A healing path stage 1: Making your twin real - bodily form

The very first step on the healing path is to make the your twin real.  All my work is firmly based in the idea that pre-birth memory is amazingly accurate, and a fraternal ( DZ) womb twin survivor will feel completely differently when compared with an identical ( MZ) womb twin survivor - the multiples feel differently again.

There are two critical aspects this this memory, which  have to form of your twin and the second is the way in which they died. Today I will look at some of the various bodily forms that a womb twin twin may take.

There are many forms to be considered:

GENETIC ABNORMALITY
Your twin may have had  some kind of chromosomal abnormality that you did not share. Even monozygotic twins may have the same genes but a different physical expression of them, because of some kind of chromosomal damage.

The red and green arrows show where chromosomes have been damaged

DEVELOPMENTAL ABNORMALITY
Even with identical twins, one may develop abnormally where the other twin developed normally.

One twin is disabled, the other is not

DEVELOPMENTAL FAILURE
If your MZ twin never implanted at all there would be no development, just sense of half of you never getting anywhere.   One twin may fail to develop beyond the very earliest stages, or may develop some organs but not others, such as having no brain or heart.

A twin with no heart or brain, with a normal twin.

EMBRYONIC CELLS
Your MZ twin may reside inside your body as just a few embryonic cells, sufficient to grow into a dermoid cyst or teratoma.  If blood stem cells from your twin entered your body, you may have  two types of blood flowing together.

NORMAL DEVELOPMENT
Your twin may have developed perfectly normally, with all organs intact.

I have had many conversations with womb twin survivors that have continued for years, as they constantly (and often obsessively) try to work out the details in their Dream of the Womb: if their twin was identical or not, what the gender of their twin was and how well their twin developed. Once they have found the scenario that perfectly fits their vague pre-birth memory, a sense of certainly begins to develop.  At last they are putting the pieces of the puzzle in the right place and can move on along the healing path.

My own experience of discovering my twin was like a 10,000 piece picture puzzle suddenly slotting itself into place in my mind.  My entire life made sense, where previously there had been confusion. I didn't know it then, but in that moment my healing path had begun.

Tomorrow we will look at the various ways in which a womb twin can die - that is important to get right and is worth a blog post all of its own!