The Lone Twin network on TV!

After many years, the Lone Twin Network now has a web site, and there is a movie on the web site of a TV programme about them.  Well worth watching. 




They have members who lost their twins at birth, but womb twin survivors are refereed to Womb Twin. They meet at various times of the year and share experiences.

Here is an interview worth listening to. David Elvy, whose twin died at birth and who is married to a twin himself,  suggests that parents should be honest with their sole surviving twins and not sweep the whole things aside. Well said, David!

This is their web site. There are some interesting stories. It's a nice idea, just meeting up with other lone twins for a chat over a cup of tea. maybe we should have meetings for womb twin survivors  in the same way. 

About Us

The Lone Twin Network is a support group run by and for lone twins, whose loss has occurred at or around birth, in childhood or during adulthood. Through twice yearly meetings and personal contact, we aim to offer a friendly and comfortable environment in which to talk openly and honestly about how it feels to be without your twin. You will find there is a wide variety of experiences and circumstances of loss within the members of the group - please remember, you are not alone. As we come to know each other through the meetings and network list, we will find mutual support. Some may wish to examine ways of increasing awareness of this profound and unique loss, so that those affected - both lone twins and those related to them - will be able to cope more easily and with greater understanding. We endeavour to help ease the pain of loss and loneliness that we all feel in some way, during our journey through this particular grief.

The feelings they describe - something missing, a feeling of intense loneliness - is exactly what womb twin survivors feel.  It doesnt seem to matter much when your twin died, the feelings are much the same.

If you are a womb twin survivor and you live in the UK and want to meet other lone twins, do go to one of their meetings - but only if your twin was stillborn or died close to birth.

Same sex attraction and the vanished twin (2)

Being gay is a problem, because it means you are different from other people and you are making unusual choices, like not fulfilling your genetic potential as a man or a woman, and that means having children and rearing them in a male- female household.   IT may be that being gay is also a choice, as was made clear by Cynthia Nixon, who said, "I have been straight and I have been gay but gay is better."
This caused quite a stir because   it is important politically that gay people are as such because they are made that way and the way they are made is not a matter of choice. An interesting debate.  But if we loo at it  from the point of view of womb twin survivors, we can see another influence at work - the bisexual.

How it is possible for there to be some genetic cause for bisexuality? The only way for that to be true is if you are a chimera, and have the DNA of a male and a female in your body.  Now we have discussed chimeras before and there is one type of DNA that dominates, so that for example if you are a chimera and you have the body of a man, complete with normal sexual equipment, you would be considered a man, and vice versa.

But a chimera is a womb twin survivor.  It goes something like this: (image from my new book)

two separate morulae,         one begins to disintegrate          the cells are combined.

So if you are a male with female DNA, what may that do to your sense of your own gender?  You may find yourself in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex and the relationship doesnt work so well because there are as it were two females in the marriage.  One way to redress the balance may be to be the "woman" in a  male-male partnership.  IF a male female chimera also had a twin of the same sex, then a same sex partnership with one party taking the opposite sex role would be the ideal way to balance out the gender energy. In my small experience of gay couples,  there are two people of the same sex but one behaves like the woman and one like the man.

This is a choice, made to balance out the inner energies. The question is,  would that couple be happier in a hetero sexual relationship? Maybe -  if they found a womb twin survivor with the  opposite balance of energies, and they would be able to compliment each other.  Like this:
(another image from my new book, which will have a chapter about balancing male and female energy)

Any thoughts, anyone? Comments welcomed.

Win a free copy of A Healing Path for Womb Twin Survivors

Same sex attraction and the vanished twin (1)

I have been thinking of how same sex attraction may be to do with being a womb twin survivor.  The first scenario is  a womb twin survivor whose womb twin was the same sex,  who finds another womb twin survivor of the same sex whose womb twin was also the same sex.

So the two people are deeply attracted to one another, in the way that many womb twin survivors are, because in each case the relationship in some way compensates for their prenatal loss. Now we must be clear what we mean here;  we are describing a deep love relationship that may or may not be expressed sexually.  Same sex attraction is not the same as homosexuality.  Many same-sex couples live together and have little difficulty remaining celibate, including among the clergy. Here is one example.

It is enough for them simply to be together, in a brother-sister dyad- just like a pair of same sex fraternal twins.

Freud gave us the idea of the Alter Ego, and he said that for some people they "Invest their libido in people who are like themselves". That sounds very much like a twin to me!

Why same sex attraction? Some people say it is a social thing:  The idea is that parents, or society in general somehow inculcate the idea of same sex attraction into children and young people.  If that is the case then single sex societies such as single sex schools would give more opportunities for same sex attraction to develop into some form of sexual behavior.  Clearly same sex schools would be attractive to teachers who like to keep company with people of the same sex, as would the armed forces, or some sports teams. It is not clear if being in such a group influences the individuals within it towards same sex attraction, or if a pre-existing latent tendency to fall in love with a member of the same sex is given more opportunity to be expressed.

