Women Talking: The Mommune
A conversation on shucking society’s expectations and doing whatever the fuck we want with Holly Harper
I first referenced Holly Harper and Siren House a year ago in my post: Why I Wish I Had a Wife. I was fascinated by the press she received about creating a co-living situation with her friend Herrin Hopper, and saw something incredibly appealing about what they had created. (You can watch their Today Show appearance here). Fast forward to this winter when the term “mommune” went viral along with this Tik Tok.
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Now the “mommune” is getting significant air time and women across the country are wondering: how can I get in on something like this?
Communal living isn’t new. It is how we used to live. Some might argue it is how we are meant to live. But American society got hooked on the nuclear family as the key to keeping the white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist system going. Anything that mucks that up is a threat.1
Many of the women in these “mommunes” are divorced. The system that was presented to them as the answer ending up not being the answer they thought it was. But living as a single-income household is hard; some might say impossible. So these women are banding together to help pay the bills. And the community that emerges in the wake of a practical solution is what is surprising everyone. The chance to be mothered. The chance to have a wife.
As Holly notes, it isn’t easy. It takes intentionality in your relationships and the ability to be interdependent rather than co-dependent.
But once you let go of the “rules” for how life is supposed to be lived? You realize there is so much freedom, and endless possibilities. Enjoy our conversation below.
What are your thoughts about the term “mommune”?
I’m neutral. The terminology is kind of neither here nor there. We have a man living downstairs right now and he is just as awesome as the women who were living here before. He doesn't have kids; he has a cat. It is the community part, the commune, that is important. Why gender it?
When we went viral, we were having people over for tours, and a lot of single women who were either divorced with no kids or never married with no kids wanted to figure out how to meet moms because they want to be “aunties.'' They don’t want to have their own kids, but they want to see a kid through, buy Christmas gifts, and be part of an extended family. Again, why make it mom-centric? I have a good friend who is almost 60 who is dying to move in. She just can’t because she has elderly parents that she is caring for and she lives in another state. She’s never going to get married and have her own kids. When her parents pass away, she wants to be my kids’ auntie. What are we going to do when our kids are gone? I still want to live with a group of women and share expenses.
I think people are interested in the mommune right now because what we are seeing [as revealed by the pandemic] is the inability of the nuclear family to sustain the economic pressures of our terribly capitalistic society. Our country incentivizes marriage. In a world where that is incentivized financially, single parent households can’t survive. So any sort of dual income living arrangement is going to be better for the people living there. If you have two or more adults sharing one roof, in any configuration, you are going to be receiving all of the benefits socially and financially even if you are not married. Now, Herrin and I could get married and receive even more benefits. But living in community is the answer.
Marriage is a self-serving ecosystem. Your priorities become: my kid, my unit, my self, my husband. It cuts you off from your community. You aren’t thinking about your nieces and nephews and neighbors. You are thinking about your own kids.
You say in the Washington Post article, “I had done everything the culture tells me to do and I’m alone and I’m struggling.” Talk to me about what our culture still tells us to do as women and why that so often ends up in disappointment.
Our society does not have a mechanism by which to measure what “enough” is. We have infinite ambition and so when you are looking around at society, when women decided to want equality to men, men were like: well, then we want to be billionaires. We just keep ratcheting up the goal. In our culture of excess, we don’t want to cut anything out, so we just speed everything up. And it is so urgent and so fast because there’s not enough — spaces in the day care, slots at Harvard. But when you get off that treadmill, by creating new paths from what society tells you to pursue, you realize that we need not more, but less. Less stimulation, less knowledge, less information, less media, less square footage. When we start tamping all that down and having less of the superficial absurd nonsense, we get so much more time, and so much more community. And those are the things that matter.
When you detox from some of that stuff, everything changes. We are being told to run at the speed of light so we don’t miss out on things that don’t matter. In that sprint, we are missing the things that do matter. Which is connection.
When you break away from the societal norms of marriage and create another way, it’s like: well, what other things are they telling me to go after that I don’t actually need, that won’t even serve me?
Exactly. Now, it isn’t always easy. We have to stay connected to our values and what we are creating together through Siren House. When we first moved in, I am a branding person and I was really aware of how organizational cancers form when the people who create them aren’t clear on their values. So we sat down and we created a manifesto using a book called The Principles of a Feminine Economy. And I said: Herrin, these are our values and our principles and if there is ever a question, this will be our constitution. And then we forgot about it. Then, it was early in the pandemic and I was going through a lot. My dad died of Covid several weeks before the lockdown, my uncle had just passed away, I went deaf in one ear. It was a lot. And I said something really mean to her, and she kind of stopped and said: you will not treat me that way. Go back to your apartment, pull up the manifesto and then we can talk about it. After some space, I was able to come back to her and say: Oh my God, here is what happened, here is where I went wrong, this is why I did it, this is how I am going to get better. And ultimately: I’m so sorry. That ability to go back to your own court of law is what keeps us together.
