A multiple womb twin survivor tells her story

In this movie a multiple womb twin survivor speaks honestly about her close connection to her lost twin brothers.

Her main problem is survivor guilt - that is so true of so many womb twin survivors. The Healing path is a way to transform survivor guilt into survivor gift.

It can be done. Believe me.

A healing path (7) Forgiving yourself

 A womb twin survivor writes:

When I was younger I was a very depressive teenager, drama queen, codependent, scared of being alone especially in the dark at night, paranoid about being kidnapped, convinced my parents had given away my twin, convinced I didn’t belong here, lonely, full of grief & sadness, woeful, full of self pity, unable to set boundaries, didn’t know what I wanted, lethargic, no motivation for life unless I thought it would fill the hole in my soul I had, searching for something/one. I carried this into my 20s when I started to drink heavily & binge & starve – again contradiction – loved to eat & yet I’d starve myself until my body craved food so much I’d binge for weeks on end. Wanted attention & yet I didn’t, wanted men to think I was sexy & yet didn’t want to have sex with them – was called a prick tease a lot; wanted to fit in & yet didn’t really like/trust anyone. Episodes of not wanting to live yet not wanting to kill myself either – just wanting ‘it’ to be over.

 What is wrong? The Dream is all.  The self pity is real, for the wound is real, but the wound can heal.  If you pick at the scars, they will never heal. 

MZ womb twin survivors - a life and death struggle

If we look at two identical twins sharing a sac, if they are both to survive they must share equally the space, oxygen and nourishment. If that share becomes unequal, then one of them may die.  If one of them dies, the survivor will be left with a sense of being half, not a whole, accompanied by a deep, vague sense that their life and survival came at great cost.

In the Dream of the Womb there is a sense of great vulnerability and being there at the cost of another life, but there is also a sense of it being quite natural to have everything the way you want it and freely exploit and take advantage of available resources.  This is a reflection of the life and death struggle that characterizes the life of two monozygotic twins sharing a sac.

Healing (8) Shame

The greatest burden carried by womb twin survivors is survivor guilt. You can notice this by the fact that you try to live two lives at once, squeezing two jobs or maybe more, plus a variety of interests and projects, into every week. If there are not enough hours in the day to do anything properly, then nothing gets finished properly. Everything is rushed and done at the last minute. There is little satisfaction in that. The result is that you focus your entire life on other people and your main source of satisfaction is that they are happy.

A few moments of reflection may show you what is being recycled here: Your guilt is such that you give your life away to others. By living two lives at once you end up with no real satisfaction in life at all except what you have done for others.

The Black Hole (1) Survivor guilt, anyone?

What is in your Black Hole? If you are a womb twin survivor and feel as if you shouldn't be here at all, here is a lovely reminder of how life itself is a gift.

The womb twin work is mainly about reconnecting with the life YOU have, that is distinct from your twin's little short life. It is entirely yours.   If you don't live it, no one will.

So here is the perfect antidote to survivor guilt: GRATITUDE!!



Matt started out being photographed all over the world and then he started dancing with people.... this is how he explained what became his way of life for a few years...



This just came to me today - I was supposed to write about womb twin kids today and how parents can play special games with their children to help them to speak about the lost twin to each other and along came dancing.

Maybe dancing with your kids to celebrate life is better than worrying about what to say!

Have a great day and when the Black Hole beckons ( watch this if you dont know what I mean) remember always to dance!

A healing path (3) From guilt to gratitude

THE PRACTICE OF LIVING IN THE MOMENT - guilt into gratitude


In this stage, you will transform survivor guilt into an awareness that your ability to live is a gift in itself. This great gift of life has been make known to us by many writers and thinkers down the centuries.   


God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. Voltaire


Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.  Marge Piercy


Read more quotes like this...


