Why Twin Power And Small Kindnesses Matter

A personal essay about my re-entry into being me, in six Acts

Key Words: Mentality, Kindness, Duality, Polarity, Eventuality, Stability

My twin sister and I are Australia’s oldest inter-country adopted persons, born in 1963 in Malaya. We have been through challenges and stressors that not many could go through, and come out looking as good as we do.

My whole story is of a journey, over decades, of staged re-entry by Acts, into being me.

2021 marks my complete re-entry into normal life.

In 1973, the happy, confident, ten-year-old self-loving Soul made her exit from the center stage of my Life. The rest of her went into a rehearsal of being a human being, leaving behind normality.

I turn 58 next month. For forty-seven years my Life has seemed normal to everyone on the outside, but it has been anything but that.

Normal

conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected

Through inter-country adoption, identity conflict, child abuse, unhealthy relationships, dependency, blocked energy and emotions, faulty thinking, lack of self-love, and discrimination of all kinds, my Life for the preceding 47 years was a shadow movie of what it could be.

Table of Contents

· Act One (Mentality) ∘ The Movie Begins · Act Two (Kindness) ∘ Kindness matters · Act Three (Duality) ∘ The Yin and Yang of Polarity and Duality · Act Four (Polarity) ∘ Smudge begins to exit stage left · Act Five (Eventuality) ∘ The New Normal · The Final Act (Stability) ∘ Exit Smudge, And The Return To Myself

Act One

The Movie Begins (Key idea: Mentality)

• It wasn’t normal to feel an outsider when I was five years old, told by my adoptive mother that some kids at school may make fun of me when they knew that I was X’s sister (because some kids wouldn’t understand that I could be an adopted sibling of a non-Asian person at school).
• It wasn’t normal for the youngest in the blended family to be molested by several brothers.
• It wasn’t normal to be latch-key children with more responsibility than was due.
• It wasn’t normal to be an eleven-year-old, sitting by the front door, ready to run outside when one of your tormentors came by.
• It wasn’t normal to be surrounded by so many people, but feeling the bottom of the ocean of loneliness, at age twenty-one.
• It wasn’t normal to be humiliated with racist taunts at school, university, in public, and everywhere that you went, from age 12 onward.
• It wasn’t normal to be excluded from participating in the final years of your adoptive parents, and for you to be punished for changing your name to the one you were born with.

When you don’t have a strong connection to yourself and others, every small kindness matters.

I was Jekyll and Hyde toward myself, a split person who hated herself but had somebody to live for. The “good twin” in me lived to support my sister and everyone else, but not myself.

The “bad twin” manifested as monsters that prowled around my bed to lurid music, and frog-marched me to the beat of a discordant drum.

Anger was turned inward toward myself, and the voice that I call “Smudge” was always trying to smudge me out. I thought that what happened was my fault. Guilt is a heavy burden from the age of eleven. Smudge was always whispering to me:

“You can’t do anything right.”

“You’re no good.”

“You are stupid.”

Act Two

Kindness matters (Key idea: Kindness)

When we were twenty-seven, my twin and I considered a way out.

Duality is a case of two things co-existing peaceably, and polarity is a matter of two things clashing, or of two things, with different results, to choose wisely from.

We existed but it wasn’t living. We had no hope. The twin to despair is hope. Despair and hope are polarities. The antidote and twin to physical, emotional, and spiritual hurt is self-love.

A twin is not an exact mirror or reflection of what is, but can actually reflect what could be. A polarity is in the form of twin or matching lower and higher frequencies.

Seeing choices and differences and using them wisely is “twin power.”

While my twin is sensitive and placid, I am not prone to getting upset easily and I am out-going. But in her, I see and value sensitivity and quietness; and in me, she sees and values thinking things through and speaking out.

We found hope in corresponding online with a man in Chicago, U.S.A., someone who had similar interests and values to us, who thought we were normal and made us feel worthy, and was kind to us.

Thinking about ending your life is the twin to emptiness. Our relationship with this person pulled us out of a deep hole. It made us see through the polarity of despair and hope. It was a lesson in twin power, or coming out of polarity and choosing duality, i.e. a new friendship along with staying alive.

Twin power is about choosing “this and that” (duality of two co-existing things of high frequency) over “this or that” (polarity, or choosing a lower frequency over a higher frequency).

