Healing path (6) From grief to acceptance

"If I Could Be Where You Are"

Where are you this moment
Only in my dreams
You're missing, but you're always
a heartbeat from me.

I'm lost now without you.
I don't know where you are.
I keep watching,
I keep hoping,
but time keeps us apart.

[chorus]
Is there a way I can find you?
Is there a sign I should know?
Is there a road I could follow,
to bring you back home?

Winter lies before me,
Now you're so far away
In the darkness of my dreaming
The light of you will stay

If I could be close beside you,
If I could be where you are,
If I could reach out and touch you,
And bring you back home.

[chorus]
Is there a way I can find you?
Is there a sign I should know?
Is there a road I could follow,
to bring you back home?

To me...

The pain is in the wishing for the world to stop, for things to have been different.
The healing is in the peaceful acceptance and the letting go.

After I let my twin go, almost at once I felt his presence close to me and he has been with me every since. Now it is not about wishing he was here with me, for he is here, and this time he is here in a way that is good and healthy and healing, not painful. It's like he is in the right place now. He is home.

Dizygotic (DZ) womb twin survivors - born grieving (and thoughts on 9/11)

Dizygotic (DZ) womb twin survivors are the children who suffer an unexplained melancholy; who find it hard to deal with the death of others, particularly family members or very dear friends.

Death and mourning
This womb twin type is characterised by emotional intensity and a concern with death. This is not at all surprising if we consider that the formative experience is of being in a very intense, intimate relationship and the first learned experience is of death of the Other. In later life DZ womb twin survivors
will inevitably be confronted with death or loss once more and at that point the hidden memory of loss will be triggered. The most traumatic bereavement for a DZ womb twin survivor is the death of a person or animal with which they have had a very close bond and intimate  relationship. Faced with this "Oh, no! Not again!" experience they may find it hard to cope without some emotional support and seek help. Bereavement counselling is of great value to  DZ womb twin survivors. In the private intimacy of the counselling relationship they are able to grieve intensely. It may not be death that does it: divorce, disability and redundancy are all losses that can trigger deep distress, despair and depression.

I was writing this blog when an email came in telling me about a new post written by Monica, who runs the US blog. This was timely, because it is about death. It uses the metaphor of the destruction of the twin towers in New York (where Monica lives - she saw the towers burn and fall...)  to describe the feelings of the womb twin survivor.

I have put it in the stories section of my web site, so it doesn't get lost among the hundreds of posts on this blog. But here is a taster:

Chapter 28: Letting go, letting be

This chapter will explore the many ways in which holding on to grief and impossible dreams are characteristic of womb twin survivors.  We will discover how a carefully-prepared farewell ritual, or some other form of letting go and letting be, could set you free from the painful feelings that lie in your personal Black Hole.

Holding on to grief
Holding on to grief means that it will remain unresolved.  Unresolved grief in the lives of womb twin survivors seems to underlie major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety.  Holding on to grief for your lost womb twin can be resolved by fully expressing it.  

Create a focus
One way to let go of grief is to create a focus for it, for where there is no focus, grief cannot fully be expressed.  For example, when someone dies and no tangible remains are left, an alternative focus for grief can be created.  In the vault of Westminster Abbey in London, England for example, there is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  The large engraved stone slab, just inside the main doors, is a focus for the grief of millions of families and friends, who lost a soldier in war but no identifiable remains were ever found.  The Tomb of the Unknowns in the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, USA is there for the same reason.  Most of our lost womb twins have no grave, so there is no focus for grief.  This makes grieving very difficult. 

Becoming aware
Your grieving may have been blocked because you have been unaware until now that you are a womb twin survivor.  You may not have realized until now that the loss of a twin could generate such strong feelings.  If you have had many deaths in your family, particularly if there have been several deaths in a short time period, you may still be carrying intense grief for them all.  When at last you give yourself permission to grieve for your twin, the strength of feeling may take you by surprise.  The preoccupation with death, which is characteristic of many womb twin survivors, is expressed in many different ways.  Some womb twin survivors often think of death, repeatedly risk their lives, attempt to overcome death or work hard to preserve their youth.  Once blocked grief can be released by creating a focus and letting the feelings surface, the preoccupation with death diminishes or ceases completely.

