This year, thanks to the generosity of our community, we have more giveaways than ever before. You can find all of the details below with links to discover more about each person and each giveaway.
Alternatively if you’re keen to enter the competition straight away, you can do so here
Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos
From celebrity and news magazines to TV programs to Facebook pages and mommy blogs, family-building successes are routinely and glowingly shared and celebrated. But where are the voices of those who are unable to have children? In relating what happens when nature and science find their limits, Silent Sorority examines a seldom acknowledged outcome and raises provocative, often uncomfortable questions usually reserved for late night reflection or anonymous blogging. Outside of the physical reckoning there lies the challenge of moving forward in a society that doesn't know how to handle the awkwardness of infertility. With no Emily Post-like guidelines for supporting couples who can't conceive, most well-intentioned "fertile" people miss the mark. Silent Sorority offers an unflinching and insightful look at what it's like to be barren in an era of designer babies and helicopter parents. Silent Sorority received the 2010 Team RESOLVE Choice Award for Best Book.
You can find out more about Silent Sorority here
Lesley Pyne
In Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness, Lesley Pyne uses her life experience as a childless woman, the experiences of other childless women from all over the world—who she calls her storytellers, and her skills as a coach and NLP Master Practitioner to gently guide readers through their pain to help them get to the other side to find their joy.
Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness helps you: Understand why the story you tell yourself is important and how to change it if it’s holding you back. Learn different ways of moving through the grieving process including, letting go, connecting with your feelings and body, self-acceptance, and exploration through writing. Recognize the importance of gratitude and teach you how to find joy again. Explore how you’ve changed during the process and gently show you how to find fulfillment now and in the future. With clear and practical advice and exercises, Lesley will gently guide you to that fulfilling life you deserve, which is yours for the taking.
You can find out more about Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness here
Bindi Shah
I started sketching mandalas free-hand after meditation and my Spirit guide connection from 2018. These mandalas became the messages in picture form. For me, the mandalas represent the essence of life and the universe.
This quote by Carl Jung on the mandala explains my journey to the mandala too: ‘I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing… which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time.’
You can find out more about the Daily Truth Oracle Cards here
Matthew Maxwell
With a message both astounding and simple, How to Hold a Cockroach is a delightful and moving love letter to humankind. A quick, compelling read, it is indeed a book for those who are free and don’t know it. . . yet. When a heartbroken and miserable boy is confronted by a loathsome visitor at his dinner table, he is forced to consider some of life’s most slippery questions:
How do we tell the difference between the sacred and the abhorrent?
How can we be at peace in the face of a shattered heart, a bruised childhood, a numbing medical diagnosis, and other challenging circumstances?
What am I?
What decides how we experience our life?
In this delightful and inspiring tale for all ages, we are offered the possibility of ultimate freedom – that our experience is determined not by what occurs, but by the meaning we choose to make of it.
You can find out more about How To Hold A Cockroach here
Lana Walker
My transformational online programmes help women and men release the burden of emotions and lack of excitement about the future. Being Childless Not By Choice (CNBC) is something that you can’t change, but you can change how you feel about the present and the future.
My clients ‘let go’ of the emptiness and fear of the future – and lots of other other emotions – using the talking & energy therapy known as tapping, or EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). EFT literally ‘taps’ on the meridian points used in acupuncture. You feel your energy shifting as we talk through your feelings and experiences. It’s an amazingly effective therapy – safe, quick and permanent. You’ll be able to let go more of than you thought – making room for new, positive thoughts, rather than being overwhelmed by sadness.
