Books for womb twin survivors: the final book about healing

So we come to the final book in the Womb Twin series. There will be more for children, as we shall see tomorrow, but this is the last one that I shall write for womb twin adults.  I hope to have it ready for editing in September 2012 and published in time for the 2012 Womb Twin conference in London.

This will be a book about the process of healing that womb twin survivors undergo, almost spontaneously, as they awaken from their Dream of the Womb. I touched on this in the final part of Womb Twin Survivors; the lost twin in the Dream of the Womb, simply for completeness, but there is much, much more to say about healing - another 15 chapters and 90000 words, in fact! 

Books for womb twin survivors: A Silent Cry

In early 2008 I had such a wonderful collection of stories, written for me by womb twin survivors as part of the research questionnaire, that I thought it was time for another anthology, this time of stories written by womb twin survivors and published in their own words. .

The response took my breath away!  Womb twin survivors were so glad to know that at last they would be heard and taken seriously, that within  a month I had seventy stories! Every contributor was given a complimentary copy of the book.

The title was taken directly from an email I received from a director  of the Twinless Twins Support Group International...

The death of Freud - was he a womb twin survivor?

Today we come to the end of this brief discussion of Sigmund Freud  in his life and works, and the possibility that he was a womb twin survivor, with the story of his death.

It is documented in full here

Freud was very tired now, and it was hard to feed him. But while he suffered greatly and the nights especially were hard, he did not get, and did not want, any sedation. He could still read, and his last book was Balzac's mysterious tale of the magical shrinking skin, La Peau de chagrin. When he had finished the book he told Schur, casually, that this had been the right book for him to read, dealing as it did with shrinking and starvation. It was the shrinking, Anna Freud thought, that seemed to speak particularly to his condition: his time was running out. He spent the last days in his study downstairs, looking out at the garden.

Ernest Jones, hastily summoned by Anna Freud, who thought her father was dying, stopped by on September 19. Freud, Jones remembered, was dozing, as he did so much these days, but when Jones called out "Herr Professor, "Freud opened an eye, recognized his visitor, "and waved his hand, then dropped it with a highly expressive gesture that conveyed a wealth of meaning: greetings, farewell, resignation." He then relapsed into his doze. Jones read Freud's gesture aright. Freud was saluting his old ally for the last time.

The Black Hole (3) death, suicide and murder

There can be such a deep black hole for some womb twin survivors that they begin to think of death as a solution to life's problems:

• "There is nothing for me here: I would be better off dead."
• "If I have to do this alone I would rather not do it at all. I would rather die." 
• "I cannot live without the one I love and I would die if he /she left me." 
• "I cannot cope with the pain and destruction I see everywhere : I don't want to be in this world any more."

A good example of how death seems to be a solution is  to be found in Scotland, where a mother murdered her young children ( two of them were twins)  and threw herself from the top floor balcony of her flat.  She should have died, which would have made this yet another murder/suicide, but a neighbour caught her and broke her fall. That was August 2010 and she faced trial recently.




This was related to the fact that the Riggi couple had divorced, and that their father was claiming custody.

But what if this woman is a womb twin survivor? What if she was so attached to her children that she would sooner die than have them taken from her, and if they die too,  then her husband could not have them?

Is this a faint echo of the sense of entitlement that so many womb twin survivors feel,  which makes them hold on to possessions, painful relationships and above all endless, angry resentment, until they will do anything rather than let go?

The womb twin hypothesis says this:

Womb twin survivors spend their lives re-enacting the life and death of their womb twin. Nothing is more important than that, even life itself. 

If we could reach people before they become totally eclipsed by their Black Hole, we may be able to save their lives and the lives they destroy.  All it takes is the Womb Twin work:

Once the real pre-birth scene, which is being constantly re-enacted, is made clear, then the re-enactment tends to diminish or cease altogether, greatly to the benefit of the individual.

