Connie Fisher has said she feared becoming a mother after losing her twin brother.
The West End star’s brother Justin died shortly after the twins were born in 1983, although Fisher did not find out about him until she was 10.
When filming BBC documentary Baby Love, Fisher saw a hypnotherapist who helped her to realise that losing her sibling was part of the reason she could not decide whether to have a child of her own.
Fisher, who called Justin “the sidekick I never knew”, told The Daily Mail it was “startling and revelatory”.
.@Conniefisher1 goes on a personal journey to see if motherhood is really for her
🍼 #ConnieBabyLove⭐️ Available now on @BBCiPlayer » https://t.co/LUtoDyDiAX pic.twitter.com/kTITWCsemn
— BBC Wales 🏴 (@BBCWales) January 24, 2018
She said of what she experienced under hypnosis: “I walked into my grandmother’s house and I remember the Scrabble board set out on the table, and the way the table felt under my fingers. I could feel the sun coming through the window, the temperature in the room.
“‘What’s the source of your indecision about being a mum?’ Andrea (hypnotherapist Andrea Yearsley) asked gently.
“‘I was 10,’ I replied, and smiled for the first time. ‘I’m playing Scrabble. I played a great word, and someone said Justin would be proud. I knew who Justin was. They didn’t need to tell me. I just knew. They had lost him but they still have me, and I want to make them happy’.
“It was a moment of emotional exhaustion, and one which Andrea must have sensed because she brought me out of the trance. Her analysis, as she laid it out, made a lot of sense. As we talked we concluded that subconsciously I was scared of losing my own child, just as my parents had lost Justin.”
Fisher went to speak to her mother as she was trying to come to terms with what she had discovered.
She said: “Mum was so balanced about it, so eloquent. She told me she’d known the moment she came round from the general anaesthetic that Justin had passed away.
“But, crucially, she was realistic about my own future, and said the words every daughter needs to hear. ‘Don’t be afraid of having a family, and don’t be afraid not to. You must do what’s right for you’.
“She is, as ever, right. The choice to have a baby or not is a privilege. More than ever I appreciate what a special gift it is, especially having been reminded of mum’s loss.”