One of our values is transparency. You have to make an affirmative statement of your needs because if you don’t tell me your needs, I have infinite chances of getting it wrong, and one chance of getting it right. So you have to tell me: what does the solution look like for you? If you can’t be clear on your own needs, that’s not my responsibility. This is in some ways harder than a marriage. We are not codependent and most relationships are codependent. When you are an interdependent organization, it is so much harder because Herrin doesn’t let me get away with my shit and I don’t let her get away with her shit. This kind of living requires a lot of self-reflection.
What does interdependence mean to you and how do you keep it front of mind as a practice?
I keep an overaction journal. Anytime something makes me angry or irritated or frustrated, I write it down. Because when you are in community with anyone, 100% of your feelings are your feelings. We are so used to processing so fast and those of us who are in management or leadership are good at being right. But you are not always right. When you are not codependent, you aren’t depending on that pattern of looking outward to blame. Instead, you know: everything is mine, my patterns are known. If someone shows up and throws a wrench in my works, I want to know what part of that is mine before I go and punch them in the face. Interdependence teaches you patience, to stop and remind yourself : oh wait, 80% of this is mine, 20% of it is theirs. Is it worth it to say something?
Because you want it to be them, but so often it is just your shit. Their action is 10% of it, and the rest is the childhood wounding, or the story I tell myself. I love that.
Now Herrin can trigger me and I can say: I’m really triggered and I’m trying to figure out why. And she can say: okay, where do you feel it in your body? And what did I say that made you feel that way? We know each other's patterns and habits.
How do you plan to handle future love interests?
Listen, this is about rejection of the story that society tells you will happen. Society says that we will get married, have kids, raise kids, the kids will go to college, they will get married, we will downsize and then we will become grandparents. What are the odds that will really happen? How often does it really work out that way?
Herrin and I are already thinking about what might happen in seven years when our youngest kid goes to college or moves out. Because the only reason either of us live [in the Washington, D.C. area] is because our exes live here. We can’t leave. So the way we look at it is this is our little nest for now. We know that neither of us wants to cohabit with another grown up while our kids are young. There is no point. I already live with one and it's awesome. I don’t want to share a bathroom again. I already have kids. I live on a girls weekend and then spend time with my boyfriend when my kid is with their father. It’s great.
Once you have disentangled yourself from that arc, then you can do whatever you want. I went on a yacht trip with all my girlfriends because I was like: I don’t need a man to go on a yacht. I need to find a yacht and a female skipper. I was like who’s in? And all of them showed up. One of my girlfriends wanted to go to Mexico but didn’t want to go by herself. We found a quorum, went as a family, got the family rate. There are so many ways to do life other than what is presented to you.
I can say that right now Herrin’s dating and I have a boyfriend who is pretty serious but casual. If it doesn’t work out, it will be my third medium to long term relationship in my life. My third love, and that’s great. Maybe I’ll have a fourth or a fifth. The heartbreak will be awful if that happens, but whatever.
You have erased the lines of the trajectory that’s expected and when you do that, infinite possibilities emerge for your future. And that’s exciting. We get shoved into these small silos of what we should want and it’s not actually aligned with what we really want. When we shed one, we realize they are just made up. I feel like that’s the theme of this whole conversation. That the things they told you to want are just fabrications.
Yes. You can do whatever the fuck you want.
Thank you, Holly, for taking the time to unpack these questions with me. You can find more about Holly here or even hire her as a consultant (also here)! She wrote a book called The Deal of the Dollhouse: How Toxic Self-Care Almost Destroyed Me, which you can purchase here.
GOING DEEPER:
Courtney Martin, author of the Substack The Examined Family, talks about communal living. She is part of such a group in Oakland. I loved this recent reflection about dishwasher repair.
I’m also really interested in how intergenerational support can address some of these issues. This recent study from Fortune reported that 42% of working parents relied on grandmothers for childcare. I am one of them. Yet more unpaid labor extracted from women. Does it ever stop?
Angela Garbes’ chapter “Mothering as Human Interdependence” in Essential Labor tackles some of these topics, specifically how it worked when she podded up with another family during the pandemic.
Episode 179 and 180 of We Can Do Hard Things unpacks friendship and the many ways we’ve been turned away from this life-giving resource thanks to patriarchy and capitalism. Dr. Marisa G. Franco, author of Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make - and Keep - Friends explores the messaging we receive that prioritizing friendship isn’t as important as giving our all to our families. But there is research that having strong friendships can improve your marriage because then you are not expecting your spouse to be your everything.
I recognize that for some cultures, multi-generational living is more common and helps with some of what is laid out here, i.e. having grandparents to help with childcare and bundling expenses with other relatives who live with you.
thank you for this interview, this was fascinating and a necessary balm on a HARD week of parenting