Half of a Whole: My Fight for a Separate Life

Half of a Whole explores the intimate bond between a twin brother and sister, the cruel consequences that occur when one of them becomes mentally ill, and the courage required to break away when love is not enough.

Just when Marilyn Peterson Haus thought she had escaped life as the child of born-again farmers on the Minnesota plains, her twin brother’s manic violence catapults her back to the fissures of her childhood. Half of a Whole is the haunting chronicle of her twin’s encroaching mental illness, her mother’s blatant favoritism, and the stultifying strictures of her family’s religious zealotry. Sentence by sentence, she battles to break free from a painful past and live life on her own terms.

This is the unadorned, compelling story of the author’s struggle to both protect and individuate from her bipolar twin brother, while enmeshed in the repressive, stifling culture of her evangelical family. An inspiring, courageous, and complex journey toward the freedom we all need to fulfill our own individual potential as human beings. -Joan Kavanaugh, Minister, Psychotherapist, Author of For the Living of These Days: Prayers for a Troubled World