Now you can waken up to the gift of life as it is revealed to you.  A life free of shame guilt and anxiety has already been awarded to you but survivor guilt has made you block yourself from receiving it.  The energy and power given to you to enable you to live in this way has always been within you but you have expressed it in a variety of self defeating behaviours. The prospect of a fulfilling life is distributed free,  donated without conditions, handed over for your use without any cost to yourself, but you would not pay the price, which is to let go and let things be as they may.


To live “in the now” enables many things to be visible at last. In the now you can arise from your sleep, arrive in the present and allow yourself to be revealed to others in your whole person, warts and all, without any fear of being ashamed.  Now you can emerge, grow and develop into fullness. 


The feeling that comes when the whole world is yours, and you are allowed to be happy, and succeed, is not so much exhilarating as scary.  As I moved into healing, I recognised that  my twin had gone and the psychic space he had been taking up was all mine. It was like coming into a mysterious inheritance of untold riches, which were revealed, not all at once but gradually.


Piece by piece and one by one, long-delayed projects just arise as an idea and complete themselves.  I began letting the energy of this Womb twin project carry me forward and the speed of forward movement has been breathtaking. 

Its all about making an end to survivor guilt, and letting life be all yours. Simple, but possibly the most difficult decision you will ever make.  

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.

Resistance

Well, I have had two very revealing adventures today with regard to resistance - the psychological kind. That is the kind of stuff therapists meet all the time: it's the unstinting loyalty to, and absolute cooperation with, maintaining the status quo - to continue wantonly along the road to self-destruct and refuse to let anyone even imply that this chosen road is anything other than totally intelligent and appropriate in the circumstances.

A dear friend from long ago, who was a wonderful wordsmith (no doubt still is; I don't hear from him any more, but I shall celebrate his talents here) once decribed his therapy to me:

One of the enlightening moments in my therapy was to understand and to embrace, personally and not just intellectually, the concept of responsibility - the pyschotherapeutic responsibility for oneself and one's condition. I may not have been responsible for the way I was, but I was responsible for dealing with that from now on. Sitting on the pity pot, being a victim, is not efficacious.

But to find the way, mired as one is in so much encrusted, unyielding, hardset, behavioral grime, is not easy. It generally needs a guide, a wise voice who can point out small-step stepping stones along a way. Therapy was of course a revelation. It was an archaeological exercise. Scrape away carborundum-hard crud here, chisel diamond-tough dross away there, get down to a shard of real value lying buried, embedded in the matrix of time; tease it out, or not; go somewhere else; chip away more; see if that loosens the grip here. Build up a detailed picture, replete with revelation and realisation. That stuff is hard. It requires work.

Yes it is hard. Diamond-hard.

So if the person concerned is absolutely determined to remain on the "pity pot"; utterly committed to the idea of being a "victim", that is resistance to owing one's personal power to choose.

If the person is absolutely determined to drink alcohol to excess so the liver fails, the heart begins to wear out and death is imminent, that is resistance to healing.

If a person is absolutely determined to die, that is resistance to living.

What if there was an intelligent rational reason for such a high level of resistance to change for the better? If the explanation for this is that the individual concerned is a wombtwin survivor, what then may we learn?

I suggest that we must look to survivor guilt; to loyalty to one's little lost twin who hever stood a chance; to a desire to be reunited in death to the other dead half of oneself.

So if I don't want to be here and never wanted to be born; if I feel I don't deserve to be here because my twin never made it into born life - why then, I may throw my life away and sit on a pity pot for years, wasting the best years of my lfe waiting to be rescued by a skilled therapist.

My friend made it through therapy and is happy at last with the woman of his dreams. Sadly it is not always so. Hospitals all over the world are filled with patients killing themselves slowly with drugs, alcohol, overeating and other methods of self destruction.

Are you resistant to living?

Try a little thankfulness. You have been given the great gift of life; dont waste it, not one minute.

Would you refuse your Christmas presents? Hand them back unopened?

Un-wrap the gift of your life today and allow yourself to receive this gift. Its free; its here and its all yours. If you don't use it, no one else will. Not even your lost twin.