twin studies

We really ARE twins!

2008-06-27T17:16:00.001-04:00

My sister is having her right hip replaced, next week. She was so bummed to find out that her hip is like my hip. It wasn't my Lyme disease that caused my hip problems! She still holds out hope that my spine problems are solely Lyme-related. So far, she's good on that front. Knock wood!

my twin and I becoming even more each other's family

2008-02-26T15:13:00.000-05:00

My parents are moving to Nebraska in about 10 days. They sold their house in Leonia NJ and are building a new one in Crawford, NE - butte country in the NW corner of the state, where Crazy Horse was murdered and lots of the old West characters roamed and caused trouble. Why are they moving there? To live near my mom's brother and his wife, Cassie. Cassie's family is from Crawford - one of the first settlers there was a Moody. They own thousands of acres of grassland where cattle graze and prairie dogs dig. Anyway, it's at a high elevation and quite dry, so my mom feels physically much better than here at sea level (she has rheumatoid arthritis and asthma).

So our ties are ending to the town we grew up in (from age 7) and the house we called home for 36 years. Bittersweet indeed. Glad they're having an adventure to help them stay young and engaged. Sad they won't be around. And sad to end a chapter of life. And glad to have a new place to visit! It really is beautiful.

They'll also be close to my brother John, whose family lives in the mountains west of Denver. They are in the process of adopting a baby who was born to methamphetamine addicts, and realizing there may be some serious emotional issues with the baby, perhaps autism. So it will be good for them to have my parents closer. And for that I am very glad. My parents were so vital to my sister and brother-in-law's stability after David died, as well as mine, my brother Ron & his family, and little Julia (who turns 6 on March 5).

separated at 48

2007-07-16T12:34:00.000-04:00

not separated at birth. not even my mother could do that. but she's been trying to get us apart ever since. and now she has. i don't think it's conscious, i just know it is. she got alana et famille to cape cod and disinvited me. oh did i cry this morning when i heard laura's message that "everyone's talking about how weird it is that you're not here." that does not help me. i have been rejected, abandoned, cut out. i'm 48 and still so prone to be wounded by my mother. and my father. he had a hand in this, too. why is she the enemy when he is equally responsible? if only for abandoning me to her control? so being a twin does not protect me from suffering alone. no it certainly does not.

Envy of the twin relationship

2007-06-29T15:40:00.000-04:00

I can't count how many times I've heard "oh, I wish I was a twin!" Also people ask "what's it like being a twin?" They simply can't fathom it. And they ask "are you two close?" indicating by their nods and visible pleasure that they hoped we are close. While they are happy to have their stereotype confirmed, some people envy our twin relationship. These are the people who say "well, my sister and I are just as close as twins." No, you're not! It's just not possible, simply because you aren't twins. I often tell people I don't know what it's like to be a twin any more than they know what it's like being a singleton. I have nothing to compare it with. It's my experience. I have brothers and we are close, and it's not the same as the closeness I have with my twin sister.

Our mother is envious of our relationship. She hasn't had the kind of mother/daughter relationship she dreamed of and was told to expect. I knew before she told me that my sister was pregnant with David, and with Julia. Alana told my mother about Julia before we talked, so my mother would be the first to know. Yet I was the first to know, because I knew without being told. No mother can compete with that. And she is envious.

Envy manifests in the implied denial of our special bond as twins. Envy seeks to destroy what it cannot have. Envy knows it isn't the same, knows it's not achievable, and so needs to denigrate and devalue that which it secretly covets. And envy also emerges in our mother's desire to separate us, to pit us against each other, to ally herself with one of us against the other. But it doesn't work! Because we are united. If I weren't so annoyed by it, I'd have some compassion for her. Maybe another day.

My sister's son, my nephew David

2007-06-04T12:59:00.000-04:00

In about three weeks, on June 29, it will be 2 years that David is gone. His 8th birthday was May 16. Julia talks about him some now, wanted to be reassured the other night that she knew he was 8 now. And Alana (my siste) said that Julia got angry the other day when her friend Lucy blurted out in class that "Julia's brother is dead!" She didn't like Lucy talking about her business. And I gather that Julia would not want to be reminded of it.

Being reminded of David interrupts our daily flow, the flow we've so painstakingly put together in his absence. I actually reminded Alana of David today because I was ordering Elizabeth Edwards' book Saving Graces when she called to see if I could pick up Julia tomorrow afternoon. I heard the typing begin and understood that I had interrupted her flow, had reminded her of her grief, had revealed the gaping hole in her life, had exposed the fundamental cruelty and unfairness of this human existence.

I'm posting her an excerpt of an interview of Elizabeth Edwards by Jonathan Alter in the April 9, 2007 Newsweek because this is the only thing I've read that makes sense to me.

You've kept God out of the public discussion of your situation. Why?
I had to think about a God who would not save my son. Wade was—and I have lots of evidence; it's not just his mother saying it—a gentle and good boy. He reached out to people who were misfits and outcasts all the time. He could not stand for people to say nasty things about other people; he just didn't want it. For a 16-year-old boy, he was really extraordinary in this regard. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. You'd think that if God was going to protect somebody, he'd protect that boy. But not only did he not protect him, the wind blew him from the road. The hand of God blew him from the road. So I had to think, "What kind of God do I have that doesn't intervene—in fact, may even participate—in the death of this good boy?" I talk about it in the book, that I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all. Didn't promise us protection. I've had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.

I was astounded to read this incredible passage that articulates what I now think is the only way to come to terms with faith, God and loss: change my conception of God. Sometimes there are miracles and someone is saved to do something else in this mortal life. Now I am coming to understand in a visceral way that the miracle is rare because it is the exception to the rule. And the rule is that people die. Good people die. Extraordinary people die. Terrible people die. So-so people die. And they/we die in many different ways at many different ages and times. That is what happens.

