Everybody’s Favorite Twins

“I’m a force when we’re together | I’m good all by myself.”

The above line is featured in the song “Make Me Better” by rapper Fabolous and singer-songwriter Ne-Yo. For twins Cherry and Sherry Wilmore, it’s their self-proclaimed “anthem” that perfectly sums up their relationship and the experiences they have shared together throughout their lives.

The Lake Charles natives have made a name for themselves on Facebook through a video-based social media blog known as “Everybody’s Favorite Twins” that has garnered over 1,000 likes. The blog’s purpose is to offer people information relevant to them in a way that is engaging and easy to understand through an outlet that is the primary source of news for many individuals.

Everybody’s Favorite Twins produces videos that cover everything from sports, to fashion, to cooking, to heavier topics like foster care and human and sex trafficking.

Some of their most recent work involves coverage of the 2019 election cycle. The twins interviewed candidates like Lafourche District Judge hopeful Rene Gautreaux, Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson and Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Tim Soignet, as well as First Lady Donna Edwards.

Cherry and Sherry choose to cover “hot topics,” but they strive to remain unbiased in their reporting.

“We wanted to bring candidates to the regular, ordinary person who may not always be paying attention to politics, and to the underserved so they can understand who they’re voting for. You decide who you’re voting for. We just give you the information,” Sherry says.

Their goal is to become the source to which people turn when they are looking for information about what is going on in their communities.

“We don’t want to be like an amendment. You know how they have those amendments on the ballot, and no one understands the language of the amendment?” Sherry says. “We wanted it to be very laymen’s terms, broken down for the common man and person to understand what it means.”

The twins describe themselves in a multitude of ways: multifaceted, funny, open, positive, quirky and personable. Sherry says they have grown both as individuals and together to become the women they are today. Above all, they are two women trying to understand life and recognize their purpose and passions.

The idea behind Everybody’s Favorite Twins was born out of that passion, specifically for service and knowledge.

Such passion has to come from somewhere. For Cherry and Sherry, it came from a significant chapter in their lives.

In 1991, when the twins were six years old, they entered foster care for the first time. They were placed in a group home for a few days before moving to their first foster home, located on a farm.

It was there that they developed their love of knowledge, which they attribute to days spent watching Jeopardy with their neighbor. In addition, their foster mother taught them how to read using canned goods in the cabinet.

Around age 10, Cherry and Sherry left that home and returned to their former group home for a month. Afterwards, they were transferred to the MacDonell  Children’s Home in Houma.

For the first time in their lives, the twins would find themselves separated from one another.

At the MacDonell home, the women were placed into separate dorms in an attempt to acclimate them to being apart from one another so they could be adopted into different homes.

Cherry moved to a new foster home later that year, while Sherry remained at the group home.

“We felt it when we were 10 and separated. I think that’s when we felt being in foster care,” Cherry says. “For the first time, we felt the foster care experience of being moved from place to place because up until that point, we were fairly young when we went to foster care…at 10, we were a lot more cognitive and a lot more aware.”

The woman who took in Cherry just so happened to be a twin. When she found out Cherry and Sherry had been separated, she fought to have them reunited.

She ultimately took in Sherry as well, and they stayed with that foster mother through their college days until they reached adulthood.

Cherry said the sisters’ closeness comes in part from the experience of being separated. However, that separation also shaped their dependency on one another.

It took them until roughly their mid-twenties to be able to learn who they are as individuals.

“It took probably until adulthood…where we were able to separate and understand our true, individual selves,” Cherry says.

“And knowing that we can still leave each other and come back and be okay,” Sherry adds.

The twins view their time in foster care as a part of their lives, not the entirety. Cherry says they do not want to be defined by it.

“It was a chapter, it might even be two or three chapters of our book, but it is not our totality, and so because of foster care, I think we realized that we were the authors of our own destiny, and we get  to write our story our way and our voice is very important,” Cherry says.

The women found that voice through Everybody’s Favorite Twins.

Cherry and Sherry says that because they understand the complexity of foster care, they understand the complexity of situations and of people as well. Just as people who have not been involved with foster care may not understand it in its entirety, people do not always understand issues that have not affected them.

Thus, the twins strive to educate people about issues or concepts of which they may not be aware.

“Everybody’s Favorite Twins is about educating you about what you didn’t know,” Cherry says.

“And maybe some things that you didn’t know because you just didn’t know. It’s not because you didn’t care. You just didn’t realize it,” Sherry says.

The twins use a conversational style in their videos, avoid being confrontational and speak to individuals knowledgeable in specific fields, as they feel this is the most effective way of educating people.

As they advance their work, Cherry and Sherry hope people will see them as bridge-builders, while also remaining lighthearted and fun.

For example, future projects include bridging gaps between minorities and law enforcement, as well as spotlighting individuals like local artists, musicians and authors.

“We see the future of Everybody’s Favorite Twins expanding to a point where we get to bring more people…do more one-on-one interviews, more community-based,” Cherry says.

Cherry and Sherry describe themselves as “yin and yang,” as they find balance in one another that translates into their work through Everybody’s Favorite Twins.

After all, these sisters are a force when they’re together.

Photos by Misty Leigh McElroy