Womb twin survivors in science fiction - Philip K Dick

 Philip K. Dick - womb twin survivor and  science fiction writer



From the Phil K Dick web site

The Early Years

 He was born prematurely, along with his twin sister Jane, in Chicago on December 16, 1928. His father was Edgar Dick, his mother Dorothy Kindred - from her maiden name came Dick's middle initial. Jane died six weeks after her birth, a loss that Phil felt deeply throughout his life.

The imaginary friend in a novel - Icarus Girl

Published in 2005, this story is about an imaginary friend. (Evidently a lost twin, but but seemingly none of the readers or reviewers got that. Of course that was seven years ago and a lot has happened since then ........)

From the guardian:

The Icarus Girl
by Helen Oyeyemi
280pp, Bloomsbury, £16.99

The Icarus Girl, a debut novel completed when its author was still at school, begins innocently, with a childish debate about identity. An eight-year-old girl is hiding in a cupboard "saying quietly to herself, I am in the cupboard. She felt that she needed to be saying this so that it would be real. It was similar to her waking up and saying to herself, My name is Jessamy. I am eight years old." Jessamy likes to amend her favourite children's classics by writing new versions over their pages with her pen: "Beth's so nice you'd think Louisa May Alcott would have treated her better." It turns out that she herself is the heroine of an unalterable hurt narrative, her tale of herself and her imaginary friend, which twists into a new version of the doppelgänger myth, the myth of the fetch, the fateful twin. It's a story with an eye for the baroque state that childhood can be and on the damage that cultural fracture inflicts on everybody, no matter how young or old.

Alfred Austermann talks about womb twin survivors

Interview with Alfred Austermann - The Vanishing Twin Syndroom or The Surviving Twin Syndrome.

About one person in ten is not alone at the beginning of the pregnancy and embarks on the journey into life together with a twin… When one of them dies, the surviving child suffers an immense shock. Even though there will be no conscious recollection of this shock later on, an enormous hole will be left and will leave its mark on a person’s entire life.

Deep-seated feelings of inexplicable longing, loneliness and guilt can result from this early loss.

The womb twin survivor in literature : "Twin Bred"

A new book by Karen A Wyle published yesterday, 15th October as a paperback and an ebook.

 TWIN-BRED

Humans have lived on Tofarn for seventy years, but the Tofa remain an enigma -- from their featureless faces to their shifting number of arms. Misunderstandings breed conflict, and conflict could bring war. Scientist Mara Cadell's radical proposal: that host mothers carry fraternal twins, human and Tofa, who might provide a breakthrough in inter-species understanding. Mara's own twin, Levi, died in utero -- but Mara has secretly kept him alive in her mind as companion and collaborator.

The Tofa agree to Mara's project -- but they have their own agenda. And so does one member of the human Council, who believes that the human colonists should have exterminated the Tofa on arrival. Mara must shepherd the Twin-Bred project through dangers that even the canny Levi could not foresee. Will the Twin-Bred bring peace, war, or something else entirely?

A novel by Karen A. Wyle

A fascinating idea.  The mere fact of being a womb twin survivor is such a wonderful gift, being mainly the gift of empathy towards others.  I read it as an ebook, which increased the sense of other- worldliness.  The story is tense and fascinating, as we are taken through the intricacies of plot and counter-plot, but for me there are occasional moments when the great gifts of being a womb twin survivor  are demonstrated to the reader in a completely new way. (A great twist at the end, which I won't reveal!)

Levi, Mara's fantasy twin brother, is evidently very much alive in her life.  The project is to create a whole population of twins, to change the world. A bold idea, which may capture the imagination of many people, but in particular womb twin survivors will enjoy the moments of insight when the world realises what twins have to offer, simply because they learned to live with others who are very different, long before birth.

Karen, I salute you.  We need more positive stories like this about womb twin survivors. It's not all about death and loss, it's also about gratitude, love and personal responsibility.

Womb Twin Survivors as writers: Alison Larkin

In her book " The English American" based on her own life experience, Alison Larkin has created a character born in America and adopted by an English couple, who discovers her twin once she has had a chance to speak to her natural mother.

Alison Larkin has a web site

On this site the book is described thus:

When Pippa Dunn, adopted as an infant and raised terribly British, discovers that her birth parents are from the American South, she finds that “culture clash” has layers of meaning she’d never imagined. Meet The English American, a fabulously funny, deeply poignant debut novel that sprang from Larkin’s autobiographical one-woman show of the same name.