So when someone is miraculously cured, it is the exception. It is the unexplainable, because why would they be saved when David was not? No reason at all. It's inexplicable, because one can't rate the value of one life over another. Does David living merit me dying? I wish it did, I truly do. I really wish I could have taken his place. And if I had, what hole would have been left in Alana's life? As a twin, she would have had an incredible aloneness completely unfamiliar to her (unless she could conjure up the feeling from 27 minutes in the world while I lingered in our mom's womb).

One loss to prevent another loss? We don't have that choice. Or at least not very often. That's the dead hero route - I sacrifice myself to save my platoon, or rescue the little girl caught in the burning building, make sure my crew escapes from the sinking ship, or as the professor at Virginia Tech did, to save my students from a crazed gunman. He survived the Holocaust - the answer to "why was he saved then?" may well be that he was able to save his students by sacrificing himself. He had something important to do later in his life. And we mourn the hero deeply, for the loss of that person is surely as great to her/his loved ones as losing the others would be to theirs.

Losing David created an omnipresent shadow over our lives. Yesterday in Dad's office, I saw the picture he drew for Grandma and Grandpa of a tiger and a dinosaur. He was a remarkable artist. I wished he could have lived longer so the world could see his art, so his talent could flourish. When I watched Julia, Eloise and Basil on the "slip-n-slide" on my front lawn, I could picture David among them running and laughing uproariously. He would have loved it. Then I looked up and saw a hawk circling. David? Maybe. I like to think so. I see him in hawks and butterflies. He loved them. And I am reminded of how he loved flowers when I'm in my garden and especially when I pick the dandelions before they go to seed and invade my lawn. Even though I don't want them everywhere, I hope I always have a few in the lawn to remind me of his picking them to give to his mommy.

Every day, I think of him. And I know Alana thinks of him almost all the time. We don't talk about our respective grief. She talks to Mom and I do, too, a little bit. I do say sometimes how unfair it is, and how I see signs of him. Like the day Julia, Rick and I were tossing the hula hoop over their house from the front lawn, and I saw the curtain in his room move slightly as if someone was pushing it aside to see better. I told her, and while we agreed it was probably the light shifting, I still think it was him.

I wish he was here with us. The grief is indescribable.

Maybe that's why we don't talk about it. There's not a whole lot to say.

Alana said she knew she'd share her children with me, and she has. And that means I share the grief, too. I was not his mother. I don't know what she feels. I only know that my grief is boundless, just as is my love for David and my determination to keep him with me and us.

So I live a full life, with determination and joy - the same characteristics he displayed. That's the best way to keep him alive.

twintimacy

2007-02-17T14:55:00.000-05:00

I'm just putting this into words.

I find I am more capable of intimacy than I think. I now realize that I wasn't afraid of intimacy, I was afraid of losing myself. They are two different things. When I have myself, I can be intimate. Intimacy is about two people sharing themselves with each other and can only happen when two "whole people" have a relationship. Otherwise, it's not intimacy.

I have uncovered/discovered/recovered a lot of myself, enough to feel safe in revealing myself to someone else.

The "almost mom"

2006-12-14T22:07:00.000-05:00

I almost have a daughter. She's my niece and her mother is my twin sister. When she's around me a lot, she starts to call me "Mommy" and eventually doesn't even get embarrassed by it. Julia is her name, my namesake. My sister calls us "the Julias" as in "here come the Julias." Julia prefers that I go by "Julie" so she can be the only Julia. That's fine by me. I just can't get those grown-ups to stop calling me Julia. And I can't stop thinking of myself that way, having been trained to be "Julia" for more than a decade. Somehow, when I started at City Harvest 13 years ago, I stopped resisting the insistence of others on calling me by my official, formal, birth certificate name. And now it's in my blood. A little crazy-making sometimes, to be both Julia and Julie. I think I'm used to it because I've so often been called by my sister's name. But really I just get confused myself.

The only time I don't get confused is when Julia calls me "Mommy." I know I'm not her Mommy. I've never had anyone call me Mommy, so it's not familiar to me. That name belongs to my Mommy, to my sister, to my sisters-in-law, to my friends and relatives. Never to me. All the more reason I enjoy it when Julia mis-calls me. I'm so clear that I'm not her Mommy, I'm her Auntie. There's no confusion in my mind, no question over what I would prefer, because there's no option or choice on my part. I don't have to make any decision. All I have to do is laugh with her and move on. It's comfortable. If I were her Mommy, we'd have a different relationship. And I love this one.

various images of me

2006-12-07T14:41:00.000-05:00

All of these are me, none are the twin. First one is the latest - new publicity shot for City Harvest, used maybe once. Second is at Practical Magic Ball when we honored Harrison Ford and I was surrounded by him and Bill Hemmer - in girl heaven! Last is oldest, from 2002 when I was one of Woman's Day's "Women Who Inspire Us." I don't have any more recent ones that I'm willing to post!

does being a twin make me more co-dependent?

2006-12-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

I've gotten a lot of help with my co-dependency from 12 step programs, beginning about 25 years ago. Since I turned 48 this past August, you can see that I have basically grown up with 12 step principles and support. As I've moved along in life, I've tried to "practice these principles" in all areas of my life. And I've done a pretty good job of it regarding work, friendships, even parents and brothers. The one person who continues to hold me "hostage" is my twin sister!

It's just this year that I realized I put my focus on my twin sister. At the age of 47 (!) I finally saw that she is the older sister and I am a middle child. I blend into the background when she's in the room. I watch how she reacts and gauge my behavior accordingly. If she's cranky, I usually cringe and try to avoid her, or to do something that will please her. Her mood can determine mine. Yikes!