It is so very simple, and so very hard to believe, even by womb twin survivors themselves.  It is a sad business to hear about the brutal stabbing to death of young children by their seemingly devoted mother, and sadder still to think how easily this tragedy could have been prevented.

For me, this is very difficult knowledge to have: I get attacked and vilified by many people and told to mind my own business, yet I see so clearly how people may be helped by a single question:

"Are  you a womb twin survivor?"

If the answer is yes (or even seems possibly to be yes)  then the womb twin work can begin.

The amniotic sac: bags in the midst of hoarding

So. Clutter. Hoarding.  So much of this is about bags and containers generally.  This is a quote from a hoarder:


I collect bags (sacs) because I am worried I might need one and be out of them.  I can't throw them away.  Sacs are so symbolic,  I am horrified when someone throws an empty bag out and I sometimes rescue them to avoid the anxiety.  


I have had a small insight recently about hoarding  (over half of the people who complete the questionnaire give the strongest response to the statement:


"At least one room in my home (including a shed or garage) is completely full of stuff."

I have been observing an extreme hoarder for five years now. He goes out every day, puts things into bags or boxes, carries them home and NEVER looks at them again.  His whole house is full of bags  and boxes of stuff.  It's the containers that matter, not the stuff inside.

Now I am beginning to find a slight connection with identical twinning, but it's not that clear and I have been mystified as I think: if hoarding is to do with being a womb twin survivor, then what if the bags are the amniotic sacs? What if the identical twin developed in a separate sac? That happens in about a third of twin pregnancies that make it to birth, but we don't know how many lost twins are created in that configuration.  If this is the hoarding scenario and if this is how you were in the womb, then we truly do have a bag that was once half of you - you would be bonded for life to that bag!


Is this the hoarding scenario?

I am working with someone who is learning how to teach others to overcome hoarding. If we can find the true reason why people do this, then we can help them to heal. That would be wonderful! So if you are a hoarder, please make contact, as we need all the stories we can get! 

The daily steps

So it's another day, and another step to take. I will take another 364 steps before I get to the end of 2011.  Today's step builds on yesterday's and thanks to Andrew's comment I have been made to think on those baby steps that seem to be the only thing possible when you are stuck in your beta space and lack the motivation to move forward.

So yes, today I make today's step.  In fact today is composed of little steps, tiny seemingly insignificant choices that will set the tone of the whole day.

The first step was the choice NOT to get  up and get on with the 10,000 things that have to be done but to rest and relax. But then that was not laziness, that was a perfectly understandable need to rest after the New year celebrations and two late nights carousing with friends, which is all as it should be at this time of the year.

The next step, made an hour later now refreshed and raring to go thanks to that rest, is to write today's blog and think on these things to help you all along the healing path.   You see, my next step after the publication of the womb twin survivors book on 1st March, just 8 tiny little weeks away,  is to write the Healing Path as a full sized published paperback book, replete with all the discoveries made in the six years since I wrote the ebook.

( If you are a first time reader  of this blog and have not a clue what these books are, see here on the Wren Publications web site)

The next step is a kind of orientation exercise, designed to get me doing something I have put off for 10 months - my tax return. The deadline is 30th January. If I don't find the motivation inwardly then I can find it outwardly - the March 1st deadline is self imposed, the January 30th deadline is a matter of law. Both highly motivating.

But deadlines are deadening when you are in your Beta space. They kill all motivation as you lock down into inactivity through fear and terror. They simply don't work. They get endlessly overshot in a lifetime of prevarication.

• But what if the whole idea is motivated, very, very strongly, by existential guilt?
• What if your whole life is driven by a desire NOT to live a full life?
• What if you are trying to keep your little beta twin alive by living your beta twins life?

Then it would all make perfect sense.

There would be a rational, intelligent, loving reason why you choose deliberately to throw your life away in endless prevarication.

Its an act of self sacrifice made out of love.

Misguided, pointless, but rather beautiful  and terribly sad.

That, my dears, is the non-life of the womb twin survivor.