Recently, I attended a production of the play My Sister at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. Written by playwright Janet Schlapkohl, My Sister is a story about identical twin sisters who come to Berlin in the 1930s to realize their dream of becoming a successful actress and writer team. Emily and Elizabeth Hinkler are identical twin sisters and superb actresses in this searing drama. The character Matilde suffers from what appears to be cerebral palsy. Nonetheless, she is a […]
Tag Archives: parents
Give Credit Where and When It’s Due
A friend of mine shared a story about her seven-year-old twin girls that highlights how important it is to enlighten people who work with twins about appropriate management of the twin connection. She told me that one of her daughters clearly excels in the gymnastics class that she attends with her twin sister. Mom is convinced that the gym teacher has not moved her daughter to the next level because her twin sister has not demonstrated the required skill to […]
Guatemala Dreamin’
I recently returned from a glorious ten-day trip to Guatemala. The idea of the trip was sparked about a year and a half ago though an Internet exchange I had with a psychologist from Guatemala City researching twin issues. Beatriz Cadena de Schwank was treating an eight-year-old twin in her practice and sought a consultation. She belongs to a private mental health group that she founded with six other women colleagues about five years ago. Their practice is called Proyecto […]
Happy Wife: Happy Life
“Women cannot afford the luxury of unambivalent love for their husbands. . . . When couples quarrel it is over the giving and receiving of gratitude.” These sentences, originally written by Arlie Russell Hochschild in her book, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home, and quoted in Jennifer Senior’s book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, caught my attention and piqued my curiosity. I am an adamant “ambivalence” advocate and have written repeatedly […]