Lenox resident Marilyn Peterson Haus spent her childhood on her family farm in Minnesota and shared a close bond with her twin brother. It is a bond that would be tested as he struggled with a mental illness that was eventually diagnosed as bipolar disorder.
Her memoir, entitled Half of a Whole, chronicles the story of her twin’s mental illness and the consequences it brings to the family dynamic.
Haus joined Zydalis Bauer to share her experience and how she found the courage to confront her painful past.
Hear the author read an excerpt from Half of a Whole.
This segment originally aired on February 17, 2022.
Read the full transcript:
Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: Lenox resident Marilyn Peterson Haus spent her childhood on her family farm in Minnesota and shared a close bond with her twin brother. It’s a bond that would be tested as he struggled with a mental illness that was eventually diagnosed as bipolar disorder.
Her memoir, entitled Half of a Hole, chronicles the story of her twin’s mental illness and the consequences it brings to the family dynamic.
Haus joined me to share her experience and how she found the courage to confront her painful past.
Marilyn Peterson Haus, Author: I started writing the book about the time I retired from my career. And it happened that my brother died at the same time and my mother died half a year later or half a year before him.
So, the two characters who would never have approved of me writing this book no longer were alive. So, that gave me the freedom to write.
And so, I had the time and the freedom of worrying about their reaction was gone, and I had this heartfelt story that I wanted to get down on paper.
Zydalis Bauer: And throughout the book, you touch on three themes. One being the unique connection between twins, the consequences of mental illness, and then your quest for independence.
How did it feel to revisit and relive some of these memories and moments that happen throughout your life?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: Well, that was a very interesting…because I felt as though I was transported right back into those situations. I re-felt the emotions. In fact, I think some of them were stronger as I tried to examine what was going on in my mind and at the time, and I relived them.
So, it was… in a way helped me to write the story because I could write it from my heart.
Zydalis Bauer: Let’s talk a little bit about the first thing, which is the unique connection that you had with your twin, Marvin. You’ve talked about the fascination that people have had with twins, even going back to mythology throughout the world.
So, in what ways did you and Marvin share a unique bond? And in what ways was it also comforting, but maybe burdensome at times?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: One of the stories my mother used to tell was when Marvin and I were very small, he refused to take his cough medicine. And I opened my mouth and took it for him, thinking it would make him well.
And my mother said, “Well, he got better, so it must have worked.”
But I always thought that was just a cute little story. But then when I found out more about twins and the bonding of twins, psychologists worry about that when a twin is supposed to individuate, take their — separate themselves, a twin will oftentimes take their twin into their own self boundary, which is what happened for me.
So, any time my twin entered a room as adults, I was immediately conscious of his presence and I could read his body language as though it were me, as though it were I, that was responding to the situation.
Zydalis Bauer: I know that a lot of this book is centered around the mental illness that Marvin had. Today, especially living in this pandemic era, mental illness doesn’t have the same stigma that it once did. And Marvin wasn’t diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder until he was forty-five-years-old.
So, in what ways did you witness your family cope — or not cope — with his behavior as a child, and eventually his diagnosis as an adult?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: When we were young, no one thought about mental illness. When we were in high school, I’m sure my brother was suffering from depression, but the stigma was so great. Our ignorance was great. And so we interpreted it, translated to being that he was lazy.
My father thought he was, you know, just a lazy and — and even called him a good for nothing, which broke my heart. My mother took upon herself to protect him, to try to make him into the son my father wanted. But none of us expected anything. I saw some signs, but it was easy to ignore them.
And then when he had his big psychotic breakdown at age forty-five, that was when I knew he had a mental illness. And my family, my current family, knew about it. But my mother never accepted it, and my brother himself never accepted it.
And so, we were not really allowed, or we didn’t think we were allowed, to talk about it. And so, even our cousins and relatives who came to his funeral, they did not know what — what had — he had been dealing with. You know, his — his challenges with — with bipolar disorder, which he was severely bipolar disorder.
He had eight breakdowns within two decades, psychotic breakdowns. And between those, he would have a depressive — he’d have depression. So, he was severely challenged by mental illness.
And the family, unfortunately, couldn’t help him as much as we wanted to because he would not acknowledge it.
Zydalis Bauer: Well, and I understand that you were the one that made the first call ever to get him help during his breakdown, one of his breakdowns.
How did that affect your relationship with him, and did it ever get a chance to recover?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: Well, he always blamed me. I was the one who saw what was happening. I was the one who realized he needed to get help, thank goodness my husband and children were willing to help. And so, I had to call the police. He never forgave me for that.
But when he was on his medications, he was his usual gracious, quiet self. But any time he went into a manic episode, he raged at me, you know, that I had caused him to be labeled to be labeled as having a mental illness and therefore, things that normally would not be considered out, you know, out of line. He would end up in a psychiatric ward.