This was and is such an important revelation for me. This summer, I tried something new. One day at the pool, she was VERY cranky. Instead of staying away from her, I tried asking her if there was something she needed to vent about since it looked like she was cranky. Her first response was "no" and then the dam burst and she went on for a couple minutes about all these people who weren't doing their jobs, and how things hadn't gone right for her at a store, etc. Then she started to smile and laugh at herself. I was amazed. I helped her change her own mood simply by inviting her to talk and then listening to her without comment (beyond an occasional sympathetic nod and "oh no!"). I felt powerful, let me tell you. I was no longer her victim, I was her friend. More, I was her sister.

This evolution reminded me of how much I still need to be reminded of and practice the principles of detachment and keeping the focus on myself. I remember my first days in 12 step programs.

Initially, I disliked meetings because they were so calm. I was uncomfortable in a space where people talked about taking responsibility for themselves, keeping the focus on themselves and their own recovery. I wanted to talk about all the crazy people who really had a problem!

Gradually, almost by osmosis, I began to understand what people meant when they referred to various diseased behaviors. More important was my growing understanding of why those behaviors weren't adaptive or helpful for me anymore. For example, I remember someone talking about how she used to "read other people's minds" and someone else shared later about how he usedto know what was best for other people and how annoying it was whenthey wouldn't listen to him. The room burst into laughter of identification. I had no idea what was so funny, because I really could read people's minds and really did know what was best for them.

It bothered me that I didn't understand why that a) wasn't true and b) wasn't good for me to think. I thought and thought and listened and talked about it for many weeks, until one day reality dawned on me.

First, I am not psychic and I do not read minds. There is no way I can know what goes on in other people's minds unless they tell me. I can ask what they'rethinking and they may or may not tell me. I simply won't know what'sin someone else's mind until the person tells me. So if I think I know what someone's thinking, I am fantasizing about what I THINK they're thinking. Usually I get it wrong. If I think I know, I need to ask "is this what you're thinking?" and check it out. After I experienced a few times of feeling really humiliated when the other person laughed at me, I stopped doing that and instead started asking "so what do you think about this?" People in the rooms helped me understand what was happening - that humiliation was being transformed into humility.

The second thing I learned was that I don't know what's best for someone else. I learned that in two ways: one, by rebelling against what other people thought was best for me, and two, by having my opinion and advice rejected by other people. I hated that someone thought they knew what I should do, and I grew to love the informal slogan "don't 'should' on yourself." No one else knew what I was thinking, feeling or remembering. Then I was helped by others to apply my feelings to someone else - could it be that other people felt the same way when I offered them my unsolicited andrelatively uninformed advice? Well, I knew how some people felt, because they told me in different ways that I didn't know what I was talking about and they didn't want my advice anyway, they just wanted me to listen and then ask them what they needed from me.

Oh. Simple. Direct. And very difficult.

People in the rooms shared their experience, strength and hope about how they faced and dealt with similar problems. How they learned to take their arms from around the other person and give themselves a hug. How they put the focus on themselves and making themselves whole, rather than focusing on how the other person was or wasn't meeting their emotional, physical or financial needs.

And that's what I've finally learned to do with my sister. To see her as separate from me, possessed of her own feelings, thoughts, memories, situations. To see myself as separate from her, and possessed of lots of skills and tools that I can use to maintain that detachment. With my sister, I detach with love. And the more I detach, the more I can love her.

Wow. I suppose as twinship goes, 48 years isn't too bad as a learning curve. It doesn't matter anyway, as this is not a competition. It's my life and I'm sure glad I realize it now.

exploring on-line retail

2006-11-17T12:49:00.000-05:00

I just started looking into on-line retail, on-line businesses, since it looks like I'm going to be home most of the time from now on. While visiting the Food Bank of South Jersey's site, I saw that they were selling FBSJ merchandise via CafePress.com. Curious as always, I checked them out and le voila! I started my own on-line store called ThinkTwin. Here's the url: http://www.cafepress.com/thinktwin. Apparently, when and if I develop my own website, I can put HTML direction on it to direct folks to my merchandise.

I said it would be for political and activism purposes. Just have to think of what! Since I am a thinking twin, that shouldn't be too difficult. Let me see...environmental awareness, compassion toward others, putting people before profits (and the profits will follow...). I will keep thinking. Maybe I can start with some lovely art of twin cats, since cats are always big and twins are always fascinating - even to twins!

Back again, after many months.

2006-08-02T21:30:00.000-04:00

It's August 2 and there are just 17 days left before my twin sister and I turn 48. Hard to believe the number is true. No more babies in my dreams. And I don't know if she'll have another. Can she? They are leaving it up to God and trying the old-fashioned way - even though it took fertility treatment for her to get pregnant with Julia just five years ago at 43.

As for me, it's over. Despite being disgustingly regular, too much physical trauma prevents me from believing anymore that I could bear a child of my own. A fourth major surgery in 7 years - this time for L4-5 - forces me to face facts. My body is not reliable anymore. Hasn't been for several years now. Probably wasn't to start with but I kept thinking of myself as sturdy. Sturdy and immune to stress. Not so.

I still don't understand how the whole stress thing operates because I sure do know how to relax and to express my feelings. People have explained it to me, and I feel quite dense for the reasoning does not penetrate.

It's sort of like the incomprehensibility of traffic jams. I do understand them more as I get older, but there is still something about them that just doesn't make sense. Yes, the more arteries that feed into a single or narrower artery, the more congestion we will have. That I understand, and despise transportation planners for. I gave up the Hamptons because of Jones Beach traffic turning into the Southern State, the LIE, the Northern State, 27A and even 25 - rendering them parking lots. It's the slow-down-and-stop LIE and Northern State traffic as you round the bend and see Queens that just does not compute. Or the inexplicable jams as you drive through the tunnel at exits 143-145 on the Garden State Parkway. There are four lanes leading in and four lanes leading out - same number of arteries, just solid lines painted between them instead of broken. What is the story there? The traffic jams I really hate are the rubber-necking jams. A strong childhood memory is listening to 1010 WINS or another all-news radio station somewhere in the US as we drove to Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or into the city, and the WINS News Helicopter reporting on "rubbernecking delays" on the Van Wyck Expressway or Koskiusko Bridge or the Chicago Skyway. I am always so disgusted when I finally near the slow-down cause and I see flashing lights, police cars, ambulances and a few totaled cars - on the other side of the highway! How do I see all this? I am rubbernecking! So really this is self-disgust for being a human like all others. A laugh then is in order, because traffic jams are all about human beings being human - quirky, fallible, curious, predictable, silly, compassionate, nosy, scared, and grateful to be on the side of the highway that is now finally moving very quickly - as well as grateful to be alive and moving at all.

