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30 years ago, when Jen was 22, her twin brother Richard died - suddenly. She has been trying to come to terms with that loss ever since..

Jen was proud to be a twin, "Our family lived on a farm, and Richard, my twin, and I, lived in our own sort of world. The problem with twin bereavement is that, the other person is such an integral part of your sense of self that when you stop being a twin, when the person who made you a twin, dies, you have to really reconsider your whole sense of self."

Many years after Richard's death, Jen wrote a letter addressed to her twin, "I found this a very useful exercise - suddenly all this anger came pouring out. How could he abandon me? He'd gone, without even telling me..." Jen's parents helped their daughter to try to achieve a sense of herself as an individual in her own right, "Nothing could fill the gap, though. You're born together and you expect to leave together - it's sort of taken for granted. Birthday's are still difficult for Jen to cope with, "It took me years to say my birthday, rather than 'our' birthday... there's a lot of guilt for the lone twin - the guilt of the survivor. All the lone twins I've spoken to have this deep belief that the other one was better - the wrong one died. Until I heard about the Lone Twin Network, I blundered around thinking I was the only one in the world... it's not a subject which crops up naturally in conversation!"

But Richard's death, Jen feels, has helped her become the person she is today, a Buddhist and a healer. "It made me learn and grow in ways I don't think I would have done. I think Richard would be all for it - when he was alive, he was much more intelligent than me. He did a lot of searching, and in a way it's like inheriting it from Richard."

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