After working in television for 20 years and covering the litany of human experience--from war zones, wildfire tragedies and plane crashes to a moment that delivers the happiest day in someone's life--you don't expect to take on a project that will have the capacity to change your own life.
Yet for me, making Separating Twins and meeting Trishna and Krishna was that fork in the road.
If you have never believed in destiny, their story may make you reexamine the possibility that some things are simply meant to be.
Where do I start? The slim chance of the girls being discovered in a Third World orphanage by a foreigner with the will to make a difference, or the almost impossible task of getting the conjoined girls out of their birth country, Bangladesh?
Finding a medical team brave enough to challenge the frightening odds, or finding a stranger with the heart and grace to commit to becoming a full-time mother for these deathly ill girls during their two-year journey toward separate lives?
These twins had "it can't be done" engraved on their birth certificate.
But to see them struggle and survive through one life-or-death surgery after another, unable to comprehend what they were going through or why, plus the in-between times peppered with flashes of lightness and love any infant should enjoy growing up, made me realize how easy it can be to love a child who is not your own.
Yes, a filmmaker must retain some objectivity when saddled with the responsibility of sharing such a remarkable life tale.
But when you stand in an operating theater after spending two years and 32 hours witnessing a miracle unfold and watch as two surgical tables are carefully, incredibly, gently, prised apart to give two tiny souls the same freedom of individual mobility that I had always taken for granted--well, basic human emotions can supersede journalistic integrity.
In the two years since Krishna and Trishna have slept in separate beds much has happened.
The girls still live with Moira Kelly who helps their birth mother make regular trips to Australia to share the joy of her daughters' survival.
Trishna is now a gleeful, energetic five-year-old with a ready, friendly smile who talks non-stop in a strong Australian accent and has taken an undeniable grip on her second chance at life. Her sister's path is more complex. Krishna cannot walk unaided, requires diapers, is yet to eat solid food, and manages only a few words, albeit bellowed with gusto and volume!
Her laughter, however, stops people in the street with its unbridled message "I'm loving life, how 'bout you?"
Amazingly, she navigates her way around an iPad almost blindfolded!
Meanwhile this hardened documentary producer has transformed into "Uncle Wayne." I'm privileged to visit "my girls" twice a week, play with them, bathe them, feed them, change diapers, take Trishna out shopping and on day trips and marvel as they fall asleep in my arms.
I live my life as part of theirs.
They don't know it yet, but their story has touched lives everywhere--those closest to the twins as well as total strangers on the other side of the Earth through the medium of this documentary.
I hope you find your world enriched by traveling this once-in-a-lifetime journey.