Back to stress. There seems to be a lot of blame attached to the topic of stress, as in "you brought this on yourself, you stress-lover!" As I pointed out to my father last week, gravity is stressful. He shot right back, "and no gravity is also stressful - in a different way!" Dear old Dad. Right as usual. Is that where I get it from? Both he and my mom are Taureans, so I probably get it from both of them. As a Leo, however, I can be cajoled, bribed and otherwise placated and soothed into being happy instead of right. And right there is the reason I don't buy the "I dig stress" blame game. I HATE stress. May I say that again? I HATE stress! That feels better.

Honestly, is there anyone out there who seeks out stress? Besides professional athletes, I mean. Competing in the Olympics, the Tour de France, the World Series, Super Bowl, World Cup, NBA finals, the US Opens (golf and tennis) and the like - that is stressful. The pressure to win must be almost unbearable and the physical wear and tear is pretty phenomenal, too. Yet so many of us pasty-faced North Americans (I read that phrase once in college and love it) want to be athletic stars. It's a socially-acceptable stress. The folks who have a knee replacement because they've been running for thirty years - now they deserve our sympathy. Those tubbies who need a knee replacement because the joint can no longer support their weight - well, they brought it on themselves. And folks like me, who once were physically active but are no longer because our bodies have started to fall apart, are hard for people to figure out. I constantly explain to people that I didn't have an accident (that would be good stress), I don't have arthritis (also good stress, though pitiable in one so relatively young), and I don't exercise excessively (again, good stress though foolish). I did have Lyme disease, which I firmly believe weakened my spinal discs. That interests people - and they then are pretty willing to let me off the stress hook.

The stress hook is a horrible exercise in powerlessness. One is told to reduce stress in one's life. OK, what stress am I to reduce? Can't really do anything about gravity. Yes, losing weight would ease some of the physical stress on my body. OK, so then there's the stress of going on a diet and being more physically active. Good stress. But stress nonetheless. Money stress. Well, get a job. What kind of job can I reasonably seek when my physical self is not so reliable? More stress in thinking it all through, and justifying to people why I believe I can no longer work full-time.

It's hard to convince others that I am physically unable to work full-time when I don't really want to believe it myself. No, no, no. I can work full-time, I can change the world, I am the great and powerful Oz! Behind my curtain is a pretty beat-up and broken body. C5-7, L2-3, L4-5, new right hip. The right side has taken a licking and is ticking much more slowly than before. How on earth can I keep the hours I used to keep? 50 and 60 hour work weeks, regular commuting - no longer possible for me.

I watch my twin. She works long hours from home, and is always tired, cranky and overwhelmed. Her back is fine, though. She lost her beloved son. Anything more stressful is impossible. She's not getting back surgery. She weighs more than I do, she carries her 4 year old child, she gardens, she moves furniture and lugs a heavy briefcase. Her discs are fine. Her hip is fine. No surgeries for her. The stress that woman has endured is immeasurably more than what I have encountered. And I'm the one who's being told about managing my stress so my back is OK and I can work full-time.

This is when twin comparisons are useless. Well, perhaps they aren't so useless - because it's helpful to then look at the differences. If we are twins, what happened to me that accounts for my physical decrepitude? There's Lyme disease! And of course, the hip thing is a strange occurrence that no doubt happened some time when I was in the hospital for the crabapple-in-eye incident.

There is one other possibility: she is the stronger twin, I am the weaker. I've always had a problem with that theory, though, because I weighed more than she did when we were born. Wouldn't the weaker twin weigh less? Of course, I had to be immediately transfused and she was fine. And I've been sick so often through my life while she's been pretty healthy. So my hanging about in Mom's womb was a matter of my getting some nutrition on my own?

None of this really matters, to paraphrase Freddie Mercury. Nothing really matters to me but the reality that I am stressed, can't do much about it, don't choose it, and have consequences that affect me physically. I haven't really worked in 6 months, and I really don't want to work again. I want to do what I want to do, without having to suffer anymore.

