Internet Radio Show
Twin Connections Twin Loss Fate and Free Will
- Linda Zlotnick
- Download
- Click "" below to listen
Welcome to Healing From Within with host Sheryl Glick author of The Living Spirit Answers for Healing and Infinite Love which shares stories of spiritual awakening spiritual communication healing energies miracles and ways to discover and use intuition for creating healthier happier more productive life experiences and today Sheryl welcomes Linda “Moonrabbit” Zlotnick author of Star Sisters: An Astrologers Memoir of Twin Loss which shares a story of a difficult beginning in childhood, trauma, loss and a love for the connection to Universal truths that helped her find a way to joy and peace beyond all the challenges.
Linda as the grandmother of twin granddaughters I am acutely aware of the special connection my granddaughters girls have and have observed the many unique differences of their souls as well as the challenges after their birth and feel blessed to have been part of their special dance together and with my family in life.
As listeners of “Healing From Within” are so well aware each show features guests who have explored the realms of metaphysical life moving beyond convention thinking of the ego motivated view of the physical world to know in feeling and by engaging with mind body and soul, the eternal soul nature of life as it begins to know itself and the Divine dimensions of life beyond here in a more loving comprehensive and complete way. In other words as spiritual beings having a physical life many of us often awaken through a trauma loss accident or hardship the true nature of being and greater love for ourselves and others.
In today’s episode of Healing from Within Linda Zlotnick shares her journey growing up in Minneapolis with her twin sister Lou Ann and their special spiritual twin “ESP” gift. Their relationship like that of most twins involved sibling rivalry covert competition and unconditional love. When Lou Ann was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer at age fifty six, life changed drastically. We will discover how Linda’s work as an astrologer helped her come to terms with the loss of her beloved twin sister and appreciate that it was the destiny of her sister’s soul and helped her and others to appreciate life in all its multi-dimensional aspects leading us to trust the plan and time of passing.
Linda tells us that Lou Ann and she were just about to turn eleven when her view of the world changed in two major ways. At the end of fourth grade they learned Lou Ann and Linda shared a special gift called ESP and over the summer, Linda discovered more about her deep connection to the stars and her interest in astrology began. Knowing and sensing things were part of their sensitive soul nature and they were both gifted although very different in so many ways. Lou Ann was more adventuresome even rambunctious at times while Linda Lea was more reflective and cautious. Linda Lea was always sad at being separated from Lou Ann in school even though my mother said we would make new friends and now we would be separate again either by camp, school marriage, or death.
Lou Ann was interested in getting married and escaping living at home and during her second semester met Joe 3 years older and studying to be a math professor. Linda knew she wanted much more than being someone’s wife. Linda decided to live on her own and get an apartment on campus..Linda knew life at home would be intolerable for her with Lou Ann gone. Lou Ann’s marriage was short lived. Just after college they both came out as lesbian and went on to work in healing professions Lou Ann as a social worker and psychoanalyst Linda as a professional astrologer
Sheryl asks if there was something in their home life or family dynamics which may have lead both girls to healing work and or their sexual orientation?
And Sheryl goes on to say,
“It’s like healers and mediums are born, but not all things are genetic or predestined. For example some sexual preferences may be determined by what a child interprets is acceptable in their culture peer group or family. Children abused by pedophiles often go on to continue the learned pattern of behavior and abuse. Our experiences can set us up for perceiving life according to another’s values or rules.
Linda writes about her first experience with a young boy who exposed himself to you and your sister and you both laughed and thought how ugly the boys private parts were. A small incident but then there were seemingly additional events that could have been damaging to your ideas of what was right for you.
You go on to explain that there was a next door couple that you babysat for and he bought a gadget that was used for massage and used to give you and Lou Ann massages after your mother died when you were about seventeen years old. You say you liked Shel and his wife Ann and they were frequent visitors in your house… You write, “One day I noticed when he was giving us a massage he was breathing so fast and I couldn’t figure it out. I started to be uncomfortable and moved away, But he wasn’t done and he began running his hands up and down my arms. I tried to get away and he said You’re a selfish girl I’ve watched you with your family All you do is take and take. He moved his face closer tome his breath stank of cigarettes. Now it’s time for you to give. I hesitated thinking my mom when she was alive had said I was selfish. In that moment of hesitation he was on me. Nothing had ever prepared me for this. I had an idea and said I had to go to the bathroom.. As fast as I could I ran out of the house home to my bathroom where I vomited.”