In many ways, Pippa Dunn is very English: she eats Marmite and toast, knows how to make a proper cup of tea, went to a posh English boarding school, finds it entirely familiar to discuss the crossword rather than exchange any cross words over dinner with her proper English family. But Pippa--creative, disheveled, and impulsive to the core--has always felt different from her perfectly poised, smartly coiffed sister and steady, practical parents, whose pastimes include Scottish dancing, gardening, and watching cricket.

When Pippa learns at age twenty-eight that her birth parents are from the American South, she feels that lifelong questions have been answered. She meets her birth mother, an untidy, artistic, free spirited red-head, and her birth father, a charismatic (politically involved) businessman in Washington, D.C.; and moves to America to be near them. At the same time, she relies on the guidance of a young man with whom she feels a mysterious connection; a man who discovered his own estranged father, and who, like her birth parents, seems to understand her in a way that no one in her life has done before. Pippa feels she has found her “self” and everything she thought she wanted. But has she?

Caught between two opposing cultures, two sets of parents, and two completely different men Pippa is plunged into hilarious, heart-wrenching chaos. The birth father she adores turns out to be involved in neoconservative activities she hates; the mesmerizing mother who once abandoned her now refuses to let her go. And the man of her fantasies may be just that…

With an authentic adopted heroine at its center, Larkin’s compulsively readable first novel unearths universal truths about love, identity, and family with wit, warmth, and heart.

Her lost twin brother is there, but only hinted at. The story does not suffer at all because of that, as it is a lovely heartwarming tale.  (I have the audiobook and love it.)

I am looking forward to a book about a womb twin survivor where the lost twin is central to the story. As you will see tomorrow, when you check in with this blog, I have found one.

The Survivor - A true story of a young womb twin survivor

The Survivor by Lynne Schulz    (read more here)    


This book tells the real story of a young womb twin survivor, and what effect the pre-birth loss of his twin sister had upon him. In her contribution to the 2007 anthology, "Untwinned: perspectives on the death of a twin before birth", Lynne Schulz explained what it is like to be the parent of a womb twin survivor, living in a disbelieving world.

The anthology

As the mother of a surviving twin I have experienced ridicule and disbelief from friends, family, child carers and school teachers whenever I have even mentioned that my eldest son is a surviving twin, and therefore different to singleton children. In an attempt to make the lives of other twin loss families a little easier, myself and a small dedicated team set out to try and educate those who came into contact with multiple loss families such as my own to be a little more empathetic towards our unique needs.

Twinship evokes an enormous amount of curiosity and interest throughout our society. The media are often guilty of turning the whole topic of multiple births into a circus event.my second book, The Survivor, I look at how twinship is viewed in different ways. Interestingly enough, the whole concept of twinship continues to be shrouded in mystical, magical, even romantic notions. 

In explaining the differences between a singleton and multiple pregnancy, I want you to imagine that I am holding two apples. Each piece of fruit represents a pregnancy. The first apple is one complete unit, whilst the other has been sliced into two. Even though one apple has been divided into portions, it remains exactly like the first one, i.e. one whole, healthy apple. Now, if we take away one half of the divided piece of fruit, what do we have left ? We are left with part of an apple. It has not turned itself into a banana, or a grapefruit.It remains an apple.
 

When a baby dies in a twin pregnancy, it is like removing half of the apple. The picture now appears out of balance. It does not look quite right to the untrained eye. That is precisely how a surviving twin appears to the world – a slightly unbalanced picture. Something is missing and behavioural patterns and physical abilities may not be quite right. The child has not magically turned into a singleton
package – that child will always be a twin for the rest of their entire life.

Well said!!

Towards the new healing book

At last, the shape of the new healing book is beginning to form in my mind.  At the moment, there is only an e-book with 30 steps and self-awareness exercises, which was written in 2004 and is now rather out of date, but at the moment it is the only resource I have for womb twin survivors to facilitate their healing. 

( Note: this is not the kind of e-book you can read on Kindle,  its a 32 page PDF file.) 

The new book- the place where it all started

Where does one begin a book about womb twin survivors?  It truly began in 2002, in a dramatherapy ritual workshop in London a few hours  after I had enacted a funeral ritual for my twin brother, who was probably lost about 13 weeks or so in a miscarriage, probably an abortion attempt. I knew then, that I had found my life's work - that I would write about womb twin survivors. Eight years later, I have the first book finished.
So, after six years of research, I started writing in 2009, and the book was, as it were, conceived.
Where to begin? Well, conception had to be the first story to tell.

