I still can't believe my twin is gone and my life is continuing without her. The last few weeks have been taken up with getting ready to sell our family home. I'm not in a hurry to move. My health needs to be better. It is bitter-sweet though, since my twin lived three-doors away from me.

It’s not sinking in she’s gone and she’s never coming back. I go through the same rituals every night, trying to rationale my life without her, while trying to go to sleep. The emptiness never goes away.

There is silence where there was once noise. I could never have envisaged my life would be separate from her and for the first time, made all the harder because we both struggled in the pandemic. I've never lived a life without her, I don't know what that looks like, or how to start. I'm taking each day.

I am sure most people will have gone through their own ups and downs having also lost loved ones in the pandemic. We're not through the other end. Deep down the pandemic has instilled fear in us.

My twin had been struggling with depression, and the pandemic made it worse.

For Sheila.

Ilana Estelle is a mental health and wellbeing advocate who combines educational insight with her personal experience of living with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. She holds diplomas in Counselling, Diet and Nutrition, Nutritional Therapy, Psychotherapy and Counselling, and Stress Management. Through her writing, Ilana supports others in navigating their emotional, mental, and physical health challenges. In addition to writing for The CP Diary, her work has appeared in healthy lifestyle magazines. Ilana is also the author of three books: Cerebral Palsy: A Story – Finding the Calm After the Storm, Spirituality, Healing and Me, and Survival: The Covid Years – Time for Change.

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