When Linda told Lou Ann who then told her she had seen him looking at her body so she made excuses to stay away from him. We remembered asking our mother when we’d be old enough to date We had just started High School and she said Just remember all men are animals with a harsh bitterness in her voice. I didn’t believe her then.
Linda Lea remembered seeing a picture of my mother standing next to her parents who had come from Russia to flee the pogroms. They then had settled in Iowa a place rife with Anti-Semitism. In the picture Mom looked about fourteen years old..she stood with her arms wrapped around her body slightly turned away from her parents with a distant haunted look in her eyes. Something about her warning to us, her posture and the look in her eyes made me wonder if she’d been the victim of her own father, a man who scared me during every visit.
Sheryl suggests that her mother’s early terminal cancer illness could have been as a result of her early traumas. Most probably her cancer as are most cancers was the effect of deep seated bitterness and fear from her childhood traumas as Louise Hay author of You Can Heal Your Life and many people I have interviewed have suggested.
Sexual orientation and preference may be the response to genetic predispositions or environmental issues. The reason Sheryl says this is because one day she met a teacher from a very challenged inner city school where she observed that many of her female students were telling her they were gay and she was of the mindset it was because they saw and experienced such violence drug abuse sexual dysfunction and diseases and poor male examples or choices for them in the community, that they felt safer staying with women and also were in their minds, perhaps, unable to compete for a male partner. Also the media over the last twenty years and the Hollywood community of writers actors and creative people many whom are gay have put so much of this viewpoint or slant towards enlarging their LGBT group and it is prevalent in everything we read see and hear in music. It seems it has gone beyond just being okay to be homosexual but more like it can be seen as being preferred. Like children of sexual predators are groomed and trained to be part of certain behaviors…our culture has been grooming our young people in a similar fashion. It is not healthy to promote a sexual lifestyle in this controlling way: It should be a natural process and choice.
Many of us wish to embrace all people and their needs, but we do not expect those who have money and power to marginalize the natural instincts of some and to steer them in other directions. Just look at what has gone on this past year with the Weinstein debacle in Hollywood and the Epstein pedophilia investigation with political overtones and the MeToo movement. Clearly our secrecy and lack of discussion of sexual ideas have led to many problems in our society.
Sheryl says that as a sensitive empathic person who seemed to have a sense of what was happening even before it did she wasn’t aware that she was highly intuitive… She thought she was just following good thoughts that worked out well, but 26 years ago after having a dream where her deceased grandfather stood near to her in energy form and told her, “You have to write something for my father” she was so confused by the experience. The next day Sheryl’s mom called telling her that her father had passed and while she wrote his eulogy as she had been instructed, she couldn’t quite grasp what had happened..Coincidences and synchronicity continued and she finally discovered what had happened wasn’t a dream, but a spiritual visitation. Sheryl was off on a quest to discover where her grandfather was now residing and why he had come that night. As she allowed herself to follow the messages she found many guides along the way. One of the first readings Sheryl had was from a healer in Lily Dale a spiritual community of healers and mediums near Buffalo New York. Sheryl was told that the line in her hand showing psychic ability was off the charts and her ability would explode.. Of course Sheryl responded, “I don’t know about that.” But since that time has become a practicing intuitive Reiki healer and medium. Sheryl was also told she had to write 3 books and has just completed the third book New Life Awaits which shares the truth that what we create in each moment here in the physical life which will help us create our next life in Spirit.
Clearly the study of astrology is really important to Linda. Linda writes, “ Astrology finds meaning in cosmic patterns, for everything is connected and we are part of the world and solar system we live in. Astrology does not cause events to happen but rather holds up a mirror so we can see them more clearly. We all know that although life can be wonderful amazing and even brilliant, it also can be confusing painful and hard. In truth there is a season for all things, and that’s where astrology can help. I’ve found that I can survive just about anything if I can extract a nugget of wisdom or find meaning in the experience. Astrology helped me make peace with the too early death of my mother at age 17 and the shattering loss of my identical twin at age 56 and it has given me insight understanding and guidance as I’ve learned about parenting both biological and adopted children. As a business owner I depend upon the input in making timely and productive decisions. Basically I believe we are on this planet to learn grow and contribute, and astrology is the best tool. I’ve found to help in achieving these ends.
