What makes being left out so brutal is that it can sting even when there’s no clear “reason” and it can feel as sharp in adulthood as it did in tenth grade.
That emotional whiplash is at the center of Ashley Tisdale’s decision to step away from a mom friend group she described as “toxic.” On her blog where she writes under her married name, Ashley French Tisdale said she joined a circle of moms after becoming a mother in 2021 because she “felt connection,” hoping for the kind of practical support and empathy that can make early parenthood feel less isolating. Over time, she wrote, the atmosphere shifted into clique behavior: smaller text threads, inside plans, and repeated moments of finding out often through social media that others had spoiled without her.
In a longer first-person essay for The Cut, Tisdale described trying to talk herself down at first. “At first, I tried not to take things personally,” she wrote. It’s not like people aren’t allowed to get together without me and maybe there were perfectly good reasons that I hadn’t been invited. Still, she said the pattern kept landing the same way: dinner parties where she felt placed at a distance, Instagram posts that made exclusions visible, and a growing sense that the group’s warmth was not consistent.
That inconsistency is one reason these situations can feel uniquely destabilizing. Clinical psychologist Christie Ferrari has described this dynamic as “relational aggression” social harm delivered indirectly, often through silence, omission, or shifting friendliness depending on who is present. Ferrari has noted that this brand of exclusion tends to hide behind plausible deniability: no confrontation, no obvious “fight,” just enough distance to make someone question their read of the room. In that fog, a parent can end up spending more energy decoding tone and access than enjoying the community they joined to begin with.
There is also a biological reality to the pain. Social psychologist Kip D. Williams, who studies ostracism, has said people are “very sensitive to signs of being ignored and left out” and that perceived exclusion can hurt regardless of intent. His research has also pointed to overlap between physical pain and social pain, which helps explain why a seemingly small slight can land like a body blow especially during a life stage already loaded with sleep deprivation, identity shifts, and constant comparison.
Tisdale ultimately thing clarity over lingering comfort. After feeling left out again, she told the group she was leaving because it had gotten “too high school.” “I realized that there were group text chains that didn’t include everyone, which led to cliques forming within the larger group,” she wrote. “And after the third or fourth time of seeing social media photos of everyone else at a hangout that I didn’t get invited to, it felt like I wasn’t really part of the group after all.”
In her blog post, she framed the exit as permission rather than drama: “If a mom group consistently leaves you feeling hurt, drawn, or left out, it’s not the mom group for you.” She added, “Choosing to step away doesn’t make you mean or judgmental.”
The takeaway is not that every mom group is doomed, or that every gathering must include every parent. It is that community is assumed to reduce strain, not multiply itand that adult friendship can be allowed to have seasons without requiring someone to keep showing up to a room that keeps shrinking around them.