In fact story after story makes clear that homosexual children often realise that they are attracted to the same sex at a very early age, by the age of 9 years or so, and that the biggest social problem they have is being honest about it. They have such a problem in fact that many of them resort to suicide out of sheer desperation.

Literature is peppered with cases of same sex couples who are not homosexual - take Sherlock Holmes and Watson for example.  In this article it says;

In One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, David Halperin discusses three male pairs from ancient texts (Achilles and Patroclus; Gilgamesh and Enkidu; David and Jonathan) noting that the first two pairs include socially accepted homoerotic desire, but arguing that the Biblical description of David and Jonathan's mutual attachment 'passing the love of women' should probably be read as meaning that their love is remarkable precisely because it does not have a sexual component. The ambiguity arises because one of the results of friendship's anomalous status is the absence of a vocabulary to describe it. 

I think we now have the vocabularly:  this is a healing bond between two womb twin survivors.

A healing bond restores the lost part of the self and makes both parties whole again.

What do you think?

A song for the co-dependent

Five musicians, one guitar. Quintuplets playing in perfect harmony......amazing!

It's the song of the relationship that was never going anywhere from the beginning. Doomed from the start. The classic womb twin survivor relationship scenario!




Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad that it was over

If you are in a co dependent relationship, you are trapped in your Dream of the Womb with someone who you want to stand in for your twin but they cant. Of course they leave you alone and the Dream comes true - again.

Need help with that?   My web site  could be a good place to start. 

Are you a co-dependent Valentine?

On this blog by Dave Jay,  a brilliant singer and song writer, we have the idea of the "Co-dependent" valentine.

Co dependency is very common among womb twin survivors.  They crave close intimate relationships, but they can allow them to last - in their Dream of the Womb the closest relationship they ever had didn't last.

Here are the words to this song:

©2009 Dave Jay Gerstein 

Be my co-dependent Valentine

I’ve all ready built a shrine to feeling unfulfilled

I swallow a heart-shaped bitter pill

Will ya be my co-dependent Valentine?

I need you so co-dependently

Without you here

There’s no me to speak of anywhere

The fun in dysfunction disappears

With our splendid co-dependent love affair

Hey!  I watch it drift away from a place where I can handle it

Wait!  Enable me a little more

Our therapist says to slip my check under her door…

God bless this livin’, breathin’, lovin’ mess

That we created with success

I guess we have to climb

The hopelessly copeless go sublime

I’m your moping co-dependent Valentine

Comments, anyone?

Borderline personality disorder - new statistics

I have been told that the psychological profile of a womb twin survivor as depicted on the quiz (try it for yourself) is far too general to be at all meaningful and by that analysis everyone would be a womb twin survivor.  At least some other people have been prepared to admit that this list of psychological symptoms is often found among people in therapy.  But I know I am onto something! But what?

Now I have been doing some more analysis  today of the 1200 questionnaires that were completed in the  2007-11 womb twin research project.  ( Tried it yet? It can be interesting to do.)  I was in search of a particular statistic about Borderline Personality Disorder and I was astonished at what I found.

Elvis Presley - a womb twin survivor

To be with  Jesse - the might-have-been.  Elvis had to be more than one person, to live for two!  He was bonded to his twin for life.




Feeling vulnerable - why am I alive? why do I have all this talent? What does it mean?

Do you worry that your life has a strange purpose, a mystery mission, that you don't understand?

I did - I always had a vague sense of an unfulfilled and mysterious mission, and I was unable to make sense of it until I realise that what I had to do was to write about womb twin survivors!  Now I know exactly what I am here to do, watch me go!!!

Elvis, a womb twin survivor with a dream

The sheer energy and desperation of Elvis, a womb twin survivor whose twin was dead at birth, is overwhelming. He lived for two, riven by guilt at being alive - how could he make his life meaningful?



Elvis had such incredible energy, that he wanted only to spread his energy about him - he would have made a good preacher, but maybe that is what he did in the course of his work in the music industry.

I am just sorry that he didn't have access to the wonderful healing therapies that exist today, he would be almost 80 years old now, but with a real understanding of how he could heal of this primal wound, he may have been still with us, and may have found some peace of mind at last.

Rest in peace, Elvis. You gave us so much, but it hurt you so deeply to give it so generously. We loved you.

If you feel that you should not be here, that it hurts you to be alive, come and join us and together we can heal this lifelong wound....

[ebook]

Try this healing path in 30 steps, for a start. Its a PDF ebook, available to download now.

Elvis Presley and his missing twin: part 2

In this part we see a little known side of Elvis, which is specific to the fact that he was once a twin. he was very interested in religion and spirituality.  Like so many other womb twin survivors, thought often of death and the meaning of life - of his life in particular.



Elvis was suffering from survivor guilt.  This was the pain he carried his whole life.  It was so hard for him to be alive; so many mysteries.  Are you a womb twin survivor too?  Does it feel the same for you?