MALIYAH HERRIN: When people first hear our story, they like to ask a lot of questions.
Like, the most common asked question was, “Do you remember being conjoined?"
MALIYAH HERRIN: To get around, we do different things for different places. I think we’ve adapted fully because
we didn’t ever have two legs.
KENDRA HERRIN: Yeah.
KENDRA HERRIN: We don’t have anything to run off of. We feel like, we’re the same as everybody else.
There's just a few things that are a little different. The best thing about having one leg each, it's like, we only
have to paint one side of toenails so, that’s really nice, yeah.
Mostly little kids stare but when adults stare at us we're kind of like..
MALIYAH HERRIN: Or like, it's strange because they shouldn’t be.
KENDRA HERRIN: They shouldn’t, they should know not to stare.
KENDRA HERRIN: It's rare to be a conjoined twin. The doctor said that we weren’t going to live past 24 hours
but after we passed that, they said that we would.
MALIYAH HERRIN: Wouldn’t live past eight sharing one kidney for the both of us.
KENDRA HERRIN: So, that’s why we got separated. The feeling of being attached to someone else is weird.
ERIN HERRIN: It wasn’t always just cut and dry that we were going to separate them and that’s all that there
was to it. There’s so much that goes into a huge decision like that. You have to make sure that it's the right thing
for them. We went to a lot of different doctors, psychologists, anything that I could take them to just to
make sure that they were ready, and it wouldn’t harm them.
KENDRA HERRIN: We just called it ‘cut apart day’, we didn’t like..
MALIYAH HERRIN: Understand. KENDRA HERRIN: Really know what it meant.
MALIYAH HERRIN: When we got separated, Kendra got the kidney and then I went on dialysis for nine months
until my mom donated her kidney. And then ten years after I got that kidney, it rejected and I went on dialysis.
ERIN HERRIN: She was on dialysis for two and a half years. And so, she would go three hours, three times a day,
so it ended up being about four hours three times a week.
ERIN HERRIN: She just took it in stride, and she had friends on dialysis that had passed away and she had to\
deal with the loss of her friends, which was really hard.
ERIN HERRIN: I’m just amazed at how well she, she did it; I don’t think I could do it.
KENDRA HERRIN: When I get up in the morning, I get ready for school and then we get picked up by our friend
and we go to school. High school has been good so far, like, people are really nice. It's just harder if classes are
far apart but other than that, it's fun.
MALIYAH HERRIN: Kendra is more outgoing if you can't already tell.
KENDRA HERRIN: Yeah, I’m way more outgoing than she is.
MALIYAH HERRIN: We don’t think we look alike.
KENDRA HERRIN: Yeah, I don’t, even though we’re identical twins.
MALIYAH HERRIN: We’ve never been bullied at school or anything, we’re lucky.
KENDRA HERRIN: Yeah, we’re lucky, some people aren’t, aren’t as lucky with that.
DONNA TIPPETTS: They came in fairly timid, fairly weak in some areas.
DONNA TIPPETTS: But they told me that their goal is to be able to walk on crutches in the school
by the end of the year.
DONNA TIPPETTS: Last week Kendra for the first time walked on her crutches here at school,
she just was beaming.
DONNA TIPPETTS: A few weeks before that, Maliyah walked up the stairs for the first time here at school on
her crutches. So, they’re just getting stronger all the time; they’re so determined.
ANABELLE BALLARD: I think that they just taught me so, much about going through trials and accepting trials with
grace and bravery. And I don’t know that I could ever go through what they’ve gone through. I’ve had the chance
to get to know them and I’m so proud of all that they’ve accomplished.
KENDRA HERRIN: Maliyah and I make dinner every night so, we switch off so one of us will make dinner and
the other one will do like, homework or like, whatever if we don’t have homework.
KENDRA HERRIN: We like to film YouTube videos with this camera, we just got it; we just set up down here and
we put this couch here and then we put our camera on a stand.
KENDRA HERRIN: So, on our YouTube channel we just do like, different funny videos.
MALIYAH HERRIN: And like, we did a video of our story.
KENDRA HERRIN: We like doing fun stuff too.
KENDRA HERRIN: We like making the videos just like to make people positive, I guess.
KENDRA HERRIN: We like making them because we’re weird and we like sharing our weirdness.
JAKE HERRIN: I think social media has helped improve their confidence and it gives something to drive them,
something that they’re really interested in.
ERIN HERRIN: And they love coming to show us, “Mom look what this person has said” and they were so excited
that we responded to them and I’m so glad that they have that in their life.
The self-esteem that they have blows me away, lots of people could learn a lot of things from them.
MALIYAH HERRIN: We are happy that our parents chose to separate us.