single mums united
When times got tough, hannah georgalas and maya leftwick found strength in solidarity.
Hannah Georgalas was at her wits’ end. The South Londoner had a toddler son, her relationship had disintegrated, and she was struggling to pay the bills. She was lost, broke and grieving the loss of her old life when her landlord told her he was selling the cosy flat she’d made her new home. Feeling utterly defeated and wondering what to do next, she sat down to flip through a book of socialist feminist posters. Suddenly, the light dawned.
“It had this poster with single mothers living in separate little flats, suffering in isolation with the monotony of housework and solo child-rearing,” Hannah remembers. “At the top it said, ‘ALONE WE ARE POWERLESS, TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG’, and I thought, ‘Too fucking right. If only.’ Then I realised I could do that – if I gathered the strength to organise it, I could find another single mum to live with. We could share a bigger home and we’d each have a shoulder to lean on and an extra pair of hands, plus I’d have a companion for my son!”
Feeling inspired, Hannah started investigating her options. She’d heard about some established ‘mommunes’ in central London, but knew they weren’t the answer. “I just thought, ‘London makes you hard. I’m hard. I want my son to be nice and soft like a peach.’ So I decided to start my own space here in Brighton.” She found a house she liked the look of, then created a Facebook post detailing her plans and the sort of person she wanted to share with. “It was important for me that they were vegetarian and extremely left-wing – they needed to be anti-racist, anti-homophobic and anti-transphobic. Plus, they had to love children and want to raise feminist children!” Maya Leftwick couldn’t believe her luck when a friend of a friend alerted her to Hannah’s post. She was also finding it tough to keep afloat with her young son Freddie, who was not quite two years old. “I had actually almost given up when I got the call – I had flights booked for the following week back to my parents in rural Ireland,” she says. The pair met for coffee and a powwow, and decided to give communal living a go. “It was pretty quick,” Maya remembers. “We met up on the Saturday and said yes on the Monday afternoon.” Making the decision may have been quite easy, but overall, the odds were stacked against them. “The housing situation for single mothers in the UK is grim, to put it lightly,” Hannah says. The ladies had to hustle hard to get real estate agents on their side – with each of them working part-time and receiving housing benefits, they weren’t exactly seen as prime rental candidates. Thankfully, an agent took a leap of faith, and just over a year ago, the families moved into a two-storey townhouse in central Brighton. Maya and Freddie occupy the downstairs en suite bedroom and living room, while Hannah and five-year-old Roddy have the upstairs bedrooms and living area. They share the garden and kitchen (“It’s a very busy and lively space,” Hannah says).
The two families are housemates with benefits. Though they have their own separate lives – Maya is a freelance business consultant, while Hannah juggles studying psychology with being an artist and running her own vegan cake business – they help each other out whenever they can. “We’ve both lived in share flats for pretty much our whole adult lives, but it’s different when you’ve got kids and there’s a lot more to consider,” Hannah says. “We help each other
get ready in the morning – getting kids fed and dressed by a certain time is really hard sometimes, and it’s nice to have someone there looking after them when you’re having a shower, or ill, or sad, or on the phone! I started taking antidepressants this year, and Maya stepped up and gave Roddy brekky every morning when I was zonked in bed. She was a lifesaver.”
They also hold weekly meetings to help manage the daily running of the household – it’s an opportunity to air any issues and talk them through. “I’m a brooder, and will stew over things unless I have a specific time and place to get it out, so this really works for me,” Maya says. “It’s also a nice way to check in with each other. Sometimes the weeks can blur into one big school run/playdate/ rush to get out the door, and it’s great to have that hour or so each week to just chat through how we’ve been.”
Feedback on their unconventional co-parenting setup has been mostly positive so far. “My ex was happy Roddy was going to have someone to play with and that we were going to live somewhere nice, but half my friends thought it was super-cool and the other half thought I was taking a massive gamble,” Hannah says. “Most people are like, ‘Wow, why don’t more single parents do that?’” Maya adds. “The occasional delivery person has probably assumed we’re a couple, though.”
The pair agrees that living together has taught them a lot – about themselves, and life more broadly. They hold many of the same values, but, as in any house-sharing situation, differences are highlighted, too. “I think we’re pretty similar in a lot of ways that matter, but where Maya is quite pragmatic and organised, I’m quite scatty, forgetful and creative,” Hannah says. Their approaches to parenting vary, as well, with Maya’s style “fairly unorthodox”, and Hannah’s a bit more “mainstream”. “It was always going to be new territory for both of us, having never shared a house with our babies before, but we were really aware of that. With the age gap between the boys, I was apprehensive about how their dynamic would work out, but they’ve bonded well.”
“It’s taught them both patience and understanding,” Hannah adds. “Roddy and Fred often enter into their imagination land together and build and create whole worlds that we don’t understand, which is so beautiful to watch.” Their situation is not without challenges, though, and the ladies say folks considering trying something similar need to be up for constant compromise. (“And make sure you have unlimited hot water, not like our house,” Hannah says.) But all things considered, they wouldn’t change a thing. The way Hannah and Maya see it, it’s been an opportunity to grow and better themselves that they wouldn’t otherwise have had – they dove in with open minds, and it worked. “When we’ve had a challenging day, or a good day, we can just have a nice chat,” Hannah says. “We can make each other dinner or a cup of tea when we really need it. We might decide to go our separate ways at some point in the future, but by doing this we’ve gained a lot: support; great friendship; parenting advice; a solid example of female strength and independence; playmates for our sons and, ultimately, a feeling of solidarity in a patriarchal society that favours marriage and money over unconventional-but-supportive setups.”