The Single Supplement: a Journey Inspired by Kristi Keller

Photo by Shane on Unsplash

What does society have against solo women? Especially aging solo women?

Yesterday I read a thoughtful piece about flying solo from one of my favorite Medium writers, Kristi Keller:

The cost of living alone.

I don’t pretend to speak for Kristi or her mother in this piece, just what her article and story brought up for this writer. And, where those questions took me, this cool sunny Thanksgiving morning in Oregon.

Kristi and I are both grounded from our international travels for now. Her points really hit home for me, as for a lot of folks, who are battling it out right now under Covid. But that’s hardly the only issue. As a 67–year-old single woman, for me, the points she makes about the cost of single living really exemplify how much our society punishes us- most especially women, aging women, and far worse, aging women of color- for daring to do it alone.

It wasn’t just that her points resonated. As so often happens with a writer’s…