Multiples: Female energy in a narcissistic man - Michael Jackson

In this series of images,  you can see clearly how Michael Jackson, originally a black boy, turned himself into a pale woman.  As he changed his skin colour and his hairstyle, he gradually gave expression to the female energy in himself.

Multiple womb twin survivors - exaggerated responses

Multiple womb twin survivors can be rather histrionic in the way they express their feelings. They can go "over the top" with emotions. They may weep excessively at a film that leaves others just a bit tearful; they may get terribly hurt by a small slight or be very easily provoked into anger. As babies they may cry a lot about nothing; as toddlers they may be afraid of being left alone, especially in the dark. As children they may suddenly become withdrawn and feel a dark mood of despair, or fear of death coming upon them for no particular reason. They may be described as "moody". As teenagers they may hide away weeping for hours for some invented reason, not really knowing why. As adults they may be plunged into "black dog" depression that comes and goes with no apparent cause. The whole demeanour of DZ womb twin survivors changes with their moods, which can oscillate wildly between despair / rage and loud laughter / joy over a short period of time.

IVF and multiples: the lifetime effects of "vanishing twins"

An Australian radio programme, broadcast in August but which I found today, includes a study of hundreds of thousands of pregnant women, tracing the events in pregnancy as related to health risks later.
The issues covered in this programme include obesity and how that is related to your mother's pregnancy, particularly in the early months.

Most importantly, the risk of birth defects in a single baby from an IVF cycle was found to be higher.  Womb twin survivors are three times more likely to have birth defects than babies who never had a twin. It is interesting that this is the last thing that advocates of multi-fetal pregnancy will mention, of course, let alone the psychological effects on the sole survivor, which we know so well......

Listen now

Multiples: How to tell twins from triplets

In Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, we have a good example of fraternal twins who are different from each other in significant ways - which,  if we look carefully, may betray their pre-birth origins as a set of multiple embryos. They were so similar as very young children that they were able to play the same role interchangeably in Full House.

The directors and producers of Full House did not want people to know that Michelle was played by a set of twins, so the girls were credited as Mary-Kate Ashley Olsen for most of the show's run. It wasn't until the final season that they were credited Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Despite the fact that the Olsens are fraternal twins, their physical appearances were nonetheless similar enough so that few could tell the difference between the two.....

This from Squidoo:

Many of these things listed below were used to tell them apart when they were younger. Some can still be used now to tell them apart.

• Mary-Kate is left-handed. Ashley is right-handed.
•  Ashley is a little bit taller than Mary-Kate.
•  Ashely has a freckle above her lip

Ghost story or lost twin story?

The feeling of one's twin being near is very common among womb twin survivors:-  watching over you, part of your life; keeping you from harm; a guardian angel.  If you don't know about womb twin survivors and the possibility of being one yourself, then this must be a ghost, for what else can it be?

Here is a story written by someone who sounds like a womb twin survivor, thinks like a womb twin survivor, shares similar feelings with many other womb twin survivors and therefore probably is a womb twin survivor herself:

I wasn't a lonely child EVER but I still felt like I was missing someone so important. A strong bond I had with someone who wasn't there? I'd never lost anyone at that age though, I thought. When I'd go to bed at night I'd look down at the empty bed with such a broken heart, almost crying and I'd think to myself "Why isn't she there?" Even to this day I still have serious issues sleeping. And a lot of times I just don't feel whole, like I lost such an important part of me.

When identical twins are not that identical

Identical twins are not always so identical, because of epigenetic effects.  As one article says, your genes do not have to be your destiny.  

That means that just because they were conceived together, does not mean twins will die together.  They can vary so much in their physical constitution, that one may die long  before birth and the other one survive.

The research - first tentative results

I sent off the database for analysis last week and we will not hear anything for several weeks, probably until the conference on 19th November.  However, with my Stone Age, low-tech approach to Excel, I have managed, with some trepidation, to find some preliminary answers. (These will be validated, or not, by the professionals later on!)

In 2009 I wrote a blog about the various findings over the years. (read it here)  As a result of the July 2009 analysis, the eleven most popular statements made by people with evidence of their twin (and who agreed the most strongly to each) were found to be:

1.  All my life I have felt something is missing
2.  I fear rejection 
3. I know I am not realising my true potential 
4. I feel different from other people 
5. I have been searching for something all my life but I don’t know what it is
6. I fear abandonment
7.  Deep down, I feel alone, even when I am among friends 
8. I have a problem with expressing anger - either there is too much or too little 
9. I always feel in some way unsatisfied, but I don’t know why 
10. All my life I have carried deeply felt emotional pain that persists, despite all my efforts to heal myself. 
11. There are two sides to my character

The new list is:

"I hate goodbyes!"

One of the statements on an earlier version of the questionnaire was " I find goodbyes difficult."  This is because many womb  twin survivors were mentioning this and I wondered how common the feeling is.  It appears to be a common feeling, in that the end of something - a relationship, a college course, a life - is hard to endure because it is a little bit too close to the Dream of the womb.

(Note: This statement is not on the questionnaire now, simply because I had to limit the number of questions to the ones that had been found the most common in the previous versions.) 

When a twin is miscarried and leaves the womb entirely, this is a real abandonment for the sole survivor, and all other endings feel the same.

DZ survivors : a surrogate twin

For a DZ survivor, the best surrogate twin is someone of the same sex as the twin who died, and someone of similar age.  A parent of the same sex may do very well in infancy or early child hood, but quickly, by the age of 3 or 4, the need is for someone of a similar age, and that means a Best Friend.

Many womb twin survivors try to make their parents into their best friend (and vice versa), particularly if either or both parents are also womb twin survivors. Then the child may act very mature while the parents acts very immature, so that can meet on common ground.

The upshot of this attempt to keep the Dream of the Womb  alive is that no one is being their authentic self and in particular, no one acts their age - and no one finds what they are looking for.

DZ survivors - yearning.

The life of the DZ womb twin survivor is driven by yearning for Something, but there is no way to know what that is.  The yearning is the energy behind the search, and it took me thirty long years until I found out what it was.  What follows describes where I was in 2002, when the idea of a lost twin brother first came to me and I was just beginning to recognise what it was I had always been yearning for:

DZ survivors: the search for Something, but what?

Womb twin survivors (at least until they realise what is is they are looking for) spend a lot of time searching, but not knowing what for. And they will look in every place they can find, however  peculiar that may be.
 



One of the stories in the Silent Cry detailed 20 years of therapy, trying out a  different therapy for a while and then moving on, until at last the twin came into view and the person realised that it had always been a search for a lost twin.