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Jakarta Post

Single parents turn to community to navigate post-divorce life

Mother's love: A single mother attends to her children as they watch TV at their home

A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Mon, November 11, 2019

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Single parents turn to community to navigate post-divorce life

Mother's love: A single mother attends to her children as they watch TV at their home.(JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)

When 26-year-old Fadyah Syifa Hasbiah’s husband left her for another woman in 2015, she became depressed and insecure, blaming herself for what happened, especially as it made her a single mother of a baby girl.

During the initial years of her divorce in Yogyakarta, where she studied at Gadjah Mada University from 2010 to 2015 and married her now-ex-husband, she turned to her aunt for emotional support and spiritual guidance. She also followed the Instagram account of a support group called Single Parents Indonesia in Motion (Spinmotion).

Syifa moved back to Jakarta to live with her parents and 5-year-old daughter after her divorce was finalized in 2016 and has since worked for a private company.

She eventually read an Instagram post that said Spinmotion would hold a meet-up in Jakarta. She messaged the account and introduced herself to the group’s Jakarta chapter in 2017.

Spinmotion has become Syifa’s life line for dealing with post-divorce life.

“The healing sessions in every meeting made me realize that I’m not alone. This is not a physical pain, but I see that my friends in Spinmotion felt the pain that I went through as well and buried it in the last few years,” Syifa told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Bintang Etnawati, 54, a junior high school teacher in Bogor, West Java, also felt like her life had come crashing down after she started her divorce in 2012, especially since at the time her three children were still in school, so she was worried about their psychological well-being.

Bintang said that she divorced because her ex-husband’s family wanted him to remarry with someone from the same ethnic background.

“My children wondered what they did wrong that made their father do it and as a mother I have to make them strong,” Bintang said.

The divorce process was lengthy as they had to split the marital property. Bintang had to take a bank loan to pay for her divorce lawyer, until it was finalized in 2014. Luckily, her ex-husband still wanted to pay for their three children’s education.

In 2016, Bintang found out about Spinmotion by way of an article on a lifestyle website, fimela.com. She reached out to it through the group on Facebook.

In the group, Bintang and the other women give emotional support by motivating each other.

“I was the oldest there because I was divorced after 20 years of marriage. So it’s a bit shocking, especially seeing that some marriages were broken by infidelity or the husband’s lack of responsibility,” Bintang said.

A debate over life after divorce and polygamy has recently stirred thanks to a story relayed by #layanganputus, borrowing the Indonesian phrase for a kite with a broken thread to describe post-divorce life.

The author of the story is only identified as Mommi ASF. Her story was posted on Facebook and was screen-captured and circulated on social media. However, the original post has been deleted and its authenticity remains
unclear.

The story describes Mommi ASF’s personal record of how her eight-year marriage broke up after her husband, said to be a well-known preacher who has a YouTube channel dedicated to Islamic preaching, married a younger woman without her blessings and she only found out after her husband had gone on a honeymoon to Turkey.

Mommi then filed for divorce and took custody of her four children, diving head-first into a life with a significantly lower financial quality without support from her husband.

Life after divorce can be a struggle, especially for women who have to find new sources of income because of losing their breadwinners.

According to the 1974 Marriage Law, divorced men must provide financial support to their former spouses and their children. However, there is no legal mechanism to enforce the former spouses’ obligations.

Founded in May 2015 by Yasin Malenggang, Spinmotion was made as a community for single parents to exchange information on how to deal with post-divorce life, with chapters in 16 cities across the country, including in Greater Jakarta.

Spinmotion Jakarta chapter coordinator Risma Nilawati said that people going through divorce often experience the five common stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

“Most that decided to join Spinmotion were usually at phase four [depression], and sometimes phase two [anger] as well,” Risma told the Post on Wednesday.

Risma said Spinmotion tried to help its members with psychological support, including with the help of experts as each divorcee had a different way of processing grievances.

“We want to help the members to rise up and help them realize that their lives aren’t over yet,” Risma said.

However, society still imposes stigma, especially on divorced women, including through jokes proclaiming they were desperate for love, Risma said.

“We want to show society that we are not like that,” Risma said. “There are a lot of dignified divorcees that even with harsh lives they still want to show that we can do positive deeds even with their limitations. That’s why we regularly do [social and charity events].”

She said there were about 90 people in the Jakarta chapter, mostly women, although some 10 percent are men. Most are divorcees but there are also those whose spouses had died.

Risma said that stories like #layanganputus had been a staple in Spinmotion and there are even more stories that are sadder than that.

She said the story showed that there were no permanent things in life, including marriages.

“Do we stop playing kite [living post-divorce life]? No, we make better and newer kites, meaning that we set up new plans, look to the future, fight and move on with strong feet to handle any obstacles in the coming storm,” Risma said.

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