Are You a Womb Twin Survivor?
Is this the reason for your guilt or your "rescuing" behaviour?
I recall, around a decade ago, being shocked and saddened at the death of Althea Hayton. I had attended a workshop of hers not long before and she had not seemed to me to be in poor health.
For me, Althea was one of those incredible souls who have tireless energy for one topic or issue, and who dedicate their lives to spreading awareness about it. I was one of the people she reached.
The topic was that of being a “womb twin survivor.”
This is very shadowy area of psychology, with little written or generally accepted about it. Nevertheless, once heard about, it resonates deeply with many people seeking to understand the forces that have shaped their personalities. Whether there is truth to the concept, or whether it simply feels true, I do not know.
The basic idea is that perhaps up to 20% of pregnancies begin with not one but two foetuses. Yet the womb of the mother cannot support both and so one dies and is reabsorbed by the body, whilst the other survives and is born.
The life of this “womb twin survivor,” however, is still marked at a deep level by certain psychological traits.
Those traits typically include the following:
a deep sense of having lost someone incredibly dear to them but without apparent actual precedent
an underlying sense of almost unfathomable guilt, for being the one who survived through the death of another
a compulsion to try to “rescue” someone in crisis, or to reverse a perceived sense of decline in another
I spent about a year getting deeply involved with the notion of womb twin survivors because the whole idea just spoke to me so deeply on a personal level. I could remember, when young, being always moved to tears by the words of an old Bob Dylan song, “I still believe she was my twin,” and could not for the life of me fathom why this might be. Althea helped me put two and two together.
I still don’t know if I was a womb twin survivor, or if the feelings I found deep inside were the result of other early life traumas. Or from some other source entirely. And, of course, there is little way to either corroborate or disprove such an idea.
But, in many ways, this does not matter. Having a concept to place certain complex feelings into is very helpful, for it allows us to explore them more deeply and to release some of what is held inside.
So, thank you, Althea, for dedicating much of your life to spreading knowledge of this notion.
I had two brothers who died , One when I was 2 and one when I was 7 , they were babies and when I was 7 I was really bonded with my baby brother Benjamin . I have ALWAYS taken on men who are really not in good spaces and cared for them so as to actually help them up and out of their circumstance , with no expectation of pay back . Now that I am older , I said to myself "Jen , you paid the debt , you can have fun next time . " I have a fascination with cojoined twins , as I feel that in their unity , one can more easily see the truth of the spirit - there was a set who the one had an incurable heart story , and there was no way to seperate them . They died about a day apart , and the one girl knew her sister was going to die and had died . So this was very odd , but bascially the one life could not sustain the other , even though when they both were alive together , one kind of ate for both . The way they were attached made them look as if they were ballroom dancers , which I found very beautiful . I think it is important to know that the mourning process is important to realize , and that this twin syndrome that you are writing about is basically mourning for a loss without knowing it . My mother did not let me go to Benjamin's funeral , I don't know why . I was never allowed to grieve .
Fascinating. More evidence that time, space, history and memory are all embodied experiences.