Missing David

2006-03-29T00:08:00.000-05:00

My nephew David - my twin sister's first child - died on June 29, 2005 from a brain tumor that grew and grew and grew and eventually snuffed out his life. He was 6 years, 1 month, two weeks old. I found him. His mom had tucked him in, kissed him and told him she was the luckiest mommy in the world to have him as her son, to have a boy like him who was so wonderful and special. She left and was downstairs on the telephone when I came in at about 8:15 - finally arriving after having been at a work function. I wanted to leave that event earlier but it was work, there were people I needed to meet, and the trains just didn't come often enough. So I got the one that arrived around 8:15, and rushed to get to the house. I knew. I just knew something was going to happen that day. And when I saw Alana laughing on the telephone, I thought it was OK, nothing bad happened. So I went upstairs to say goodnight - first to Julia who was with her Daddy reading stories. Then, I went into David's room, knelt down by his bed - really, a mattress on the floor because that's what he wanted - and kissed him, saying "good night, sweet David." Then I noticed that his eyes were half open. So I called his name a little louder, touched his shoulder and gently shook him, watching for him to wake up, to respond, to acknowledge me, to know that Auntie Julie was there. I learned later that he'd been asking for me all day and evening. And I wasn't there. I think he must have known I was there, heard me come in. At least I hope so. I so hope he knew I was there. Alana thinks he died knowing I was there and it was OK to go. Oh yes, she had said to him that he could go, she would be OK. I am crying so hard when I'm writing this, making so many typos I then go back and correct. I can't sleep tonight for missing him, for grief. I opened a drawer and saw his little sweatpants that I kept because I need a piece of him with me. And he'll always be that size. He'll never grow up. Never. It's beyond words. I miss him so much. I am engulfed by grief. I worked so hard at that damn job. I stopped crying after a while because I had shut down there, become invisible - even to myself. Now I'm free to cry, and I do. I went to the cemetary a couple weeks ago and just cried and cried so deeply sitting on that beautiful bench, looking at the words on the footstone "David Leland Coble, Best Boy in the World." And the worst thing about all this is that I don't feel entitled to this grief. I'm just his aunt. But that's not how I feel. I feel he was my child. I was with him almost every day for the two years of his illness, and was there a lot before, too. He was my boy. I was the "almost mom." He'd call me Mommy a lot - mostly because I look so much like his mommy, but I also think I behaved like a mommy to him, I loved him like a mommy, I would have done anything to protect and save him, like a mommy. I have been blessed to feel that I would give my life to save his. And the futility of that wish, that desire is deadly. I feel myself go numb. I find it so hard to accept that David is really not coming back. I know it, I see the grave, I hear the absent footsteps and silenced voice, I feel the empty arms and loadless back.

celebrity dreams

2006-03-27T13:29:00.000-05:00

When I was a little girl, I dreamed that I would marry a millionaire and be famous. I thought I'd be the first woman President of the United States. I also thought I was an alien child left here by my parents, and they tried to contact me through the ringing in my ears. How I explained that to myself is a mystery - after all, I was a twin! And my sister was living evidence that I was no alien, I was no orphan, I wasn't adopted or abandoned.

I so desperately wanted out of my relationship with my mother. It was impossible for me to believe that I could be stuck with her for the rest of my life. Some day, all would be revealed and made better - that I was with her by mistake and I really had another, kinder, more loving and understanding mother.

This was no adolescent rebellion - these fantasies began when I was five or six or seven. What desperation at such a young age. Poor little thing. I see photos from that period and what a scowl I always sport! Or at most a shy little smile. Contrast that to my sister's wide smiles, clear glee. Why was our childhood so different? We are twins, after all. Today, she's married and has a family - great tragedy, too, with David dying of brain cancer at age 6. So I'm not envious, simply curious. How did she turn out relatively normal, while I remain single and capable of intimacy only sporadically?

Does this have anything to do with celebrity dreams? Of which I have had plenty. And yet never have had the will or willingness to pursue with the single-minded determination one needs to become famous and loved by millions.

My recent experience at NYRP has so disillusioned me about celebrity. I can't read the celeb mags withouth thinking "she must be a real bitch in real life" or "I bet he treats his staff badly" or "she looks so sweet but I bet she's a pain to work with." It's as though the best-loved celebrities are the most obnoxious, controlling, arrogant, belittling people in their real lives. They believe their own press. Well, at least the celebrity I got to know believes her own press. She actually thinks she's a nice person. People should only know. But actually that would destroy their fantasies and dreams.

My dream of being one among the constellation of stars has suffered a great awakening, that the constellation of stars isn't really a very nice place to live or even visit. People say they'd love to meet so and so, or have dinner with so and so. If it were arranged by the publicist and the sponsor of a contest, that meeting and dinner would no doubt be quite pleasant. Because the celebrity would be acting, fulfilling the public role and personal they have created and nurtured over time with the collusion of all those around them - some paid, some unpaid. But get inside the inner circle and there's controlling, disdain, contempt, pouting, and blaming. I called it "shoot first and ask questions later."

People learn to keep their heads down, to stay quiet, to couch everything they say so that it's tailored not to generate an explosion of abuse. Above all, people learn that they are NOT the celebrity's equal, that their opinion doesn't matter, that only the celebrity's opinion and passion count. It all has to be her idea, her passion, her values, her credit.

Fear is the mechanism for controlling others. I actually was an object lesson for everyone around her, for I dared to challenge her and do things without her permission. And look what happened: I was fired. I annoyed her, so I was fired. Lesson for all involved: don't act independently. Don't have your own agenda. Don't suffer from the illusion that you will ever matter enough to be indispensable and that you will ever have the ability to take liberties of familiarity or equality.

Susan M. likened the place to Henry VIII's court, with courtiers jockeying for position and favor. It was very true. And those who succeeded were those most successful at sublimating their own ideas and opinions to fawn on her. It's not that they didn't have opinions, it's that they had learned how to phrase things so they weren't directly challenging her. Rather, they were building on her ideas, helping her see all sides of it, subtly encouraging her to evaluate the idea and come to the result that the idea was a little nuts or foolish or expensive or unoriginal.

That last had to be done really subtly because she couldn't stand the fact of other ideas or programs existing that perhaps were better than hers. Collaboration never seemed possible even though NYRP was theoretically working with other groups - NYRA, other greening groups. Most of the collaboration took place sub rosa - very few of them were highlighted. Those who worked longest with her were wisest - they had seen clearly that it was only NYRP's work that she felt pride in and happy about. Other groups had the potential to steal credit from her. Ix-nay on at-thay!

The puzzling thing for me is why I was hired in the first place. I was not subtle in the interviewing process, and I think Phillips Oppenheim knows that I am not a subtle person. I'm straightforward and above-board, openly passionate and incredibly creative, collaborative and team-focused, self-confident and driven. I do not kow-tow. My strategic abilities are for the center stage, not behind the scenes. I like to have partners, I like to share, I like to invite and engage others to become involved and invested and passionate. (Twin stuff? Possibly.) And I was a non-profit superstar. I'd taken City Harvest to its pinnacle, turning around a dying organization and building it into a force for change and a highly visible player on the city stage. So it's not as though I hid myself and gave the impression that I would be a suitable courtier.