Of course, that wasn’t true, but he would be so angry at me. And it was very painful for me because I had I had actually tried and managed to keep him out of trouble that time and get him the help he needed. And yet he — he blamed me.
But I always thought about that as a fact, he blamed me when he was manic, but when he wasn’t manic, he didn’t blame me. And then we — so our relationship, in the end, we kind of — we never talked directly about that, but we talked about other things, our background and our past.
So, I felt very close to him at the time he died. I could be with him, along with several other people.
Zydalis Bauer: Now, another painful moment that, for me, in the book was hearing about all of the efforts that your mother took to kind of hold back your successes from your twin Marvin. And one of the stories that really touched me in a painful way was hearing how she kept you in a walker as a baby because you began to walk before Marvin did.
How did those moments affect you, your individualism, and in turn, the relationship that you had with your mother?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: Well, it was extremely painful, and I didn’t realize, really, what was going on. When I found out about that incident when she prevented me from walking, I was stunned.
I knew I was having trouble in my relationship with her because she would diminish me, she denigrated my career, the way I raised our — the way we raised our children, even the food I cooked. And…and…and she was so critical of me, and I couldn’t understand it. I worked so hard to please her.
I loved my mother, and I had always sided with her in our patriarchal family. And so, I couldn’t understand what was going on. And then when I went into therapy and came out of therapy and then I began to work on my own, I realized I had this rage at her.
And when that rage erupted, I finally — 10 years after I completed therapy, so I was like 60 years old — I confronted her. And she was adamant in her position, and I told her, you know, that she had not treated me fairly. Um, she eventually backed down just for a few moments, but I, at that point, accepted the fact that she was acting out of her own situation.
She was desperately trying to protect my twin. And she thought I made my twin look bad. So…and in the process of protecting him, she sort of pushed me aside. So, it was very painful for me. But in the end, I understood why she did what she did.
I understood, you know, that she was protecting my twin, and so I accepted the fact of the situation as it was, and she sort of apologized for a moment. And so, I felt very close to her.
She then developed dementia and went into a nursing home. But I was…and she turned into a kind, sweet mother. They did put her on an antidepressant. And so, the ending years, I felt very close to her.
Zydalis Bauer: And do you feel like you ever were able to find your individualism?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: : Yes. Writing a book for me was, you know, when I’m almost 80, I was 80 by the time — just a few months ago, was — is sort of a real validation. And I went back and explored all of that and wrote it all out and came to understanding and forgiveness and — and just acceptance, acceptance of — of all that happened.
Zydalis Bauer: Marvin passed away from cancer at the age of sixty-seven.
What were some of your fondest memories with him growing up and even through adulthood? And what would you want people to take away from his story and really understand about him?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: Well, I think my fondest memories are of all the fun we had on the farm, just the two of us. We explored the woods. We found the kittens and played with them. We fed the pigs. You know, we had an idyllic childhood on the surface, and we had all this free time, I’m sort of stunned at how little supervision we had and so many things could go wrong.
As adults, I think the most important thing was for me when I finally wrote him a letter and told him, “You know, I really want to know what you think about when we grew up.” And then for the first time, we actually talked about some of the dynamics.
You know, how my father, his bad relationship with my father and how my mother had favored him. So, those were moments of closeness. And of course, as we gathered around his deathbed for five days, we could talk about some of those times.
As for what I want people to take from the book, I think I would hope that they have a greater understanding of the impact of mental illness on a family. It’s devastating. And, you know, he tried to hide his mental illness and we weren’t able to talk about it, and each of us were operating out of our own expectations, our own needs, our own pain, our own, you know, what we wanted out of life.
So, I would hope the reader also has more compassion for each of us who are involved in a family with mental illness. That we’re all imperfect, each of us, and that we’re all profoundly human.
Zydalis Bauer: Now, writing this book and confronting your painful past has helped you let go of that toxic silence as you have described it.
What advice would you give to other individuals who are struggling to find their own voice or individuality?
Marilyn Peterson Haus: Well, in my case, I just didn’t give up. I, you know, my — I had to, obviously, my mother had huge control over me with her. She controlled me with her anger and with her criticism.
And I I’ve finally…you know, therapy for me was extremely important in order to get at some of my demons. And I finally was strong enough. I — I really kept…I kept in touch with her. I worked on it and worked on it with her, until finally we came to a point where we could actually face the issues. I could confront her with — with what had happened. I
‘m not sure that would work for everyone because in some situations you need to just accept the fact that, this is what you have. And maybe if the relationship is so toxic, you just need to walk away from it. I was fortunate I was able to break through this wall I had built to protect myself from her.
