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:

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........

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!