The One Where I Talk To Writer, Christina Campbell

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In this week's episode I talk to writer, Christina Campbell. 

Christina lives in Northern Virginia, USA, with her cats. She writes about invisible illness, singles’ rights, and the inexorable onslaught of entropy. Her book, And Sarah His Wife, won the Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press Chapbook Contest in 2017.

After earning her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from George Mason University, Christina co-founded the singles’ advocacy blog, Onely, with her MFA classmate, Lisa Arnold. The site deconstructs cultural stereotypes about single hood, such as the myth that unmarried people die alone, eaten by their cats!

Christina’s writing on Onely has been featured, quoted, or referenced in numerous publications, including The Atlantic.com;  PsychologyToday.com; the book Going Solo: the book Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Stop It by Bella DePaulo; and the book It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single, by Sara Eckel.

Topics that Christina & I cover are: 

• What motivated her and her college classmate, Lisa Arnold, to start their blog, Onely;
• Why Christina started writing about systemic singlism and discrimination against single people;
• How Christina has been affected personally by systemic singlism;
• Bereavement leave, how even that seems to favour those who are married, and how Christina wasn’t entitled to take bereavement leave for two of her close relatives;
• How single people aren’t able to choose recipients of certain benefits, whereas married people are automatically allowed to benefit their spouses;
• How single hood has meant that Christina has been hugely financially disadvantaged in respect of her health care;
• The project Christina worked on which found that single people, at a certain salary rate, finish their life at least $1,000,000 worse off than their married counterparts;
• How both Christina and I have been asked by 6 year old girls why we’re not married, and why we live alone; and how important it is to show little girls that it’s ok to be alone.
• Despite several relationships, Christina has always been very content on her own and never really felt the need to couple up;
• The stigma around childless women and how they are often perceived as ‘selfish’.
• Bella DePaulo’s term ‘single at heart’ and how Christina and I feel about it.
• How our ‘women’s intuition’ is our strongest tool against the patriarchal narratives;
• Last