Kindness came to me in such small amounts that, with Smudge telling me that I didn’t deserve it, it was easy for me to overlook it or not believe in it.

But when it was my sister who was kind to me during many days of depression, telling me over and over that I was a good person, these small acts of kindness pulled me through.

The sameness and differences between two people or more are acknowledged and used wisely, only with kindness toward each other.

Somewhere, sometime in your life, if you are open to the simplicity and power of kindness, you will witness and wield its power.

When I was a teenager, I noted my adoptive mother going out to the letterbox and a person came along and put some advertising mail into our letterbox. He looked worried, as though Mum would tell him that she didn’t want it.

Instead, my mother looked at him and smiled, and said “Thank you.” She probably made his day with this small act of kindness. Even if she planned to put the junk mail in the bin later, she could have told him “No thank you” kindly. She chose to make this person feel good, not bad.

Every kindness matters. You can choose non-love or love. This is the foundational choice of polarity. You don’t know what a person has gone through, or is going through, so use twin power to choose kindness.

Act Three

The Yin and Yang of Polarity and Duality (Key idea: Duality)

A twin can be the same as you in many ways, but also contains some opposite of you.

Duality is a case of two or more “twin-minded” or same-minded people or ideas working together harmoniously. Dual actions are those taken by two or more people to co-create a safe, healthy, peaceful, inclusive, and satisfying environment and life.

In contrast, polarity is a choice of complementary happenings, where only one happening is a choice of love and kindness. Polarities are “twins” in terms of containing or consisting of two matching or corresponding parts, which look distinctly different, but which illustrate and show the choice-points between the two.

You don’t know what a person has gone through, or is going through, so choose kindness.

Yin and Yang is the philosophy that all things cannot exist without each other. In order to understand one experience, you also have to understand its opposite experience. For example, a lack of kindness toward me shows how much small kindnesses matter.

Yin and Yang is the concept of dualism, in terms of describing how obviously opposite or contrary forces are and may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world.

For example, when the sun goes down, we call that “night”, and “night” is complemented by the sun coming up, and this is what we call “day.” Day and night are both parts of one whole revolution of Earth around its axis, with the sun’s rays reaching different hemispheres of Earth, as Earth orbits the sun.

The Yin and Yang philosophy also embraces the concept that Yin and Yang are not only complementary but can transform into each other. So polarised choices or complementary choices, of which one results in a more positive outcome, can shift so that the less positive option becomes a more positive option.

Act Four

Smudge begins to exit stage left (Key idea: Polarity)

Kindness matters, and my sister being especially kind to me, when she could, and a few other instances of love from others (with love being the twin of hate, apathy, and selfishness) were the tonics that helped me fight off Smudge.

I was kind to everyone, but not to myself.

Smudge was the powerful self-imposed twin of me and was responsible for blocking out loving feelings for myself, rendering me a shadow of myself.

Smudge began to wear me out, and in January 2017 my personality had enough. I was having problems at work and one day I was due to catch a train from a different station to usual. The morning felt fresh and normal and I stared down at the abyss, seeing the railway tracks to nowhere.

Kindness from others had taken the other train during my life lately.

“I know,” I thought, “I could just throw myself down there and end it all.” It was a happy thought for a moment. Usually, I would tell myself “You have to stay around to look after your sister.” But this time around at 53 years of age, I decided that she was old enough to look after herself.

“Nobody will miss me,” I thought for a split second. Luckily, the twin of despair made an appearance. Polarity morphed into duality. Hope sprung up and I thought “Wait a moment, some people do like me and it would be a pity to miss out on being with them, maybe I don’t have to do this.”

I was kind to myself in the smallest way, but with the biggest significant effect.

From that day onward, kindness from me to me mattered. I chose to stop putting so much energy into supporting others. The polarity of hating myself versus not loving myself began to crumble. The duality of liking, respecting, and caring for myself while doing so for others, began.

And this conscious choice took me on the long path to stop feeling obligation, guilt, sadness, self-anger, hurt, fear, unforgiveness toward myself, and especially to stop hating myself. The shadow, Smudge, that had entered when I was ten years old, was about to exit.

I now choose to be kind to everyone, including myself, not because it’s easy, but because it is the twin of propagating helplessness and despair. I finally learned to choose the antidote to stop suppressing the real me. It’s time for small kindnesses from me to me.

