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
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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 Ellanne Thomson about losing both of her parents, in the span of 7 months, to cancer. They discuss how her mother was diagnosed with Lymphoma back in 2017, before then being terminally diagnosed with multiple brain tumors in 2021, giving a timeframe for her passing. "There were many many challenges as you can imagine. The biggest challenge with my mom, going through that and getting the terminal diagnosis, the biggest challenge was - and I now know it's called Anticipatory Grief - where you know this is coming but you're trying to be present because you know you have a limited time, but it's just chaos... well, in my mind it was just chaos for those couple of months in between finding out the diagnosis, finding out she had 3-6 months to live and then actually only having 2 months with her. That was a real blessing to have those 2 months, and I'm very very thankful and grateful for that, but a big challenge to walk into that every day and know there's an expiration date." Ellanne also talks about the challenge of not being able to be that present with her father, who was in Australia when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and how an infection he picked up during chemo caused him to pass far sooner than expected. They also discuss how finding support, finding "her people" and joining a grief group helped her immensely.
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
