task.
  • I have 4 gigobytes of computer files on the subject of wombtwin survivors
  • I have seven large ring binders of papers
  • I have 500 completed questionnaires, about half of them with a story
  • I have 43 wonderful people who have agreed for me to quote anonymously from their story.
  • I have articles on various aspects of being a wombtwin survivor, all referenced.
  • I have 350 references already in my Endnote library
  • I have time, energy, commitment (not to say obsession!) and about 9 months.

Can I do it? Can I bring to birth the Book of the Wombtwin project?

Working title: "Wombtwin Survivors: the Lost Twin in the Dream of the Womb."

Encouraging comments, please!


Friday, June 26, 2009

Michael Jackson: wombtwin survivor?

So, farewell, Michael. Some said you were weird, but many people loved you. I am sure that you were a wombtwin survivor, and I often wondered what may have happened if I had been able to tell you that you were not crazy or weird but simply a perfectly normal wombtwin survivor. Certainly you were a contradictory character - like so many wombtwin survivors, who live out two lives in one.

On the Alpha side there was the confident, glittering star dancer:- a King of Rock to rival Elvis Presley (also a wombtwin survivor, only his twin died at birth), Michael the star dancer was and still is loved by millions of fans and massed a vast fortune.
But on the Beta side there was the abused, gentle, hurting and extremely lonely man.

On the Alpha side there once was an extremely handsome dark-skinned youth.
But on the Beta side for many years there was a hideous, white-faced androgynous figure with long hair, a travesty of a female.

On the Alpha side there was male energy - professionalism, vigour, creativity, the BAD man in leather with a desire to father children.
On the Beta side there was female energy - quiet, sweet gentleness, the long-haired saviour, with a desire to comfort children, give them toys, make them a special play space and spend time with them.

The Alpha side of Michael Jackson has been gradually destroyed by his own choices and actions. His vast fortune has been squandered, the handsome youth is long gone, destroyed by self-destructive plastic surgery. His terror of death and decay, which revealed itself in his desire for immortality, has at last brought about the one thing that was most feared. He has now sadly died, and long before his time.

But this path of self-destruction is so often a wombtwin survivor's story. It sounds crazy, if not insane, to throw your life away, waste your talents, destroy what is good and healthy in you and replace it with a total commitment to a secret and subtle slow forms of suicide, such as overdosing on alcohol, tobacco, food, drugs, extreme sports, reckless driving and so on.

Wombtwin survivors tend to live a life of self-sabotage and some of them sabotage themselves to death. Now there is no sign that Michael Jackson died at his own hand, but the signs of the self-destructive wombtwin survivor would have been there to be seen, if we had only known how to look for them. Sadly, no one - not Michael himself, or his family, his friends, his children or his colleagues, knew what was wrong. Michael's brother is a wombtwin survivor, but that was all we knew. Sadly also, the Wombtwin Survivor project had not yet come to the notice of professionals, who may then have been able to help.

What a different life he would have had if he became aware that, long before he was born, there was once a little twin sister who died - being too sick to come to birth - leaving him as the loneliest man in the world, and prepared to sacrifice everything to keep this half-acknowledged little female figure somehow alive in his life. He ignored the scorn of the public as he gradually destroyed his own handsome male face; he tried so desperately to stay young, to never grow up, never grow old and start to decay, that he now has his greatest wish. He truly is now immortal and will never die. The world will never forget Michael Jackson. Like Elvis, he will be forever young.

He will always be the glittering star who has for so long been bleeding inside, with a grief he obviously never understood.

Wombtwin survivors spend their lives re-enacting the life and death of their wombtwin. Nothing, not even life itself, is more important than that.

Rest in peace, Michael.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Wombtwin workshops (2) Belgium

By means of the Eurostar train from St Pancras in London I discovered how near Belgium is. At the workshop venue, which is a therapy centre North of Gent, I also made a whole lot of new friends.

This was a group made up almost entirely of wombtwin survivors- a strange situation for those two who were not, among so many who were!