I imagine that others thought that I could recognize the difference between myself and the diva, and that I would be suitably deferential and subtly strategic in working with her. I guess they saw my ability from the outside and ascribed attributes to me that I don't possess. In the context of building something from nothing or very little, my abilities are perfect - scrappy, dogged, enthusiastic, public, even a little brash. In the context of an established entity with powerful egos in situ, my abilities and style are not so good. I tend to clash with folks in authority. Never was a good sponsee, either. I really don't like people to look down on me, to assume that I am stupid or less than or somehow inferior to them. I approach people as equals, and pride myself on it (uh-oh, pride goeth before the fall...). I anger people in power. I think I do it strategically, but I really do it emotionally. I can't let go, I can't take the longer view in terms of my position, even as I take the longer view on the issues. For example, I know that ultimately America's Second Harvest will have to become a more inclusive place. That will be probably five to ten years down the road, however. I was way too pushy for that to happen now. It couldn't. And I couldn't see that or keep my mouth shut about it. Talk about not listening to people. Talk about not being subtle. Talk about being pigeonholed as that b**** from New York. Talk about failure to communicate, failure to accurately assess a situation, failure to come up with a game plan, failure to accurately assess myself and have a plan for what I would do. Wow. Hindsight is even better than 20/20. It's actually quite horrifying to look back and see how I behaved. I was so angry, so emotionally invested, so wounded by the betrayal within the ranks of Foodchain, and so deeply irritated by the condescension and patronizing of the boys from Second Harvest. I just couldn't see anything else. I saw reality and sold it very well to Foodchain, but couldn't help myself hating the reality and acting out on that aversion to the bullying denigration of their negotiating demands and their intransigent position of moral superiority based on being better "businessmen."

That's a fundamental weakness of mine - that I don't quite get the "it's only business" explanation for bad behavior and cruelty. It's like the diva saying "I'm mercurial" as an explanation/excuse for yelling at people and being abusive in her comments about someone's idea or opinion. You just have to suck it up, because that's the way it is. And if you have any feelings about it, keep them to yourself because they're not relevant to this discussion. Of course, the powerful one's feelings are completely relevant. Their feeling of fear, for example, that someone else has an idea and could upstage them. Or the feeling of anger that another is challenging their decision. Or the feelingsof disgust or contempt or envy, jealousy, self-pity, suspicion, or hostility. All of those were relevant. As are the feelings of impatience and exasperation in a Board that decides they don't want to play out a situation and see what happens, or even give someone a hearing. So while it may be business, it always has to do with feelings. Unfortunately, the feelings of love, caring, compassion, respect, generosity, sadness, kindness and willingness rarely come into play when a difficult decision has to be made. I suppose that's where the saying of "act in haste, repent at leisure" stems from. Because the feelings of passion - anger, lust, impatience, etc. - drive immediate action and really act against taking one's time to evaluate a situation dispassionately and come up with a course of action that DOES take people's feelings into account and can express some kind of caring.

It's interesting, the juxtaposition of passion, dispassion, compassion. One leads to regret, the second is perhaps necessary to arrive at the third. More to think on here. Because I am a passionate person, driven by passion. I also like to think that I'm compassionate, able to take into account other people's feelings and to walk a bit in their shoes so as to arrive at a decision and an approach to implementing that decision which acknowledges and respects the other person's feelings and material needs. Dispassion is more difficult for me, yet can be an incredibly useful tool. As I look back at my own behavior dispassionately, I gain perspective and perhaps the hope of behaving differently in the future.

I no longer want to be a celebrity, for I see the price is very, very high. Watching a diva up close allowed me to see her mistrust of and hostility toward the outside world, a world that wants something from her even as it gives her what she needs - adoration and adulation, riches and power. I don't know if she is capable of intimacy - she must be or she wouldn't have a husband for so long. But it's within a very small circle, and I don't actually know how someone gets into that circle. The deep disappointment for me is that I couldn't manage to get in, I couldn't make her see me as a wonderful person in my own right, I couldn't make her trust me. Because I couldn't play by her rules. No, I wouldn't play by her rules. At first I didn't know what the rules were. Then I did, and I grew more and more despondent as I played by them. It was a relief to go.

It was another situation like my childhood. I felt I was in an alternate universe with no connection to reality. The diva was my mother all over again - and I simply couldn't stomach the unpredictability and emotional violence. I'm really disappointed in her, myself, the situation. It reminds me that I was deeply disappointed in my childhood and my mother. I had to settle, there was no choice, she was in fact my mother and that fact could not change regardless of my fantasies. I would have settled at NYRP, too, had they not asked me to depart. It's familiar, the settling.

Have I settled elsewhere? Probably. A little thought about settling for Alana having the family, the friends, the life, the success, the independence from me has popped into my head. Paying attention to stray thoughts is a useful tool, for in them lies my truth. My twin has the life, I have the disappointment. My twin has her path, I have hers, too. Ay-yai-yai.

So now I feel my life is over. I have no idea what I want to do or will be willing to do or hope to do or even can do. And I sort of don't care. Today. We shall see what happens as I continue on this path of exploration on the meaning of being a twin. That seems crucial and unsatisfactorily explored to date.

Writing to right myself

2006-02-27T13:40:00.000-05:00

Today, I have so much to do and I am not doing it. Being out of work means having some kind of self-imposed routine. Something I do not seem to have today. I have taken one job-search-related action today. Supposedly that is all I have to do every day - one action. Doesn't feel like enough. So writing is one way to get myself motivated.

The idea of writing about things I really know is not a new one. From time immemorial, writers have memorialized their most compelling and most trivial moments in novels, poems and memoirs. Yet writing down memories, using writing to reflect and remember - just has not occurred to me as a legitimate endeavor - for me.

