Ashley Tisdale may be a mother of two, but she has no time for babying anyone’s drama.
The actress-singer and Disney Channel alum, 40, opened up about leaving her “toxic” celebrity mom group in a candid personal essay published in The Cut on New Year’s Day. Tisdale previously wrote about the experience in a post for her blog, By Ashley French.
“Since becoming a public figure as a teenager, it’s often the thing I least expect that people most want to talk about,” Tisdale wrote in The Cut. “Sometimes, I’ll say something offhandedly, only to see it turn into a headline or start a conversation on TikTok. There’s one recent topic that has made my phone blow up like no other.”
Tisdale shares daughters Jupiter, 4, and Emerson, 1, with husband and composer Christopher French.
In her blog post, “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” star opened up about leaving the celebrity parent circle, which reportedly included Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor, after noticing the women seemingly began leaving her out of group hangouts (Tisdale didn’t name her former mom friends in the account.)
On social media, Tisdale does not follow Duff or Moore on Instagram, as of publication. The actress still follows Trainor’s account. USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Duff, Moore and Trainor for comment.
“It’s a subject that has made women [message] me to say, ‘I feel seen’ and to share their most emotional stories with me,” Tisdale continued in The Cut. “It’s one that has also made wannabe online sleuths try to do some investigating like they’re on ‘CSI’ (please, don’t even try — whatever you think is true isn’t even close).”
Tisdale said the mom support group was assembled by a friend, who had a slew of other pals who recently became mothers. The “High School Musical” alum said she and the women bonded over their shared experience of navigating parenting during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What I remember most from those early days was how impressed I was by those women and all of the amazing things they had going on,” Tisdale reflected. “They were building brands, running their own companies, launching creative projects. They just happened to also be mothers of young kids.”
Tisdale gushed that she felt “energized” and a “sense of belonging” through being around fellow working mothers who had achieved “finding the balance between fulfilling work and family life.”
“Maybe we’d be able to share our secrets to success,” Tisdale wrote. “By the time we started getting together for playdates and got the group chat going, I was certain that I’d found my village.”
While Tisdale initially waved off her suspicions about her absence from social events, she said she “could sense a growing distance between me and the other members of the group, who seemed to not even care that I wasn’t around much.”
“During the early days of the group, there was another mom who often wasn’t included,” Tisdale recalled. “I’d picked up on hints of a weird dynamic, but at the time, I didn’t dwell on it too much. I was just so happy to have found these incredible, smart, funny women. Now it seemed that this group had a pattern of leaving someone out. And that someone had become me.”
Tisdale said she later confronted her mom friends over their alleged exclusion in a blunt text message that read, “‘This is too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.'”
Although Tisdale said some of the women attempted to address the issue and reconcile, “our group dynamic stopped being healthy and positive.”
“I’m not in high school anymore. I’m a mom,” Tisdale wrote. “And it’s because I’m a mom that I couldn’t stay quiet. I kept thinking, ‘Aren’t we supposed to be teaching our kids to speak up for themselves when their feelings are hurt? When they get left out on the playground, aren’t we supposed to teach kids to include each other?’ I knew that I had to speak up for myself, just like I would want my daughters to do.”
