Maureen Pollard interviews Monique about her experience of losing her twin to cancer; how hard it was to come to terms with what was happening to her sister's body while watching her deteriorate and how that trauma stayed with her. "It took years after her death for me - I understand that rumination is part of your brain processing, you can't process everything at once so you ruminate, your brain is just.. trying to just let you digest what's just happened to you. Post traumatic stress and survivor guilt, and of course being a twin and wondering.. I had never been alone before ... the bond that we had was so close, that even though we weren't always together, the nakedness that I felt - and I will use this phrase for your viewers, 'singleton' which is something I learned post-her death from other twins." Monique recommends to anyone who knows a twin or has experienced early twin loss to find support at https://twinlesstwins.org. They also discuss Monique's digital memoir project, "With Every Brush Stroke" which you can check out here: https://www.witheverybrushstroke.com
All content for Grief Stories is the property of Grief Stories and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Maureen Pollard interviews Monique about her experience of losing her twin to cancer; how hard it was to come to terms with what was happening to her sister's body while watching her deteriorate and how that trauma stayed with her. "It took years after her death for me - I understand that rumination is part of your brain processing, you can't process everything at once so you ruminate, your brain is just.. trying to just let you digest what's just happened to you. Post traumatic stress and survivor guilt, and of course being a twin and wondering.. I had never been alone before ... the bond that we had was so close, that even though we weren't always together, the nakedness that I felt - and I will use this phrase for your viewers, 'singleton' which is something I learned post-her death from other twins." Monique recommends to anyone who knows a twin or has experienced early twin loss to find support at https://twinlesstwins.org. They also discuss Monique's digital memoir project, "With Every Brush Stroke" which you can check out here: https://www.witheverybrushstroke.com
Maureen Pollard interviews Vicky about losing her husband to myeloma, after surviving prostate and bladder cancer. They discuss the challenge of not having a cancer clinic where they lived, meaning they had to for drive hours back and forth for treatment. They spent so much money on hotels that they ended up having to leave their home and move closer to the clinic, adding an additional struggle of maneuvering their new apartment stairs in his state of illness.
She talks about how her physical and mental health was affected as his health deteriorated, but she could still only see him with love and hope. "He's in the hospital and, this is before he died, and I stopped eating when he stopped eating. I lost 30 pounds, I wouldn't even get up to go seek water, all I could do was hold his hands and break down. And, he was so strong you know ... He wasn't getting better and I did not see that. I look at pictures now and I see how ill he was, but it's true when you look at someone through the eyes of love you don't see the illness, all you see is that beautiful face that you adore. My husband was everything to me, I mean our story was a love story."
They also discuss how her friend Karen took her in after she lost everything (her home, her husband, and her own will to live) and how the Universe brought her a new friend who understood what she was going through.
Both of these women lifted her up and helped her through the darkest time in her life, as did a song that her husband wrote while he was sick which you can listen to here (performed by John Sharkey): http://itunes.apple.com/album/id1715659192?ls=1&app=itunes
Grief Stories
Maureen Pollard interviews Monique about her experience of losing her twin to cancer; how hard it was to come to terms with what was happening to her sister's body while watching her deteriorate and how that trauma stayed with her. "It took years after her death for me - I understand that rumination is part of your brain processing, you can't process everything at once so you ruminate, your brain is just.. trying to just let you digest what's just happened to you. Post traumatic stress and survivor guilt, and of course being a twin and wondering.. I had never been alone before ... the bond that we had was so close, that even though we weren't always together, the nakedness that I felt - and I will use this phrase for your viewers, 'singleton' which is something I learned post-her death from other twins." Monique recommends to anyone who knows a twin or has experienced early twin loss to find support at https://twinlesstwins.org. They also discuss Monique's digital memoir project, "With Every Brush Stroke" which you can check out here: https://www.witheverybrushstroke.com