Linda tells us that Lou Ann her twin came out as a lesbian after you and why she thinks it took her longer Lou Ann was married for a short time and probably was looking for a more conventional life at that young age. She had had an easier relationship with our Mom and was always a step ahead of Linda so she was more confident and comfortable in her own body and decision making processes and possibly wasn’t as damaged by the emotional and physical abuse Linda Lea felt so sharply and continuously as a child. Linda began life prematurely and was kept in an incubator disconnected from her mother and the love which is so vital at the early stages of life. Linda also writes that her sister was always slighter taller than her and stood in every photo in the front. Around age three something changed. While Lou Ann looked directly at the camera with a big smile I looked to the side or down. My smile looked awkward, reluctant . Mom told me later that I had a hernia repair surgery and after the surgery developed a high fever and almost died. The event mirrored my birth when I’d been left in the hospital incubator alone. Later when I was an adult during body work sessions and in dreams I’d have brief memories of endless terror and crying for help.
Sheryl says…though genetically almost identical to your twin your experiences as indeed all our experiences clearly define our fears and challenges and are unique to our development and to how we view the world.
Linda seems to describe an out of body experience she had. As a healer and medium Sheryl has discovered so many people interested in the field of metaphysics or the study of energy, the afterlife and the Universal Laws of energy often study many energy modalities to allow them to advance their awareness and reach higher consciousness.
At a session with an energy healer Linda drifted off and in a dream, a lucid dream, Linda flew effortlessly through outer space in a vast star studded world—a world of darkness where the darkness was infused with light. The light penetrated every cell in our body and mind until she felt completely dissolved and illuminated. Constellations streamed by and whorl shaped galaxies glittered in the distance, more magnificent and beautiful than anything she had ever imagined. Linda floated amidst the rings of Saturn and marveled at their dusty reflective particle….The entire time a subtle vibrational music filled my ears ..An immense sense of perfection wholeness and peace filled me. That dream was more real than anything she’d ever experienced. Lou Ann told her she had a lucid dream that she had learned about in psychology class. It’s an altered state of consciousness. Lou Ann didn’t think she could make a living as a astrologist but Linda like many was guided by Spirit to pursue her mission in this time and place.
As a result of altered consciousness Linda wrote, “The world I had known and my understanding of reality had shattered. In its place was another kind of knowing. All life was interconnected and humans were capable of much more than we imagined. If not for our everyday limited consciousness, we would all live inside the divine.”
Like me my twin sister Lou Ann was seeking something beyond what we all knew.
After her divorce from Joe Lou Ann changed career direction. She studied gestalt therapy astrology psychic interests and Reiki healing. She attended a well known psychic workshop with someone from the Easlen Institute and had an individual session
Linda decided to study Reiki in the hopes of creating a strong core or root center. During a Reiki session she had a past life experience and felt such pain in both of my wrists. Her intuitive reiki practitioner told her she had been a healer and had her hands cut off for breaking the law…She was also told by this psychic healer that she had to take back her power given to an abuser.. She knew immediately she had to confront her old neighbor Shel who had tried to sexually abuse her. She and Lou Ann decided to include Dad and confront Shel at his office. But what was surprising at that confrontation was not the apology Linda received for the sexual advance from a grown man a month after she had lost her mother, but the way her father responded to Shel. Dad said he was sorry to have bothered him and shook his hand. Linda hated Shel but also her father for caring more about his feelings than hers. We knew Dad didn’t like confrontations and always tiptoed around Mom and maybe there was a reason for how he acted. He obviously came from an abusive family and had trauma at an early age also.
At therapy Linda was told that her mom was physically and emotionally abusive. Lou Ann who was studying psychology didn’t think so and said that their mother had a bad temper and hit us but we weren’t abused. In her MA program she learned about alcoholism and drug abuse in families. Now those kids were abused.. Linda Lea went on to say, “I’m not talking spankings, It was her rage, the hitting throwing things, the shaming that makes it abuse.
Sheryl says: It seems so many children are in dysfunctional families..Perhaps everyone is in a dysfunctional family for we are all socialized and expected to follow rules many of which are arbitrary and benefit those making the rules, not those who have to follow them. Parents and adults have so many stresses in this modern day world that they are all struggling to stay afloat and everyone is suffering in one way or another. Yet Sheryl as many others are aware that we all chose the families we are born into in order to have the experiences our soul deems necessary for it’s growth
.
In Sheryl’s book The Living Spirit she wrote about some of the challenges we face from the past and within our family life, “When we are born into this life, we unknowingly carry within us our soul energy of past life memories of people, places, and events that may have resulted in less than desirable, if not devastating, outcomes. The important thing to remember is that in this life we can make new choices that will release these traumas to create better health and relationships and find a connection to universal energy. In order to do this, we must work towards relinquishing blame, judgment, fear and ideas of our limitation. It is only when we create within ourselves a sense of personal power courage, self-love and bravery that we can embrace both the gift of life and the challenges that the universe offers us.”