PART ONE : the death of a twin before birth
(Each  of the five parts is introduced by a wonderful poem written by a womb twin survivor, but  you will have to wait for publication to see those.)

Chapter One: The making of you


(Here is some of what the first chapter says:)

Whoever you are reading this, when you were no more than a twinkle in your father’s eye, the making of you had already begun. You came into being as a separate, unique, brand-new little person at the moment of your conception. Now conception requires two tiny single-cell gametes to meet, one from Mum and one from Dad. Mum’s gamete is called an ovum - sometimes called a human egg - and Dad’s gamete is called a spermatozoon - usually known as a sperm.
Sexual reproduction - and this is after all what we are talking about - has been going for a very long time. Largely by a process of trial and error, this extremely complex and delicate process, operating at
a microscopic level, has been honed to a nicety over the generations. Your Mum and Dad played their biological part to perfection, as they negotiated themselves into position to enable conception to occur. It may have been carefully planned, impulsive, entirely inappropriate or even morally wrong, but once Dad’s sperm and Mum’s egg were in exactly the right position and in precisely the right environment, they made that impossible, crucial connection and merged. That created you. Whatever else you may say about yourself, you are a miracle. We all are.
As we will discover later on, all those years of evolution have not eliminated the hundreds of mishaps that prevent conception or the successful development of the embryo. Over time, intricate and elaborate means have been developed to ensure the survival of our species. Today, if conception and development simply won’t work, despite Mum’s and Dad’s best efforts, we now have artificial means to try and ensure that they can have a baby. They may be still uncertain, but the various artificial reproductive technologies - known as ART- have helped us to understand a little more of how we all came into being.

For full details and a bit more to read, see here.

Spreading the word about womb twin survivors

Gradually but inevitably,  news about womb twin survivors is spreading.   My womb twin survivor friend (and there  are dozens of them now, all great people)  has been doing some research and has put a note on his Face Book page. 

What does a foetus experience in the womb?

The popular view, even today, is that a foetus is 'nothing but a bunch of cells', 'a blob of jelly', 'just an extension of the mother's body' and that it has no thoughts, feelings or ability to sense, experience or interact with its surroundings.

Recent research, however, is beginning to reveal a very different picture. In the last 15-20 years, a lot of work has been done with single survivors of twin and multiple pregnancies. Much of the progress made has been a result of advances in ultrasound technology, which have enabled doctors to see with unprecedented clarity what is going on in the wombs of pregnant women.  read more.....

Then there is Sylvia, a writer, who has written a story about a womb twin survivor and her journey to  discovering more of herself and how the loss of her twin has impacted in her life.  There is a post on the worldwide Womb Twin blog about it.

It is not uncommon for people, seemingly ignorant of this ‘loss’ to develop fantasies about “being with someone else,” or needing to live their lives for two. Is it a personal memory of womb life or an intuition of an unexpressed part of their mother’s mind?   If told later in life about the loss, there are often feelings of relief at not being “crazy” but sometimes too, anger and distress at not being told all along. 

Sylvia Dickey Smith‘s novel. A WAR OF HER OWN makes an important contribution to womb-twin survivors by raising awareness of this phenomenon and educating others as to what can be its long-term possible emotional effects. read more

Not to mention the work of Alfred Austermann whose book " The surviving twin syndrome,"  translated from the original German, details the psychological effects upon the womb twin survivor and how they can be discovered and explained.


I could go on and mention prenatal psychotherapy and all the other therapies that workn on prebirth influences: I could list the many blogs that mention the "vanishing twin" syndrome.   There are several Womb Twin blogs now on this subject as the Internet does its work and people are at last beginning to talk about this thing that so many experts insist cannot possibly happen : that even when a twin is lost after just a few weeks of life in the womb, there is a profound and lifelong effect on the sole survivor.


There are more than 600,000,000 womb twin survivors in the world. I am one and perhaps you are another.  That's two of us.  Let's spread the world and find the others. I have found about 1000, but that's only a drop in the ocean. There is more work to be done and more womb twin survivors to be found. 


If you have posted on your blog or facebook about this, please let me know the link and I'll put it here.


Let's get together: - united, we will triumph over  the sceptics. They have absolutely no idea what we are talking about, but then 90% of the population don't understand this.  That doesnt mean we have to listen to them. We know, they don't. 


