Womb Twin Survivors

Poverty is so much more than a lack of money. It is also about hopelessness. It is about living an empty and meaningless existence, knowing that this is how it always must be. If we are to help the poor financially, we must first eliminate those who are potentially able to support themselves. In my view, the most comprehensive and possibly the most accurate definition of poverty is spiritual rather than economic. We cannot sure spiritual poverty with money.

Spiritual poverty has nothing to do with material needs, but with a sense of existential emptiness. Surrounded by the trappings of a wealthy life, the poor rich people of this country wait for the happy life and the inner joy which the advertisements promise. This eludes them always and sends them in search of still more riches. As long as we believe that happiness is a cigar, we will never find true happiness.

Mable, now in her eighties, does not consider herself poor. She lived through poverty and privation in the war, and lost everything in the blitz. She now lives in a warm and comfortable retirement home with every comfort provided, but she misses still the closeness of a supportive group of friends, many of whom have now died. She tells me that happiness and richness are not about getting what you want, but wanting what you get. Her childhood was difficult, but she accepted her lot and did not waste energy in regrets and yearning for some golden age of the past. Instead, she coped with what was around her. She worked hard and looked after her friends, who in turn looked after her. She never married but is rarely, if ever, alone. In her new life in the retirement home she makes little trinkets and crochets woolen rugs to raise money for the home. She is dying of a heart condition but says she welcomes every morning “as a gift from God.”

Mary, now in her seventies, was fostered by her grandmother as a child but as a result had a better life than her three siblings who grew up in the difficult family home. She is well aware of this and claims that she was “spoiled”. She had a good job and a busy social life but ended up as a drug addict. She over came this habit and became an alcoholic for many years. She never married. She still suffers from depression and a feeling of being abandoned. She lives in a warm retirement home with every need provided but she and suffers from arthritis. As it is painful to walk, she stays alone in her room, mostly lying in bed. She wants to die because her life is not worth living, and she greets every morning with a sigh, as yet another empty day of a meaningless existence.

Now the question is: to what extent is Mable’s peace of mind and Mary’s depression a personal choice? In other words, to what extent was Mable’s poor childhood inflicted upon her and to what extent did she create it? There is no doubt that no individual can force a bomb to destroy a house. This is an unfortunate event. But to what extent is Mary’s sense of emptiness a personal choice? She isolates herself in her room and is brusque and rather unfriendly with her carers. She eats badly, never exercises and does little more than complain. However when she is in a good mood she is funny and highly intelligent: one gets the impression of unrealised potential, a wasted life.

There is a relatively new area of psychological research that concentrates on the pre-birth experience. This work is based on the idea that the human brain is active in the embryo and a 27-day embryo has a brain and a beating heart. This means that everything that ever happened to an individual is available at some level, somewhere within the central nervous system. Now the earliest parts of the brain respond at the most primitive level, and indeed prenatal psychotherapists do find that this pre-birth experience is very primitive and vague - often totally incoherent and confused.

An exception to this is when the individual is born as a sole surviving twin, whose twin died at birth or before. These people are known as “wombtwin survivors”. Recent research suggests that wombtwin survivors may experience, at a vague and primitive level, some sense of their missing twin. Furthermore, that sense of something missing is played out in adult life. The survivor lives out a mirror image of their twin’s short life. They do not develop to their full potential; they feel that somehow they are not really here or they do not exist. They do not embrace a full adult existence but remain child-like, immature and dependent.

They are in reality the stronger one of the twin pair, but they are far too closely identified with their poor little lost twin to recognise this. They remain only shadows of what they could be - poor little lost creatures, wandering friendless and alone in a hostile and unfriendly world.

They are today’s poor, living in a world of plenty. They choose to be blind to opportunities for growth and their own great potential, but at the deepest possible level they are following a high moral ideal.

Wombtwin survivors spend their lives re-enacting the life and death of their own wombtwin. Nothing - not riches, success or even life itself- is more important than that. This is the rational, intelligent and loving reason why some poor people insist on remaining poor, refusing or sabotaging all offers of help. They are not stupid or inadequate; they are deeply in love with Someone who was once there, in the closest possible human relationship, but has gone missing. If the surviving twin makes sure he lives half a life and dies prematurely, there seems to that person to be a kind of rough justice in doing that.

If we are to legislate ways to help the poor, we must first find ways to identify the willing poor, who are the wombtwin survivors. Research is continuing into ways to discover who are the wombtwin survivors in this country and abroad. To know that you are a surviving twin can be a huge relief; to know that because of this you are sabotaging your life is a great blessing and a trigger to new growth.

This simple piece of information could help to identify those poor people who need therapeutic help from those poor people who have been unfortunate and only need a bit of a helping hand to get on their feet again.

Althea

(Comments welcomed!)