As the second twin living with cerebral palsy, I grew up following my twin. And without the emotional support I needed – support should have protected and guided me, but instead our parents, made me follow; my twin without cerebral palsy, was the one to lead.
It wasn’t a choice.
It was only when I began to write on my blog, The CP Diary that I began to learn about myself – it's how I learned to piece my experiences together, to separate things and to place what didn't belong to me.
In my early years I didn't know how to because I didn’t fully understand the reality I was living in. When you don’t know, you can’t adapt – but once you finally gain awareness, you begin to shape your own identity – set your own personal boundaries and make choices that feel aligned and authentic. Those boundaries came late – but they came.
Now that my twin has gone, I’m having to reinvent the wheel. As a twin who has always been independently minded yet living with cerebral palsy, I was conditioned to physically follow my twin’s lead – and only now, in her absence, do I feel the depth of that conditioning. I am having to learn now how to lead – around a life where I was solely conditioned to follow.
I’m learning that losing a twin as an adult is not just an emotional change – it’s a somatic one. My nervous system grew up scanning another body: hers. I was made to follow her direction without question.
Now my twin is no longer here, I am having to learn how to lead on my own – as a singleton. With a history different to my twin, living a separate life feels disorienting, because we were always judged together – and those judgments did us both a disservice; they made it harder for each of us to be seen for who we were, separately.
This is the next chapter in my identity – a chapter I never expected I would have to write. Now I am having to learn how to lead for myself.