Sheryl would say that as a medium who downloads messages for clients who have lost a loved one she is totally aware that life survives physical death and we remain connected to them as they are around us in energy and still part of our life though living in another dimension of life.
When Lou Ann was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at her partner Mindy’s urging Linda went to a genetic counselor and the tests came for Linda came back negative. “Twins are born with identical genes, but genes change over the course of a lifetime,” “Environmental stimuli can force a gene to mutate slightly and if that happens the person is more susceptible to cancer. Your risk factor is higher because your twin developed this disease but does not mean you will get the disease. So Linda decided to study their birth charts.
Right off Linda saw Chiron the wounded healer archetype on the point or nadir of Lou Ann’s death chart. She thought about that time at the lake when Lou Ann had shared her longing to be a mom and the regret she felt. Regrets were all about wounds, what a person had not brought into their lives: what she missed with a deep ache in her soul. Staring at the Chiron on her death chart made me realize it was opposite the sun, Saturn conjunction, a profound symbol of the end of a life person’s life force. The charts were never wrong although if a person was not ready to accept the truth, it would not be seen as being accurate. Such is the power of the mind to deceive and deny reality.
Since Lou Ann’s passing Linda has been able to explore her own issues to find growth and peace. Linda wrote. “During Lou Ann’s illness especially as it worsened an inner healing started in her that liberated her unlived spirit. Like the wisps of smoke after you blow out a candle, it snuck in between moments of nausea, doctor’s appointments and bad news. I saw a new serenity on her face noticed a looser posture in her body and heard a soothing quality in her voice. She spent more time listening to inspiring music and reading Buddhist teachings. Underneath it all lay an acceptance of death, a willingness to leave behind parts of her that were unnecessary and inauthentic. I saw her transform from wounded healer, Lou Ann the psychoanalyst into something far more illuminated. Later I would come to understand that to survive her death I would have to do the exact same thing.”
Linda might want us to remember after reading her book Star Sisters that no matter how the journey of dealing with cancer is for a loved one, especially a twin sister, much is learned by the soul during this difficult time and in the end, it is only an experience leading us past the difficulties of the physical world, leading us into the light and love of our soul life beyond this planet. It is necessary for the soul to expand and experience greater love. While we wish it were not necessary for anyone especially those closest to us, the stars and our life plan determine the experiences we must have and the time we must depart this life. It is not random and it is as it is written in our soul journey …the family we are born into, the work we will explore, the loves of our lives and the time of our death. There is meaning and purpose to all of it. Healers intuitive mediums astrology charts all tell the truth, and the truth cannot be bent or altered. Allowing accepting and surrendering to what must be in the end is necessary to lead us forward to new life in the universal dimensions of creation and eternal life.
Linda “Moonrabbit” Zlotnick author of Star Sisters has shared her unique journey in so many different aspects of human challenges…losing a mother at a young age, losing a twin, exploring a unique life style as a lesbian and mother of daughters and the feminist perspective in life… and being an alternative healer in the astrological realm of seeing life in different dimensions and times, all a bit out of the mainstream, but offering unique opportunities to know yourself and life on levels that many have not explored in this lifetime in any other way.
In summarizing today’s episode of “Healing From Within” it has become evident from Linda and Sheryl that no matter how the journey of dealing with cancer is for a loved one, especially a twin sister, much is learned by the individual’s soul, their family and friends, and though so difficult to live through in the end it is only an experience past the challenges of the physical body and world, leading us into the light and love of soul life beyond this planet. It is necessary for the soul to expand and experience greater love and often we do this through the most painful of times. While we wish it were not necessary for anyone especially those closest to us, the stars and our life plan determine the experiences we must have and the time and way we must depart this life. It is not and never has been random and it is as it is written in our soul journey …the family we are born into, the work we will explore, the loves of our lives, and the time of our death. There is meaning and purpose to all of it. Healers mediums astrologers all tell the truth and the truth cannot be bent or altered. Allowing accepting and surrendering to what must be in the end is necessary to lead us forward to new life in the universal dimensions of creation and eternal life. But what is remembered and appreciated by those who have more time yet to live is to be valued and honored treasured and shared.
Linda, Lou Ann and Sheryl would have you remember that the joy and sorrow we carry through life is a badge of honor showing us that the courage and bravery of the soul out weights the frailty of the human body. While we travel divergent paths one thing is clear as written by Kahlil Gibran “Joy and sorrow are inseparable…Together they come, and when one sits alone with you, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
