I had a brother.

What a weird sentence! I didn't have a brother. I was an only child. For fifty years.

But then, through the thinning veil, perceptions, impressions, fragments came through. Me, in deepest despair: “How could you leave me??!” An ocean of loneliness. Complete, absolute, unquenchable loneliness. A pain that tears everything apart, so completely unbearable that every time I either fought it with claws and teeth and to the last centimeter – or fled from it, literally into the beyond. Pain bordering on madness.

I had my perceptions checked, and they were confirmed.

By now there is hardly any doubt in my mind. I had a twin, a twin brother, who probably died around the third or fourth month of pregnancy.

I had only heard about the possibility of such a thing about a year earlier – and, to be honest, I thought it was pretty far-fetched. It seemed to me like a made-up explanation for whatever... “Oh my God, my left little toe hurts, I must have had a lost twin...”

Someone told me that he would see a very deep trauma in me. Who, me? Traumatized? No. Not me. Others have experienced much worse. How could I say that, he said, when I didn't even know yet what I had experienced?

Well... curious as I am, I delved into the literature, came across Peter Levine (Language Without Words) – and found what was written there terrifying. Terrifyingly accurate. And in fact, in the long run, I couldn't get past the fact that there was (and is) immense pain and I avoided coming into contact with it at almost any cost. For a long time, however, it remained unclear where this pain came from. It was completely overwhelming, but there were no images, no really useful information about it.

Then came the fragments of perception described above, and I went back to searching for literature. The fact that Barbara Schlochow is also the sister of a former shamanic teacher of mine was less relevant than what she wrote (Gesucht: Mein verlorener Zwilling; I am referring to the expanded new edition of 2017). In a side note, contractions in the diaphragm area were mentioned. Such contractions were (and are) my constant companion since a series of events about four years ago, which I now consider to be a reactivation of the original trauma.

And suddenly, many pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

In fact, even my career choice found a deeper explanation in this way. Of course, there are also comprehensible external reasons for this, but the connection is nevertheless striking. I have been working as a freelance professional genealogist for twenty-five years. What does a genealogist do? They search for people: ancestors, descendants, heirs, biological parents, relatives. Not always, but most of the time, the people they are looking for are already dead. ... I have been searching for my lost twin all this time ...

In recent months, I have tried to say goodbye to my twin—which hasn't really worked. I have tried to contact him—which has also only worked to a limited extent so far. He has a name (which neither I nor my parents would have chosen, but which, on closer inspection, almost makes sense) and a candle on my altar.

I asked why he was there and why he left. The answer was that it was to show me love and pain. And that, yes, truly, is exactly what is happening right now.

In these past months, I have repeatedly relived, experienced, and felt what it was like for me back then when it happened. From abandonment to pain, from there to numbness – and then to death. From loneliness into abysmal despair and finally to within millimeters of my own actual death. Back then, still in the womb, I literally tried to tear my life out, to scratch it out, in order to follow it. Which obviously didn't work, because otherwise I wouldn't be here.

Incidentally, I then also realized that there is a big problem with trust. Apparently, I have never really considered this world to be safe. Of course, I trust, I do, and over the years, shamanic work has ensured that I can trust the guidance of the spiritual worlds. But time and again, situations arise in which this trust in the world is fundamentally shaken from one moment to the next. So underneath it all is a core of mistrust based on the feeling of having been betrayed. I'm not yet sure where this comes from: from the loss of my twin? Or is it more a feeling that the world betrayed me by not even allowing me to kill myself and follow my twin?

In my despair, I decided then and there to get by on my own from now on, to be strong on my own under any circumstances and at any cost. This aspiration has indeed been a constant theme throughout my life, much to the chagrin of some of my fellow human beings. But only now, finally, do I understand why this is so.

At the moment, the pain is still like a tunnel with no light at the end. A mandala I painted a few months ago after a holotropic breathing session is completely black. In the sharing, I said that while painting, I had considered adding a light to the picture, at least for form's sake—but that wasn't possible because there wasn't one.

It's clear: the way out is the way through. This applies to pain as well as to issues of lack of trust and the need to be strong on my own. Both seem to be resolvable in only one way: if, on the one hand, I am fully aware of this despair, this loneliness, this Nothing and accept it unconditionally; and, on the other hand, make a conscious decision based on this Nothing For trust. For not always doing things alone. For life.

And... as difficult as the path is, I am infinitely grateful for what I have been able to learn and experience in the past few months. I am grateful to my twin for what he has done for me. Even if it sounds paradoxical, I am deeply grateful to my former shamanic teacher for the extreme—not to say close to the edge—experiences I went through in the circle there, because without them, the twin thing would not have been accessible to me. I am grateful to life, I am grateful to myself for making it possible for me to walk this path.

(Fall 2018)