Small kindnesses were and are critical to my survival and to shaping me into a being full of confidence, self-worth, and self-love. My staged re-entry into being me has resulted in deep recognition of my choices, or of twin power. And this has spot-lighted small kindnesses, and shown me how splendid all kindness is.

Act Five

The New Normal (Key idea: Eventuality)

If you see me in the street, you wouldn’t know what I have been through. But if you really choose to get to know me more, you may find the courageous, non-judgemental, patient, tolerant, intelligent, positive, and loving person, with steel bands of willpower, that I have become.

This is the higher frequency part of me, in duality with self-actualization, as put forward by Abraham Maslow. It is the part Smudge couldn’t erase, although Smudge rendered me hurt, frozen with fear, worried, unsure of myself, and hating myself.

In order to understand one experience, you also have to understand its opposite experience.

The Yin and Yang of twin power is about wisely evaluating and choosing which path to go down. It’s about choosing positivity, and recognizing polarity and turning it into positive duality. For example:

• Willpower is the twin to apathy and handing over control of your Life to others.
• Kindness is the twin to ugliness and lack of respect.

And every small kindness matters. I eventually learned to be kind to myself, and with willpower, I choose pathways to enable me to reenter the movie of my own Life.

I turn 58 on 14th September 2021 and for the first time in forty-seven years I now feel “normal.” This is the hallmark of my re-entry into Life.

By this, I mean that I now love myself and I feel that I am deserving and worthy of positive opportunities, good health, abundance, and love.

• I am “normal” because I no longer have Smudge telling me that I am no good.
• I am “normal” because I am able to ask for what I want and assert my boundaries.
• I am “normal” because I feel hope for my future.

My story is of a journey, over decades, of staged re-entry into being me. It is a story of redemption over traumas that shocked part of my Soul into leaving my body. And my whole self has always been searching for me.

Over the past forty-seven years, the core of me, my complete potential Self, was the twin of Smudge, never leaving me, and never stopping to love me.

My Life has been extraordinary, but I myself have always been normal.

We are all normal if “normal” means being who we are and managing our human journeys as best we can. It was my experiences that transitioned from not normal to normal.

Being a twin helps me see and support the other side. Being wise with choices is the twin power to choose between helpful duality or unhelpful polarity.

Duality exists when you have twin-minded people or ideas or actions supporting each other. And physical human twins embrace both sameness and differences. They can be dual forces or polarised forces.

My challenging and chequered life has taught me huge lessons. Upon my final re-entry, I have overcome the sadness and integrated my losses. I am excited now to pay forward the concept that twin power and small kindnesses matter, in my new self-allocated role as a “kindness coach”.

The Final Act

Exit Smudge, And The Return To Myself (Key idea: Stability)

My Life has been loaded with polarity because I have not liked myself much and have resisted being myself, which resulted in many health crises. But after 47 years, this year I have graduated in the recognition and the use of twin power and kindness. This wisdom was instrumental in facilitating my journey of re-entry into being me.

The kindness from my twin and others, and the choices many have made using twin power wisely, have shown me just how much positive duality and small kindnesses matter. And without these, I would not have made it to now.

I had open-heart surgery at fifty years of age, to replace a faulty heart valve, and thought it could be my time to go then. But Soul encouraged me to stay on, and after two more illnesses, comprising a near-death experience with a stomach problem in 2019, and shingles in 2020 due to feeling overwhelmed, my kindness to myself grew exponentially when I realized that I have to start loving myself.

I have always been “me”, but not allowed myself to be fully, genuinely me, until now.

Forty-seven years have passed since the ten-year-old happy, confident, self-loving me took a rain-check. With the recent choices to love myself again and to be kind to me, Smudge made its final exit.

And the girl was free to reenter the movie of her life with a new contract.

2021 has seen her re-entry into being fully she.

Fully, truly, kindly, she; she is now the wise woman who is catching up on love lost, while truly caring for herself.

She has finally drawn back the curtains to show her full splendor.

Upon her final re-entry, she has found that her best symphony has only just begun.

She has found everything new, with the golden glow of promise in her new eyes. She knows that the pearl in the oyster is formed by creating something beautiful and valuable around an irritation, and her similar powerful and organic experience is what her re-entry offers.

And using the pearl of wisdom that twin power (or wise choices) and kindness matter is an act that anyone can follow.

Will you, won’t you, join the dance?