Joan Woodward is a lone twin, a twinless twin and a psychotherapist based in Birmingham, England. She is the founder of the Lone Twin Network, an organization that enables lone twins to contact each other and share their experiences. She is the author of "The Lone Twin", a book on twinloss.

Her view is that the loss of a twin can be overwhelming to the survivor twin. To quote Joan Woodward: “They need extra help and support to take them through the loss of their other half.”

She works as an attachment therapist, using John Bowlby’s theories as her conceptual base. She believes that twins’ attachment to each other may begin for most twins many months before birth.

Since announcing in the fall 2009 issue of The Twinless Times that our conference keynote speaker in Detroit would be Joan Woodward, unfortunately because of health reasons, Joan will not be able to travel to the US from England for this occasion. 

However, we do hope to have copies of Joan Woodward’s book “The Lone Twin” with a special message written from Joan inserted inside the book for sale at the conference.  So please plan to be at the July 2010 Detroit conference if you would like to snap up one of these special copies as they will not be available through our website store.

JOAN’S BIOGRAPHY

Joan Woodward lost her identical twin sister when they were three years old. Because she had not, to her knowledge, met any other lone twins to discover if they shared similar feelings to her own, she embarked many years later, on the first study ever done on the effect of twin loss on the surviving twin. She interviewed 219 lone twins in their own homes. The Study was presented to The International Congress of Twin Studies  in Amsterdam in 1986 and subsequently  chosen for publication in their Proceedings. In 1989 she set up The Lone Twin Network to enable lone twins to meet regularly and to contact each other. Her book ‘The Lone Twin’ was published in 1998.

Joan retired from being an ‘Attachment based’ psychotherapist in 2008 but continues to lead an active life, writing, working on her allotment and playing a part in a number of different social groups.

J.W. Aug. 2009