Back to the book: I will have Part One, "The Making of You" which is full of all the medical facts about conception and twinning plus diagrams,  ready today for the FINAL proof reading. The cover is now ready.

The final cover

Save money and make your order in advance here ( all advance copies will be personally signed by me. Gosh.

Events for womb twin survivors in 2011....

I've been updating the Wombtwin.com Facebook page to include several events for next year.  

(All dates will include book signings where requested!)

• Lunches in Nottingham, Portsmouth and London with me and others.
• A workshop in New York City with me, Monica and Barbara
• A free public meeting with illustrated presentation by me November 18th
• Our annual conference 19/20 November
• The Wombtwin.com Annual general meeting for members and special guests.

Take a look here:

The lost twin in the Dream of the Womb

The title of the new book is "Womb twin surviviors, the lost twin in the Dream of the Womb. " Now some experts in prebirth psychology have complained about that, saying: "Well if this is supposed to be only a "dream", are you saying it's all a fantasy, that we made this up? Are you with Sigmund Freud then, who  talked about fantasies all the time? Like we dont remember being born, that we don't remember the womb? We have been working hard for decades to convince the world that we DO remember the womb, are you promoting the idea that its not real, all just a dream?"

My answer is that it's all a matter of words and definitions. The words "remember" or "memory"  got the sceptics screaming at me that we don't  remember the womb and telling me that I should be ashamed of myself for even suggesting the idea. ( See some of these extraordinary exchanges here if the psychology of scepticism interests you at all..)

Assuming  (with good reason, based on my experiences so far)  that scepticism on the subject of pre-birth memory is widespread, I have been very careful with my terminology. The word "dream" works psychologically because in post-traumatic stress the trauma is often re-experienced as a nightmare: the loss of a twin before birth can be traumatic. Dream also suggests a longing or hope, and any womb twin survivors who experience that the nameless painful yearning for Something that refuses to be named until a way to name it is found, will  agree. Subjectively, the lost memories of a womb twin have a dream-like quality - they are vague, nameless, haunting and often appear, truly and  symbolically, in dreams while  asleep.

Finally, its a matter of how we are learning to heal womb twin survivors, and we have come a long way in the last seven years. The womb twin work takes the Dream of the Womb; names it; validates it; puts strong biological evidence behind it, thereby makes sense of it; then peice by peice the Dream becomes a reality.  With the help of that reality the constant search for the lost twin eases, for in a sense the original reality of the twin has been found.  In time, the day of true awakening comes and the healing is complete - it took me five years, but I had to do it alone.

I look forward to the day when we have many womb twin survivors who have awoken from their Dream of the Womb and will be ready to reach out to others and enable them to experience the joy of living free of the Dream.

This how the Dream has been described:

Just behind my eyes, my Dream of the Womb 
is like a matrix through which I see the world. 
Like a dark, mysterious cloud whirling through the primal places 
of my unconscious mind, this Dream is my way of being. 
In the light of day, however hard I try, 
I cannot see through the cloud obscuring the meaning of this Dream. 
It is with me always; I cannot remember a time without this Dream. 
In the dark hours of solitude when there is no one there 
and all there is is emptiness and stillness, 
out of the corner of my eye, I catch the faintest glimmer of gold. 
It is elusive but it is always there, and it gives me hope. 
It is like a light to show me what came before the Dream. 
But I am convinced nothing existed before the Dream. 
The Dream is all I have.

A book about twins - when there was only one left

In Gent for the Twin Research conference in 2007 Abigail Progrebin, an identical twin writing a book about being a twin, thrust a microphone under my nose and asked me about my work with womb twin survivors.   I spoke, as is my wont, volubly and off the top of my head.  When the book, One and the Same, was finally published, there was the interview, in its entirety, as a substantial part of chapter eight.

Asked about the book and  this same interview in particular, Abigail said:

 I always try to let people speak for themselves and let readers decide for themselves. With this in utero twin loss I felt like I would lay this out there. I’m not sure what I think and let’s see what others think. This was really new territory as there’s no science at all to support a hunch that if you started as a twin pregnancy and ended up as a singleton that it’s going to have some kind of psychological impact somewhere down the line. But there is, and thanks to Althea Hayton it’s much more organized now, this body of anecdotal testimony from people. There’s no way to quantify whether they’re affected by it. There are a number of people in my life that say, how can you trace this? At the same time, it’s this ineffable intimacy that you have with your twin. You can’t quite describe that closeness.


More here


Its always good to get a bit of support with this - thank you Abigail! 


Read more about this book