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Obesity and womb twin survivors

I have often thought that food addiction is linked to being a womb twin survivor.  In fact I found food addiction first,  in 1987, and when I began to explore the psychology behind my food addiction I found my own womb twin many years later in 2002.

I  watched the Tv show "Too fat for fifteen" and heard Georgia Davis describe herself as a food addict, and how her  addiction began with the death of her father when she was 5 - which she has never recovered from -.



She went to a US fat camp and lost half her body weight, and appeared on TV transformed and beautiful. She was absolutely determined to lose weight and stuck at it with enormous strength of character. A great girl!!



Now the weight is coming back, because this " treatment" didnt get to the root of the problem.


Georgia Davis weighs 28 stone
She left her home in Aberdare, south Wales, for North Carolina in the USA to attend the £3,600-a-month Wellspring Academy and managed to slim down to 18st.
But now she is back to 28st and has pleaded for help after claiming that her weight gain is “out of control”.
“Please help me, someone,” she told The Sun. “I know this is my fault but it’s out of control.
“It was my choice to return to my family and not continue my treatment in the US. But now I know it was like putting a heroin addict back in a chemist shop.”
Since returning to the UK in June last year she has been caring for her 55-year-old mother, Lesley, who suffers from a heart condition, and her 70-year-old father, Arthur, who has lung cancer.
“I knew it was going to be hard when I came back but it was a lot harder than I ever imagined.
“Eating in the US was in a controlled environment and everything was put on a plate for me.
“Around eight weeks after returning from camp I drifted off the plan. I felt really alone. My parents weren’t doing it with me at home and my friends weren’t doing it at college so there was no motivation to continue.”
The teenager said that her local health authority had not done enough to help her, adding: “I know I have no one to blame except myself but I don’t know how to change things. I would really like some help.
“My addiction to food is no different to drugs or alcohol. Those people get help from the NHS.”
John Gordon, a spokesman for Wellspring said the academy would welcome her back if she decided to return.

Addiction to food is being totally ignored by the health authorities because they dont understand it. I believe that by studying the psychological effects of losing your co twin before birth we may find some answers.

See my  food addiction blog for more.

The death of a twin: the same story, again and again

Some  of the 90% of  the population who have no experience of twin loss claim to know that womb twin survivors "make it all up"; that they are seizing on this idea to "explain all their troubles away." Yet time and again I hear the same story. Here is an example. 

More than half a century has passed since Mary Billingdon’s twin sister was stillborn. Here, Mary talks about the sister she always felt was missing from her life, and the heartache it has caused her.

Mary and her sister Rosemarie were delivered in April 1953 after their mother Elizabeth was rushed into hospital suffering from pre-eclampsia. All three lives were at stake and doctors battled to save mother and both children. They managed to save Elizabeth and deliver Mary safely, at just 3lb 7oz. But Rosemarie was stillborn and weighed a whole pound less than her sister.

Mary recalls: "Mum was 29 and we were to be her first babies. She never really got over losing Rosemarie. In those days, people didn’t like to talk about such things, it was out of sight, out of mind.

"But Mum always introduced me to people as ‘one of the twins’, it was as though she didn’t want to let her go.

"I missed my sister right from the beginning. While other children had imaginary friends, I had Rosemarie. I’d sit on the bus and if someone tried to sit on the seat I’d immediately say: ‘Don’t sit on my twin sister!’ Our nanna, who was with me, would be embarrassed, but I was adamant Rosemarie needed somewhere to sit," she said.

Mary said: "Right from an early age I felt something was missing from my life – it was as though there was a part of me missing that could never be replaced. Mum had never hidden from me that I should have had a twin sister and I grew up knowing about her from the start.

"The bond between twins starts early in the womb. We had shared a placenta and an amniotic sac, and after our birth I still felt there was a bond that would never be broken. I remember playing with twins at school, desperately wishing Rosemarie was still alive so we could all play together.

"I had close friends but I still felt lonely and longed for my twin. I chose twins as friends so I could see what it was really like – what it would have been like if she had been there too. I was envious of those twins, who had each other while I had to pretend," she added.

