I struggled with my identity about who I was after my twin Paula died. The shock of losing her posed so much of a threat to my existence that I buried my grief. But as we all know, there is no way to negate this sorrow from our lives. Facing the pain and moving through it proved to be my ultimate healing endeavor.

Our guest speaker for last year’s national conference was Mary R. Morgan, a woman who not only lived with the loss of her twin, but studied it deeply in the context of her profession as a social worker. My eyes were opened when I heard her give words to the identity issue I have always searched my vocabulary to express. Our founder,Dr Brandt, was correct when he expressed the need for a new dictionary to facilitate speaking about our twin experiences and twinloss emotions.

This is what Mary R. Morgan said: “I is seen in the framework of a we”. In other words, as twins, we see ourselves in the context of another person, our twin. This dramatically affects how we identify ourselves and how we define ourselves. We are born into this world in a relationship to our twin. Our experiences inutero, during the birth process, and in life are in relation to our twin. We react to each other before birth and throughout life, developing an interaction which helps form our basic personality and who we become as a person. Our “self” is in relation to our twin.

At different stages in our life we try to separate our identity from our twin’s and the individuation process continues through our entire life. At last year’s conference, a twin telling her story compared her twinship to being born married. A twin relationship from birth is even more intensely close than a marriage union. Our sense of self is determined, to a large degree, in our twin relationship. We compliment each other and make up for each others deficits. It is understandable when we lose our twin, why we feel broken, only half a person, and unable to cope in a singleton world without our other half. This loss challenges who we are as an individual. In no other loss is this challenge of “self as an individual” found, to this degree.

Our lives are lived differently than singletons. We come from a “we” perspective and are now expected to conform to an “I”, in an “I” world. Each of us has had a different give and take within our twin relationship, thus a unique grief to endure. I felt Paula was stronger than me. My reliance on her was removed when she died. At 21 years old, when she fell victim to a small plane crash, I felt too vulnerable to continue on without her. My avoidance of feeling the intense emotions attached to her loss gave rise to my experiencing a delayed grief many years later. When my emotions surfaced, they were as strong as they would have been at the time of Paula’s death. Imagine how unsure I felt at expressing them almost 20 years later. My identity was challenged and I revisited the past, our twin relationship and investigated her death. The journey was intense and I was painfully vulnerable to life. Dr. Brandt acknowledged my delayed feelings and my twinship. This organization and all the other twinless twins helped me to continue and gave me strength. I learned the value of facing the pain and honoring my feelings.

“Twins develop their identity from their twin experience.” When Mary R. Morgan expressed this concept, I flashed back to the enlightening dream I had, when I woke up and wrote down: “Paula set the limits for who I was”. I continued to experience revelations about my twinship, what Mary Morgan might call, “ pieces of my emotional history presenting themselves years later”.  Many people in my life couldn’t understand or believe what I was experiencing, but I continued to focus on my past to heal. My repressed grief for my twin Paula was coming to the surface. All my emotions flooded out, as the dam was broken by a dream. I know it is difficult to understand why someone would choose to delay their grief. For me it was not a choice. It was a necessity for survival, at a young and vulnerable time in my development.  This is especially true for  twins who have not formed their own identity, as many of us had not, at the time of losing our twin. I have since learned from my work as a regional director in this organization, that some of the twins who come to us for support are experiencing a similar “re-grieving”, delayed grief or are just starting to face their pain. The validation we give each other at a conference, along with the acknowledgment of our shared pain is vital to healing. We validate each other’s loss by listening and telling our stories and sharing our experiences.

Mary R. Morgan’s insightful words: “Let your pain go - you will not drowned in it, it will heal you” haven proven to be true in my life. Realizing we are entitled to our feelings is a huge revelation! Mary also shared her isolation and denial after she lost her twin Michael and the fact that she “hid her grief away”. Her positive words about “moving forward” in relationship to our twins bring joy to my heart, as opposed to society’s belief in “moving on”. “Healing does not mean giving up your relationship to your twin”. I also learned this from Therese Rando, a noted bereavement psychologist and author, whom I met with, at a crossroads in my journey through grief. She advised me to keep my family and twin alive by continuing to have them present in my life.  By using meaningful rituals I have been able to share Paula with my young son and keep her alive in our hearts.  My efforts have been, as Mary Morgan eloquently put it: to “reframe my relationship” with Paula as I move forward in my life.

“The I fully supported in the spiritual we” is a concept I have come to love, with the necessity of repeating it many times for clarification. As I close my writing, I have just been informed Mary Morgan will be with us again this year, for our 2004 conference in Chicago. I look forward to more healing revelations and seeing you all.