When Aesha Mukerji announced her divorce from the Indian cricketer Shikhar Dhawan, her Instagram post was inundated with messages of hate, moral policing and unsolicited advice that demonised a woman for her personal decision. “He loved you”, “You should have thought about the child”, “This is not Indian culture” — are common societal tropes that are thrown at women, so much so that it intimidates many of them to stay in a toxic marriage and not even consider divorce.
However, Aesha, through her Instagram posts, stressed that divorce is normal. “There are many reasons for relationships changing and breaking down. It’s best to not judge the people rather accept it’s a normal part of change and growth,” wrote Aesha, as she also offered support to women who are in the process of a divorce or after.
Aesha Mukerji and Shikhar Dhawan legally separated after eight years of marriage. They have a son named Zoravar. In her first post, where she announced the divorce, she shared her personal experience of going through a divorce for a second time. She started her post by saying, "I thought divorce was a dirty word until I became a two-time divorcee.”
Melbourne-based Aesha, who is an amateur kickboxer, was married to an Australian businessman earlier and has two daughters from the previous marriage. She and Dhawan got engaged in 2009 and married in 2012.
"Funny how words can have such powerful meanings and associations. I experienced this first-hand as a divorcee. The first time I went through a divorce I was soooooooo f**kn scared. I felt like I had failed and I was doing something so wrong at that time," Aesha said in the post.
She went on to write, "So now imagine, I have to go through it a second time. Woooahhhhhh. That is terrifying. Being divorced once before already, felt like I had more at stake the second time around. I had more to prove. So, when my second marriage broke down, it was really scary. All the feelings I felt when I went through it the first time came flooding in. Fear, failure and disappointment x 100."
However, once she went through the cycle of emotions and the required actions, she said she felt empowered and that the fear disappeared. “I realised my fear and the meaning I gave to the word divorce was my own doing,” she added, who listed out a series of redefinitions of the word divorce from her perspective.
In her second post on September 7, Aesha offered help to women who were struggling to cope with divorce. In the post titled ‘Have your friends left you, now that you are divorced?’ she recounted how many women whom she worked with either fear the loss of friendships or are experiencing loss of relationships while going through a divorce or after a divorce.
“If you have, I just want you to know that it’s NORMAL. Do not think or feel you are alone going through this or there is something wrong with you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you and sometimes things and people fall away from your life because they no longer align with who you are,” wrote Aesha, whose Instagram page description reads: “I help women who have lost their identity and their independence reconnect to themselves and their kids by taking radical responsibility and action.
In both posts, she offered to help women who are scared of being labelled as divorcees and for them to become part of a new tribe or community to find support, which women often seek after their divorce.