You can find out more about Emotional Freedom Technique here
Steph Penny
Surviving Childlessness is a book for those who are childless through circumstances, childless-not-by-choice, childless by a medical condition, or childless for any other reason. We, the childless, wanted to have children at some point in our lives, but we were unable to do so. We grieve the loss of children, the loss of hopes and dreams, the loss of opportunity, and sometimes, the loss of faith. This book brings thirteen childless peoples’ stories to life from around the world. You will read their tales of tragedy, IVF, miscarriage, early menopause, donorship, faith, grief, hope and healing. You will also read my own story of being childless-by-forced-choice. With a few tears, a little laughter and lots of furbaby references (especially of my pet rescue cat, Portia), we find ways to survive the devastation of childlessness. There is a special chapter set aside for friends and family who want to support their childless loved one. Ever worried about saying the wrong thing to your childless friend or family member? This book is for you. This book is also filled with tales of church sermons and services gone wrong, and even some done well. If you are a pastor, minister or leader in your church and you want to know how to better support childless people in your congregation, this book is for you. If you are childless for any reason other than free choice—if you are sick of being told to ‘relax’ or ‘be grateful’ for your childlessness—if being childless has affected your relationship with God—if your ’dependent’ is a furbaby who follows you everywhere, including the toilet—this book is for you.
You can find out more about Surviving Childlessness here
Sue Bulmer
Having grown up on farm in the North-East of England I have always loved spending time outdoors. I remember daily life being governed by the seasons, from the cold snowy winters with biting north easterly winds blowing in from the sea to spring time when snowdrops appeared in the garden, the land thawed and everything started to grow. Then the more balmy summer days accompanied by the unforgettable smell of freshly cut corn during the harvest months followed quickly by autumn, blackberries being picked, leaves changing colour and fields ploughed, changing the landscape once again, marking the passing of time.
I now live in rural Nottinghamshire, where I love to explore the local footpaths and countryside with my dog. I make my art from my studio at the top of my cottage garden.
This pack of five handmade cards feature one-of-a-kind original abstract mini-landscape artworks. Sue is inspired by the outdoors and spending time in nature and her images evoke rolling landscapes of our external and internal worlds.
You can find out more about Sue’s art here
Cristina Archetti
Cristina Archetti started researching childlessness after being diagnosed with "unexplained infertility". She soon discovered that, although involuntary childlessness affects an increasing number of women and men across the world, this topic is shrouded taboo and shame. This book is both a first-person reflection about the existential questions posed by involuntary childlessness and a readable account of the way the silence surrounding this topic is socially and politically constructed.
Revealing the invisible mechanisms that, from the microscopic details of everyday life to policy, make up the structure of silence around childlessness, Archetti demonstrates what it means not to have children in a society that is organized around families. Through a prose that mixes analysis, excerpts of interviews, media fragments, and evocative writing, she develops a new language of feeling-in-the-body fit for the twenty-first century and exposes the devastating effects infertility has on relationships, identity, health and well-being, in societies that fetishize parenthood.
Childlessness in the Age of Communication draws upon a range of disciplines and fields including sociology, health, gender and sexuality studies, communication, politics and anthropology. It is a book for all those interested in childlessness and innovative qualitative research methodologies.
You can find out more about Childlessness In The Age Of Communication here
Sue Fagalde Lick
First you marry a man who does not want children. He cheats and you divorce him. Then you marry the love of your life and find out he does not want to have children with you either. The three he has are more than enough. Although you always wanted to be a mother, you decide he is worth the sacrifice, expecting to have a long happy life together. But that's not what happens. This is the story of how a woman becomes childless by marriage and how it affects every aspect of her life.
You can find out more about Childless By Marriage here
Emily Watt
This artwork is in part a reflection of my childless journey. Both the good and the bad, the growth that is sometimes difficultly slow, at times regressive. The good growth the, I got this, the I’m okay and the need to step away times. But mostly the people, making new connections in the community, the reflections of understanding, getting to know others. I hope you see the positives and find the joy in this piece.I would like to invite the winner to name the piece.
This piece has been a working progress over many years, I started with doing some acrylic pour paintings that I then manipulated on photoshop into patterns. These are then added to hand made clay hearts adding texture and or gold/copper leaf.
You can find out more about Emily's work here
You can enter the World Childless Week 2021 Competition here