"As I grew older, guilt crept in – guilt that I had lived and Rosemarie hadn’t. While I was staying with my nanna once I asked why I had survived and not Rosemarie. She joked: ‘you were the greedy one, you were a whole pound heavier’, but I was just seven years old and I took her words literally and blamed myself.

"For years I carried that burden around, feeling guilty that I’d survived and not you. I tried to compensate by being over generous to people, anxious not to be seen as greedy.

"It wasn’t until mum died nine years later that I finally realised it wasn’t my fault. As she lay dying of bowel cancer we talked a lot about you. She reassured me that I wasn’t to blame.

"Every time I look in a mirror I think of her. We were identical twins and I think we would have led identical lives. I think she would have been a nurse, like me.

"I wonder if she’d have looked exactly like me, dressed alike. I remember when I was eighteen, mum and I were shopping when a man stopped us and admired my legs. Mum was horrified but I wondered what he would have thought if Rosemarie had been there too, in an identical skirt. We could have hit the catwalk as twin models," she laughed.

Shortly after her 18th birthday, Mary’s best friend Heather died in a car crash.

"I was devastated at losing Heather. Over the years I’d always tried to compensate for not having Rosemarie by having very close relationships with my friends. In a way they were substitutes for her, and I felt doubly devastated by Heather's death.

"My one regret is that I can only talk to Rosemarie in my head because I have no grave to sit beside. When she was buried in a tiny white coffin. The church decided to put her into a grave that was being dug for another body so that they didn’t need to dig a tiny hole.

"We never knew which one she was in. I have recently trained as a bereavement counsellor and it has finally helped me come to terms with her death. I am helping other people who have lost babies and twins and I feel I am putting my grief to good use.

"I am now at peace with my past and hope one day I will be reunited with my twin after a lifetime apart."

This is her story

Womb twin survivors are not making it up. The twin bond was formed in the womb but broken by death and needs to be grieved normally, freely and publicly.  But first we need to overcome this block that exists in some peoples minds,  that this is nothing but a fantasy.

90% of the population have no experience and do not understand - how dare they claim to know anything about this!  It makes me really angry.

The death of a twin at birth - a new play

Hallo I must be going

A new play for the New York fringe theatre

FringeNYC Festival Review
Martin Denton · August 14, 2010

Hello, I Must Be Going begins with the sound of Groucho Marx singing the song of that title; the paradox of that lyric is at the heart of this drama by Albi Gorn, though not, in general, its fractured sense of humor. The play concerns Harvey, who when we first meet him is just a few days shy of his 50th birthday and also about to be a father, for the first time, of twins. But he's saddled with ambivalence because his father, Maury, has recently suffered a debilitating stroke that has left him unable to speak and paralyzed on his right side. And then very real tragedy strikes when one of the twins is stillborn. (The other, a healthy boy, is named Julius—Julie for short—in honor of Groucho, whose real name was Julius Marx.)

Gorn's play explores how happiness and sorrow co-mingle in the lives of Harvey and his wife, Emma, as they celebrate the birth of their son, mourn the loss of their little girl, and try to come to terms with Maury's fading health. The play is adventurous, in places: Maury is represented by two actors, one of whom speaks his thoughts and also portrays him as a younger man in a series of flashback scenes depicting Harvey's relationship with his Dad over the years. More interestingly, the unborn children are played by adult actors who speak their "thoughts" from inside the womb; and baby Julie also is seen to speak his own, very grown-up thoughts even as he "acts" like the tiny infant that he is.

For me, the most interesting idea raised by the play was how the death of a twin in the womb might affect the survivor: Gorn theorizes that Julie misses his sister rather severely, though he seems hopeful about Julie's ultimate ability to overcome this trauma.    More here

You tube Interview with Albi Gorn

Is this another womb twin survivor, I wonder?  His latest play is about forgiveness,  that's a big issue for womb twin survivors........

New Youtube movie : The black hole

Take a look at my new movie! Comments welcomed.

The Black Hole - a poem for womb twin survivors

The black hole

The black hole is death and dissolution, entrophy and ecstatic union with emptiness.

The black hole is pain and terror and the darkness of non-being.

The black hole is power, essence, and the majesty of God-in-me

The black hole is energy and creativity centred into a split second of life giving.