I've spent so much time comparing myself to other writers (wow! I actually include myself in that category...), that my life isn't interesting enough or I haven't done the kind of things that other people write about. It's definitely blocked my ability to use writing as a tool for expressing myself. Interesting that I have not been able to use writing for myself because I compare myself to others. So I myself am not enough, is the ipso facto of that equation.

While I'm not sure how or why it happened, it is now clear to me that I am enough. That what I do or think or say or want is just fine for me. It's not about fitting myself into the round hole by shaving off inconvenient or unpleasant or unwelcome or even hidden parts of me. I have striven to fit in, rather than to have the right fit. So now under Project Right Fit, I am committed to the idea that there IS a right fit for me, perhaps several of them, and it's a matter of me choosing the right one for now.

Working for the diva certainly propelled me along this trajectory. I have spent many years wishing to get close to celebrity - either become one myself or be friends with one or two or more. The daydreams about marrying Prince Albert of Monaco or George Clooney. The fantasies about Julia Roberts wanting to be my friend because we have the same first name. The thinking that celebrities have something I also have and they will recognize it once they see me, meet me, talk to me. They, too, will want what I have. Just as I have charmed masses of mere mortals and become a power of example for many ordinary folks, I can charm the stars themselves into accepting and loving me.

It's as if I never grew up in some very fundamental way. I've held on to my childhood fantasies of marrying a millionaire, of becoming a movie star, of being President of the United States, of writing the best-selling novel of the century - of having my own fame and fortune, or at least sharing in someone else's fame and fortune. Of course, I haven't taken the steps toward fulfilling these fantasies. I've pursued other paths, other fantasies from childhood such as making the world a happier place, a more just place, a socially civilized place. And the job at NYRP was like my step into a childhood fantasy - reflected glory from working for the diva. Oh how naive I was! Maybe naive isn't the right word. It was simply shocking to realize that she was not going to give me a chance to charm her. I was ostracized from the word go. I was not "her staff." Why did I think I ever could be? I believed so much in my own personal power, in my own magnetism, that I felt I would register more quickly as a "good guy" in her camp. But no. I wonder what could have made a difference. Not hiring Naomi? Maybe, but the diva wasn't talking to me from the very beginning. You know, this is where I get into trouble, trying to figure out how I could have behaved differently. The point for me is that it wasn't a fit, I knew it wasn't a fit, I wanted to find out how much not a fit it was, and I went ahead and made a hiring decision with the awareness that I was finding out where my authority began and ended. And I did find out. That was an awful day, having to ask her for a second chance. What a b****, "I don't know, Julia. What have you learned?" I still think my response was right on target:"to be a steward of your vision." And I am not satisfied with being a steward of anyone else's sole vision. A group vision, great. I can help a group find their vision - if everyone is willing to play. If the most important person is unwilling to play, it can't happen. And so it went. Now I have this little fantasy that she'll remember me, she'll realize how good I was, blah blah blah. If she remembers me at all, she'll do so with contempt and dismissal. I do know I did my best for NYRP, and I believe they are in better shape now than they were before I arrived.

So the lesson for me includes "right fit" and earn my own fame and fortune, if that is really what I want. I do want to influence people on a wide scale. I do want to practice the principles of courtesy, open-mindedness, positive thinking, honesty, integrity, self-examination, personal accountability, kindness, respect for self and others, hard work, life-long learning, generosity, support, service, charity, fairness and love. I want to value myself, my life and my learning. I want to help give voice to the silent - including myself. I want to be someplace where I get to shine on my own merits and achievements, where my personality is valued and welcomed, and where I make a difference for the good of others. Don't know where, don't know when...but do know that it will happen.

With this acceptance that I am just exactly right, and that I can/will find the right fit of work for me, I'm finding that I understand the work needed to fulfill my dreams and fantasies. It is hard work to stay positive, to keep on the road and not rest overlong, to take action day after day, to believe in myself and my abilities and talents, to allow my passions to take me along, to have faith and allow God to exist and guide me, to forgive others for being human and hurting me.

Hard work that I can do, because all I have to do is from inside. Instead of referring to the outside world to see how I'm doing, I go inside to see if I feel aligned with my values, my skills, my passions. If I am, then I'm doing great. If I feel out of integrity with myself, that's what I need to address. This is a giant revelation to me, this self-acceptance and self-referencing.

The old way of being was in some ways grounded in my belief that I was all-powerful, that I could somehow mold others to my reality, that I could mold reality to my wishes. I've been supported in that egotistical belief by therapists and friends and employees who have told me that I'm so amazing, so special, so gifted, so inspirational, so much a power of example, so visionary, so really different and almost saintlike. And I've drunk it all in.

A heady mixture of praise, with a little bit of criticism from Linda. How I let her stay in my life is almost beyond me. Maybe there always was hope for me, as I kept the value of self-examination and listening to others. Because I still don't know exactly how or if I'll be able to mitigate my shortcomings regarding colleagues and bosses and other ego-maniacs. But perhaps I'll have a fresh appreciation of what I do well, what I don't do well, and what I can value in other people. The arrogance and contempt for those who don't think as I do - very unpleasant traits that I'd be very well rid of! Perhaps by valuing myself by my own standards, I can allow others to be valuable according to their own standards.

Now - let's be honest here - I still am striving for sainthood, but perhaps with a bit more humility. Humility born of the humiliation of having absolutely no impact on someone's opinion of me - or rather, having only the impact of worsening someone's opinion of me - completely against my will and intent.

