Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...
In early 2003, Lonnie and Michelle Somers, who were expecting their first child in July, found out that Michelle was pregnant with not one, but two, babies! As Lonnie (who never stops talking) likes to say, it was the first and only time he's ever been speechless. However, the excitement about their two little bundles of joy quickly diminished when the babies were diagnosed with Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome, a deadly fetal syndrome in which one baby is getting all of the nutrients from the placenta and the other is getting none. The prognosis was grave...Doctors prepared Lonnie and Michelle that there was little chance for either baby to survive. But Lonnie and Michelle weren't going to give up. They found a doctor in Florida who could perform laser surgery to try to save the girls. Even after a successful surgery, there was less than a 50% chance that both babies would live, but in June 2003, Michelle gave birth to two healthy baby girls: Aspen and Ashley Somers (That's us!)
We know how lucky we are just to be alive, and even more so, how lucky we are to have each other. We believe that we were given a chance at life for a reason, so we try our best to take advantage of everything life has to offer and make the world a better place in the process. Ever since we were three years old and spent weeks making jewelry out of paper, beads, and safety pins and then sat on our driveway for days trying to sell our goods to raise money for charity, we've always had big ambitions. Fast forward sixteen years, and we are now both juniors at the University of Southern California. We run our own non-profit theater organization, Stagebugz Theatre. Ashley's acted in a network television show, Aspen was nominated for a BroadwayWorld "Best Director" award for her original play. We produced a ten-episode web series and feature film spin-off during quarantine. We're in the midst of launching a home bakery, Lolli-Popped.
On paper, it's easy to make it out that we live uber-successful, perfect lives. In reality, though, each of these achievements were the result of failure after rejection after challenge. Over the past year, both of our lives have come to a screeching halt as we each faced individual health issues. Now, in January of 2023, we've both suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly found ourselves having to take health leave from school this semester (more on that in our next posts!) But, we are firm believers that everything happens for a reason.
Starting Twinspiration together is something we've dreamed about for many years, but we've put it on the backburner as we've been occupied with school and other obligations.
As we both face the trials and tribulations that life has to offer, we have seen first hand that a little inspiration goes a long way. Whether it's the story of someone else overcoming the impossible, a recipe for the perfect comfort food, a reccomendation for a movie that has you in fits of laughter, or just the knowledge that you are not alone, we all need a little inspiration in our lives to help us get through the tough times. At Twinspiration, we invite you to share in the things that make us happy. We've always wanted to make the world a better place, and we hope we can do so by bringing a little more joy to the little things in life.
There is so much to learn in every adventure, and we wanted to create a blog as we embark on this crazy journey to follow our dreams in hopes that we can inspire you with our lessons learned (or at least entertain you along the way)! This is not one of those lifestyle blogs where we preach about how we made our lives perfect and you sit there reading and dreaming your life could be the same. We promise to share our lives as they are: messy, chaotic, beautiful. Here is where you will get to know a little bit about who we are and where we're going. We hope that, by telling our story, you will know that, whatever battles you're fighting, you are not alone. We hope that you can grow alongside us in our failures and be inspired by our successes. People are always telling us they wish they had a twin, so we invite you to be our honorary twin as we go through this painful and wonderful thing called life together!
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