The black hole is a teacher, to fear and yet live, to live and not to fear to die.

Come with me now into the black hole and you and I may come to rebirth.

Into the black hole: come!

I am calling you back to the place of origin!

Into the black hole; go!

I send you into the dark to find the light!

On the far side after the maelstrom there is power and purity, and the pain of absolute unselfish love.

On the far side, where we may stand, there is  silver light and surrender to the infinite power of simply being.

And when the moment comes to let life go in all its richness, the black hole beckons us, with riches beyond our wildest dreams.

Let us not fear the black hole or attempt to understand-

Let us be open to the goodness and the power that can be ours if we give it way, let it go, and surrender to the breath of life that blows in gales from out of it.

Blown by the breath of God that pours from the black hole, we can live according to  the will of the wind;

And in our last hours feel the suction draw us down into that place of origin and creation that is the place of dissolution and death.

Sink willingly into black hole! It is the cloud of unknowing, filled with ageless mystery : it is the gate to paradise.

If we wait in this holy space together and listen to the silent and mysterious loving power within;

Then truly we will have a taste of paradise this side of death.

Saying goodbye to your lost twin

In his new book A clear blue sky, the Hon. Timothy Knatchbull, whose identical twin and other members of his family were blown up, he says that the book is designed to say goodbye to his identical twin, Nick.

Read a moving account of his journey here.

He has moved on. Like all surviving twins he can heal, and this entails a journey through the pain into a recognition of being the fortunate survivor.

Scrapbook remembrance

I was listening to an online radio show today about the death of a twin,

LISTEN NOW HERE

And on this programme is the idea of making memorial scrapbooks for a lost twin.

This is a simply wonderful idea.

Take a look for more here and here and memorial gardens here

Comments welcomed!

The solstice : Wombtwin day Dec 21st, 2007

There has been a lot of interest in keeping December 21st as Wombtwin day, and it would be good to know that the idea is being spread around. I had an email exchange with a man from Australia just yesterday on a separate subject and it came up that he lost his twin two days after birth. When I told him about the solstice being Wombtwin Day, he loved the idea and decided to go walking and think about his twin. In over 40 years he has never given his twin a name but I would not be at all surprised if on this walk a name comes to him.

It may be that you are a wombtwin survivor yourself reading this, and you want to remember the day but have no clear idea what to do: the following is a suggestion.

One idea seems to be central when I talk with people about this: the idea of a river seems strong, and casting something into the water to flow gently away.

I suggest, in the interests of the environment, that flower petals (always a good symbol of a little life cut short) be gathered into a special little box, with the name of the lost twin written on the lid. Then by a river or maybe the sea, you can send your twin into the light with all your love, by casting the petals into the water and letting them float away. The empty box can be kept until next year.

I do hope that as many wombtwin survivors as possible will tell me later what they did. Certainly for some people this idea and this action will be the first step towards healing. I would love to learn more, to help more people, so please post a comment.

An annual Wombtwin day?

I have been researching St Thomas, called "The Twin" in the Bible, whose feast day is celebrated variously. This is what the Encyclopedia Brittannica has to say on the subject:

Saint Thomas born , probably Galilee

Died c. AD 53, Madras, India; Western feast day December 21, feast day in Roman and Syrian Catholic churches July 3, in the Greek church October 6

The July 3rd Festival of Twins is now well established, but that would not be the best date for surviving twins. We need another date.

Now December 21st would be good: it's 7 months before Twins Day and many twins "vanish" at around 8 weeks. It make sense also because it's a dark time and yet, once it is past, we are moving slowly and gently into the light of a new summer. So many surviving twins who have walked the Healing path with me are in a very dark place until they let their twin go - and almost at once they too are moving towards the light.

Also, being in those busy days before Christmas, many surviving twins find Christmas so hard, and it would be good to spend some time remembering our lost twins before we plunge into the festivities.

So I have made a decision: I will keep December 21st this year and every year as a special Wombtwin Day. I will spend some time remembering my twin and thanking him for all the gifts he has given me: this project being just one!!

Who would like to join me in doing this? Do post a comment if you have a good idea about what to do, and let's gather some good ideas together via this blog.

Wishing you well on your special day

Althea