One of my favorite parts of life is being a twin. Cassie is my first and best friend. We talk multiple times a day and she is my “person”. She knows me better than almost anyone and I know her the same.
Throughout our lives, we have gotten many questions and comments about twins. Being a twin is something many people are curious about. A lot of people say they always wanted to be a twin or wondered what it was like. While there are differences in twin experiences, I love getting to share my experience of being a twin.
Cassie and I are fraternal twins. When we were little we would always say “two eggs not one” :). We are five minutes apart and I am older by 5 minutes. My mom delivered us at full-term. And by full term, I mean we were two days past our 40 week deadline. BLESS HER HEART. She also delivered us vaginally, not by C-Section. At 40 weeks. Two full-sized babies. I’m pointing this out because I cannot EVEN imagine it!! I’ll say this for sure, twin moms are ROCKSTARS! Having just one baby is exhausting and I can only imagine two!!
We obviously look really different. She has always had lighter hair and I have always been taller. She has blue eyes, I have brown eyes. Pretty much the opposite of identical. Many times people wouldn’t believe us when we told them we were twins. Ha!
We have very different personalities. Cassie is an introvert and I am an extrovert. When we were little, I was the one who liked being a twin and Cassie didn’t. I loved to dress alike and she really preferred to do her own thing (I will say she is much more easily persuaded to dress alike as adults when we go to Disney!!). We (still) don’t always agree on everything, don’t do everything the same and have very different interests and passions.
We for sure had the typical twin things of being called the other by many people for most of our life. And our favorite pet peeve is when people would refer to us as “you” as in one person not two.
With the exception of preschool and a few high school classes, my parents always put us in different classes at school. It worked well for us to have our own spaces. We even went to different Universities for colleges.
Friendships are always interesting to me for twins. For us, we pretty much had different friend groups throughout most of our growing up years. There was for sure some overlap and many mutual friends through the years, but in almost every season of life our friend circles looked different. The tricky part comes in because I think twins can be really intimidating for friends. “Love me, love my sister”kind of thing. Which on the one hand was so so great to always have someone, but I think it could be really intimidating to other people at times. There were also times when we wouldn’t want to have to include the other in something but had to so they weren’t left out.
We never really had a twin language or anything, but I would say we have a deeper connection than just sisters. There is also just a very deep level of understanding and communication that I feel like we share.
My very favorite thing about being a twin is that throughout my whole life I have always had her with me. Through every season, all the ups and downs, I have always had a friend and someone who gets it, understands me, and loves me no matter what. I am so so grateful for that.