I found that the powerpoint presentation is certainly too detailed for a group of wombtwin survivors- they wanted a quick run through and to get on with the exercises. When we did start, I did something unusual: I divided the group according to whether they were identical fraternal or they werent sure - like a bit of both. Two were not sure if they were wombtwin survivors at all. I then asked each group to discuss what major psychological difficulties they shared, and it was differeht for each group. The fraternals had feelings of abandonment, the identicals problems with the Alpha and Beta twin and how that script was appearing in their lives, and the multiples wondered about the balance of gender energy within each one.

There are some exercises that seem to work well now I have had a chance to try them out: in one I make a circle of black cloth and this is the Black Hole, and they have to stand in the black hole and see how it feels and discuss how they are to get out of it and what would help. That does seem to clarify things for them.

I had a translator for the first day but the second day when we talked about the healing path and things were more difficult I asked that they use their own language and not keep translating for me. This seemed to help. We comunictaed well with little tips and simple suggestions and of course a hug at the end!

There was a substantial donation for wombtwin.com by the end of the weekend which I took in lieu of a fee. I took out the travel cost and handed the rest back to them and suggested that they open a bank account for their new organisation-to-be, "Wombtwin.be." This I hope will be the first of many such sister organisations, allied to wombtwin.com simply by the word WOMBTWIN in the title, using the same logo and having the same aims. I dont mind running the UK operation but I cant run the whole world! If the Belgian organisatioin takes off soon we will learn how to do this in the simplest and best way, and this will I hope provide a lead to others.

Any readers interested in setting up a local Wombtwin organisation in an other country of Europe or North America?

wombtwin workshops ( 1) PORTUGAL

Well, a bit of a gap in these postings but it has been busy in May!

To start with, a series of workshops in Portugal. I learned more about how to balance the presentation, rich in medical detail about the lost twin and also showing some of the research results to far, and the group workshops, which allow people to contact their feelings about their own lost twin and begin to find a way forward.

It seems to depend on the audience: if there is a room full of wombtwin survivors, they will probably be anxious to get on with a workshop, but if there are a lot of psychologists, social workers etc who are not wombtwin survivors themselves ( or if they are they dont want to consider that possibility) then they will be happy to stay theoretical. At the workshop in Lisbon this became clear: we stayed theoretical because there were not all that many wombtwin survivors, but we did have some time for exercises - emptiness; being alone; being abandoned.... among other things. The exercises ended up as a kind of dramatherapy mixed with dance and ritual-I make it up as I go along because this is something we have to explore intuitively rather than be too proscriptive. The survivors found it helpful and the observers were amazed at the strength of the feelings engendered by the exercises- it would seem to be good for both groups to mix them, after all.

The main idea that came forward from this delightful weekend with wonderful people was to help the young children who are wombtwin survivors. We heard a seven year old tell the story of her own lost twin in simple ideas and words, and this seems to be the perfect thing to do: to make a simple story book with lovely colourful images using this simple story.

We know that wombtwin survivors benefit from knowing why they feel as they do, but its very hard for parents to broach the subject with their child. A story book would seem to be the answer. Claudia (who will be known to you from the forum) is masterminding this project, so comments please either here or on the forum.

Friday, May 08, 2009

A new book

Dr Brent Babcock has written a book about his healing journey as a wombtwin survivor.  He told me today and I went to take a look.

Here is is on his new website www.vanishingtwin.com

Here is how to view and order the book via Tate Publishing  click here


My Twin Vanished: Did Yours?
The Vanishing Twin Crisis
by Dr. Brent H. Babcock

"The deepest imprinting for the personality of a human develops in the womb. It is a little-known fact that one out of eight single births began as twins. Saddled with the loss of this ultimate relationship even before birth, tens of millions of Americans have gone in search of that relationship. In their searches, they become lost in dysfunctional cycles of addiction, abuse, sickness, mental illness, or suicide, without even knowing why. In My Twin Vanished, Dr. Brent Babcock shows that these painful and dysfunctional patterns can be traced back to the phenomenon of the vanished twin. This life-altering book connects the dots to life's questions for those who have been seeking answers without relief. Doctors, nurses, clergy, and counselors will find new understanding and answers in My Twin Vanished, as will all who unknowingly are surviving twins."

I am so glad. With 600,000,000 wombtwin survivors in the world we cant have enough books n this subject!