If you’ve never heard of Vanishing Twin Syndrome, I’m here to share my personal experience of how it has affected and impacted my life.

What is Vanishing Twin Syndrome?

Vanishing Twin Syndrome occurs when one twin in a multiple pregnancy disappears during gestation, often in the first trimester. One of the fetuses stops developing and is absorbed by the mother’s body or the surviving twin. Early ultrasound scans might show two gestational sacs, but later only one remains visible. Many women who don’t know they were carrying twins may experience mild miscarriage symptoms without realizing why.

The exact cause isn’t always known, though it often involves chromosomal abnormalities in the undeveloped twin. The surviving twin usually continues to grow normally, and the pregnancy often proceeds without complications (London Pregnancy Clinic, 2024).

I don’t remember at what point I learned that I was a twin, but I’ve always known that I once had a twin. My mom lost the pregnancy due to Vanishing Twin Syndrome. You might think something that happened before birth couldn’t possibly cause feelings of loss, upset, or even trauma. But I’m here to tell you—that’s not always the case.

I believe much of my lifelong struggle began in the womb, long before I was ever born.

Twins are said to share a bond unlike any other—formed before birth, rooted in their genetics, and carried through every stage of life. Twins often become lifelong best friends, mirrors for one another, and steady backboards when the world feels too heavy. I’ve often wondered what life would have been like if I’d had that balance. Would I have been less wild? Less restless? Maybe I’m wrong—but what I’ve learned is that this loss created an empty space inside me that I’m still searching to understand!

My mom tells me that from birth, she was never able to “fill my bucket.” No matter how much love or attention she gave, it was never enough.

And it wasn’t her fault. I had a great childhood—my mom was present, loving, and took good care of me. But I always felt out of place, restless, searching for something that would finally make me feel whole. Even as a little girl, I resisted being boxed in. My mom likes to tell the story of taking us to church, dressing us up in Sunday attire. I would throw tantrums in the pews, stripping off the tights she put me in because they made me feel trapped. That discomfort—of being forced into a box that didn’t fit me—would follow me for the rest of my life.

No matter what my mom did to pour into me, it was never enough. That emptiness carried into my relationships as I grew older. I was unhappy, anxious, and constantly seeking something outside myself to fill the void.

By the time I was a child, anxiety and panic attacks were already shaping my world. I couldn’t stay the night at friends’ houses because I would get homesick, crying until my mom came to pick me up. Eventually, I was diagnosed with a mental health disorder before I even hit puberty. From then on, I bounced from one medication to another, never giving my body and brain the chance to settle or stabilize.

By age fourteen, life had already dealt me some pretty traumatic experiences. They left me with trust issues, fears, paranoia, and confusion. Without the tools to cope, I started telling myself stories—versions of events that felt safer than the truth. Those stories were my way of surviving emotionally and mentally, but in the long run, they only deepened the pain.

The emptiness never left. My self-esteem plummeted, my emotions spun out of control, and I put myself in situations that only harmed me further. This was the beginning of my spiral—the early struggles that would shape so much of what came next in my life.

For me, Vanishing Twin Syndrome has never been “just a medical fact.” It’s the root of an emptiness that shaped my childhood, my mental health struggles, and the path that eventually led me to addiction. It’s the silent loss I’ve carried my whole life—the missing half of me I never got to know.

People don’t often talk about the impact of losing a twin before birth, because how could you grieve someone you never met? But the bond of twins begins in the womb, and when one is gone, the survivor is left with a kind of grief that doesn’t always have a name. It’s not like mourning a person you had memories with; it’s mourning a connection that should have been there but never was. It’s a grief that lives in the body—in the restless searching, in the ache of never feeling whole, in the endless need to fill a bucket that always seems to be empty.

I don’t think I’ve ever stopped wondering who she would have been—or who I would have been if she had stayed. Would life have felt lighter? Would I have been calmer, more grounded, more whole? I’ll never know. What I do know is that the loss of my twin sister shaped me before I ever took my first breath, and the ripple effects of that loss have followed me every step of the way.