Cristina is a World Childless Week and a Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is author of three books and the winner of the 2008 Denis McQuail Award for Innovating Communication Theory. She spoke about the power of writing and childlessness in her Facebook Live.

Throughout the weeks to come and starting from today, we've compiled the links to sites who are also sharing content that the team and Champions think you'll love to read because the creator writes to our daily theme.

Last year for the first World Childless Week I was approach by a childless friend who was a member of Heart Gallery a colouring group on Facebook. She wanted to help raise awareness and had organised a colouring competition within the group.

Creativity is what I know best, and during some of my darkest times I turned to drawing. 

While I love to write, I found sometimes words are just too challenging,  or have the tendency to put things in a box.

I used to think everything would work out for the best.

If only I hoped hard enough, prayed hard enough.

When it didn’t turn out for the best, my world changed.

I created this in a place of great emotional pain. In the piece you can see many elements that are quite animal-like, scales, teeth, tentacles, eyes. All writhing around each other, all-consuming and dangerous.

A dark haired toddler stands next to me and whimpers.

I started researching childlessness because I have a direct experience of it. My husband and I were, a few years ago, diagnosed with unexplained infertility. For those who are not familiar with this condition, it means that while the medical tests of both of us are totally fine, we do not get pregnant and medicine does not know why.

Her motives are unclear
She took our son so dear
Stole life's most precious gift
and now he'll be adrift

I wrote this song to try to express feelings I was/am having about my own childlessness. I never thought for a minute that I wouldn't have a child of my own, but I waited to try to conceive and, as it turns out, I waited too long.

To a couple dealing with infertility, it seems like nothing is clear or certain.

Between the ages of 35 and 44 I was mostly single. I was always optimistic that I would meet a man to have a family with, I don’t think I could entertain the alternative.

Hello! Before I start I want to highlight that I believe and know that EVERYONE is creative. We all have a powerful intuition within to connect too our own creativity and healing power. ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE!!!!

We have our first competition winner!

The plants need watering

but have sprouted all the same

We are thrilled to share this recording from singer, Helen Louise Jones composed for Gateway Women and shared with you on World Childless Week.

I created this pencil drawing last year while in the very rawest part of my grief. It was at a time when I finally lost all hope for a child of my own, and with that I have found that all of my hope in general have disappeared. 

One aspect of my loss is not being able to share my favourite books with my child

The set of poems I am contributing to “Childlessness & the Arts” as part of World Childless Week is about grief. It is difficult to explain the loss of a person who neither died nor lived to someone who has never experienced it.

This performance lecture about involuntary childlessness deals with the questions: What does it mean not to have children in a society that is organized around families? How do we uncover the stories that are silenced? How to tell the stories that are written in our bodies? How to communicate what cannot be conveyed by words?

Today is a whole new concept for World Childless Week as we explore Childlessness and The Arts. I was not sure of how this day’s topic would be received but the response has been nothing but positive. People use ‘the arts’ in many ways to express their feeling of being childless and I hope you’ll take the time to watch, read and listen to what is shared today.

I’d like to start by sharing something I shared on my Facebook timeline in December 2014.