World Childless Week 2019

Childlessness and The Arts

The written word can be strong but sometimes a single image can express a thousand emotions. Today we explore all forms of art and you don’t need to be a professional to participate.

If you are a photographer, poet, painter, sculptor, actor, dancer, musician or creative in any way this day is for you. Join us as we celebrate the healing powers of art.

Art, Healing and Moving Forward with Helen Segal

Earlier in the year Stephanie Phillips (founder, World Childless Week) watched Helen Segal of Grieve with Love and Kindness in a webinar where participation was encouraged:

I was a little aprehensive of what delight or disaster I would create but I thoroughly enjoyed the process and was quietly happy with what I created. The biggest thing to remember is as Helen put it in an email to me:
“Art, Healing and Moving Forward! NO CREATIVE EXPERIENCE NECESSARY”

Watch this recording here

Emotional Release Through Creativity

Wednesday, September 18, 2019
7:00 PM 8:00 PM
LondonUK (map)

In this webinar Stephanie Phillips will be joined by Tina Reid-Peršin and Victoria Firth. Tina is a photographer who produced the portfolio, “Photos I’ll Never Take” and Victoria is a performer who is about to tour with “How To Be Amazingly Happy”.

Victoria Firth is a performer, theatre maker and director from Yorkshire. In September she will be kick starting her tour How To Be Amazingly Happy! Victoria is on a quest to discover how you make a new life when you can’t have the one you imagined. In this big hearted, big thinking show of storytelling and physical comedy our heroine’s mid-life search for joy, identity and belonging features public displays of playfulness, private truths and sheer bloody mindedness. Join Victoria as she asks – is it possible to be happy without kids?

Tina Reid-Peršin is an artist working with photography, She first showed her “Photo’s I’ll Never Take” at Brighton Fringe in October 2012. Photos I’ll Never Take is about the family I will never have, and uses the concept of a fictional family album to try to convey the sense of grief and loss that accompanies this situation. Since February 2011, I have been making a series of tableaux that will be used to create this album and have also made a couple of short video clips, to accompany it. In place of a child, I have used a shop mannequin and have involved my husband, family members and friends to create the photos.

Tina and Victoria will both give their own presentation followed by a discussion, where you will have the opportunity to pose a question anonymously. You can register for this webinar here

Your word, images, poems and stories about Childlessness and The Arts

Featured

Art, Healing and Moving Forward recording

Come and join Helen and find answers to questions or problems you have, through writing and creativity in this recording of our webinar that took place on 18th September.

My cracked and bruised heart

It was after the second IVF. Hopes for a successful IVF were diminished, haunted by the miscarriage of the first round and the sense it was a last roll of the dice. I no longer saw the 34% success rate, I saw the 66% unsuccessful rate. They don’t tell you that. The hope is falsified not only by desire, but also the selection of statistics. Needless to say, the second round was unsuccessful.

I Just Wanted A Baby

I just wanted a baby

No! I don’t want you to try to fix me

And I don’t need your sympathy

All I ask is that you to listen to my story.

Wearing My Heart On My Head

This painting started life as a doodle with a gel pen…

Invisible

Does anyone see me?

Do they notice the void?

Do they know that I’m broken?

Do they try to avoid?

Goodnight Little Man

I opened it just a crack.

My heart.

Tentatively. Because what happens if you inadvertently tear off scar tissue covering pain and grief the intensity of which you didn’t think you could survive?

Outlier

I’ll bawl again tomorrow, or maybe on Saturday.

Chiara Berardelli Live Music Stream

Chiara Berardelli is an Italian Scottish singer-songwriter living in Glasgow, Scotland. Join us at 7pm on her Facebook page to listen to her live stream, read on for the link…

Hold You

I want to hold you.
Gently.
Fiercely.
And never put you down.

Magpies

One for sorrow
two for joy
three for a girl
four for a boy.

Small Hands

Small hands softly clutch
at wisps of hair,
whilst you nuzzle, peacefully
into my shoulder.
In my arms, you are safe.

Childless Grief

Can you take them,
these feelings that sit on my chest.
Stop them weighing me down,

so I can take a rest.

Creation

I forgive you

Imagining yourself into life again: Writing, childlessness, and the power of creativity

“Alchemy.” This is the first word that pops up into my mind—as strange as it might sound—when I ask myself “what have I learned from the experience of involuntarily childlessness?”

Soldering On

I’ve started to remember who I was before IVF and miscarriages. I used to be an artist, print maker and stained glass window maker.

Badass Superstar

Back in July this year I was on holiday with my mum at my parents’ villa in Alicante. I awoke before dawn, as is my habit these days, and lay there in my bed, listening to the sounds of the countryside: a dog barking; cicadas buzzing in the trees; a cockerel heralding the new day. In my room, the aircon hummed methodically