Not everyone will like me. Sob! Why is that so hard to accept? I just think I'm so fantastic. Is this what it means to be a "person among people," "one among the many?" I can be fantastic and still not be everyone's cup of tea. Just as they are not mine. If I never see the diva again, it will be too soon. She is just not a very pleasant human being. And I don't think she'll mind my absence from her life either.

resentment, the silent killer

2006-02-27T13:39:00.000-05:00

My resentments are holding me back, killing my dreams.
Moving ahead is impossible.
Cries of pain, tears of humiliation tug at my shoulders and waist
craving attention and resolution.
I hate those people, I hate those things.
And I feel it over and over and over again.
Refeeling, re-sentiment, resentment.
Over and over I hate.
I resent Judas and Weasel and Lower-Than-Dirt.
Hard to even think of Miss C.
The look of hatred in her eyes mirrored mine.
And I see it again and again, as charged today as it was so many months ago.
Painful to feel again. Heart-stabbing pain, in fact.
The remedy is to fully feel, fully express, fully accept, fully forgive.
Forget? Doubtful. But you never know.
After all the work is done to erase resentment, memory fades.
Without the sharpness of the pain, memory loses its currency.
So resentment keeps the past current.
A logjam of feelings dams me. It blocks the present flow.
Hardly optimal experience or even Good Orderly Direction.
How can I be in "the flow" with such obstructions?
Of my own making is this dam, with its carefully stacked and sorted hurts and hates and angers.
And yet it has an aura of neglect. Little visited, barely smoothed.
Sharp edges jut out harshly, nicking and cutting my heart at every infrequent pass.
So shall I dismantle this home-made wall, take down the fortress, risk the wounds already endured?
That is the point, isn't it? The worst has already happened.
Refeeling can never be as bad as the catastrophic and unanticipated original feeling.
My mind tells me differently. "It will kill you!"
My heart tells the truth. "These resentments are killing you - and your future."

A Fundamental Connection

2006-02-25T14:45:00.000-05:00

Last night I was talking about how my sister is fundamental in my life. She is bedrock. As long as I don't go away, she'll always be there. And I have no intention of ever going away. Because I need her, I need that bedrock.

Singletons may wonder what this is like. Some singletons claim that their feelings for a sibling or parent are the same. I have two other siblings and parents, and while I do feel they are critical parts of my life, they are not essential in the same way. Well, they're not essential. I will miss them terribly, I will cry and be sad. But if my sister were to die...I don't know what will happen. I've talked to identical twins who've lost their twin, and they say it's like a part of them is gone. It's pointless in some ways to compare twin and singleton experience, it just irritates me when singletons want to claim that they know how twins feel. How on earth can they? They don't have the same experience as we do. Similarly, I don't have the same experience as a singleton. Our experiences are just different.

That said, I am amazed at the power of my connection with my sister. How much I need her. It makes some kind of sense. After all, we have been together from time zero. The only time we were separate pre-birth was when she popped out and 27 minutes later I emerged. The family joke is that I needed some space. Which I probably did, still do. Since then, we've been apart a lot, but always in contact. Probably college was the time we were most separate - the summer between sophomore and junior year was particularly distant. I spent the summer in Los Angeles with my girlfriend's family and Alana was in Brussels, Belgium and the south of France (Grasse, I believe). Our contact was quite minimal - a few letters and postcards. These were the pre-e-mail days of 1978.

That reminds me of one of the most common questions asked by singletons about twins - sometimes the very first one: "do you have telepathic communication?" We do have some psychic connection, not predictable or continuous. When one is in trouble, though, we know it. And our lives have been somewhat synchronous. Despite our best efforts to differentiate.

During our junior year, she was at Northwestern University for a semester. I was at Smith but living in a different house than in my first two years. One night I dreamed that she was in a Dali-esque set, like the dream sequence in 'North by Northwest.' She was skiing down a house roof and coming too close to the edge and falling to her death. When I woke up, I called her only to find out that the previous night, she'd been feeling quite suicidal. A friend knocked on her door and they talked, and she didn't do anything stupid. We hadn't been in much contact before that, but I knew something was wrong. For me, that is the most powerful example of the psychic connection.

Other examples are more mundane - like when we show up wearing the exact same thing, or the same color scheme. It makes some sense in that we have the same coloring and body type, so we should buy the same kinds and colors of clothes. But we have a wide variety of clothes, many colors, many styles. So how come we end up dressed virtually the same about half the time? Just one of those doo-doo-doo-doo Twilight Zone things.

Synchronicity is another story for another time.

twin power

2006-02-23T13:08:00.000-05:00

I wrote a whole section about twin power and the usual questions people ask about twins - and didn't save it. Damn. Now I'll have to rewrite everything. Some twin power.

2006-02-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

This morning, I realized that my life is a function of my twin sister's - and that's just fine with me. 47 1/2 years into this twinship, I'm at peace with it.

People want me to have my own life, to pursue a path separate from that of my sister. They are singletons and just don't get it - there is no life separate from my twin. How could they get it? They view us (twins) as freaks, in the nicest possible way. I mean, we don't belong in a freak show (or do we?). But we are oddities among the normal.

I always thought it would be useful for psychologists to study how twins separate and individuate, rather than keep that stupid focus on how alike we are. You know, "separated at birth but both are cowboys!" "They buy the same clothes! Named their cats the same thing!" So what? As my sister says, duh, we have the same body type and coloring, why wouldn't we dress alike?

I actually think human beings trend toward looking alike. In my office one day, every other person came in wearing the exact same color combination - dark red and black. There were 15 of us in the exact same colors - even though some were blond and some brunette, some black and some white, some male and some female. What are the odds of that? I think that over time we all picked up subtle clues about what colors occurred most often and thus would contribute to creating the most harmonious workplace. Of course, that was our goal - to have harmony.

I suppose you could see people wearing radically different clothes at work as indicative of a conflict-ridden culture. Like my last job - major differences in what people wore. I could tell that I was making headway in creating a team when a few of us showed up in the same color combinations a few times. Alas, I am gone from that job.

Lest one thinks that it is my "twin power" creating all this synchronicity, I'll remind you that women living together for some length of time end up having their monthly cycles coincide. And people look like their dogs. And married people end up looking alike. We like "likeness." Many of us certainly like looking at ourselves in the mirror. We actually think that people who can't look at themselves in the mirror have some kind of mental infirmity - self-hatred or no-self-esteem.