Ashley Tisdale French is revealing why she cut things off with her mom friend group.
In a personal essay for The Cut, the “High School Musical” actor shared that she broke things off with her "toxic" mom group after their behavior made her feel like she was back in high school — and not the musical kind.
Tisdale French, the former Disney Channel star and mother of daughters Jupiter and Emerson, wrote that after the birth of her first child, she was craving connection with other moms. She said that at first, after she joined the mom group started by her friend, she was sure she had “found her village.”
“I felt a sense of belonging,” she wrote. “And it made me hopeful about finding the balance between fulfilling work and family life, since all these cool women were able to do it.”
Tisdale French did not name anyone who was in the group, saying only how impressed she was by them. "They were building brands, running their own companies, launching creative projects," she wrote.
She also cautioned "wannabe online sleuths" against trying to identify any of the moms, saying "please, don’t even try — whatever you think is true isn’t even close."
Yet after being excluded from some hangouts and finding out about them on Instagram, Tisdale French wondered whether her mom friend group had turned toxic.
As she sensed the growing distance between her and the other moms, Tisdale French wrote, she was continually excluded — even from a hangout planned at her own daughter’s birthday party. Soon, “an unpleasant but familiar feeling” bubbled up for her.
“Here I was sitting alone one night after getting my daughter to bed, thinking, Maybe I’m not cool enough? All of a sudden, I was in high school again, feeling totally lost as to what I was doing ‘wrong’ to be left out,” she wrote.
Uncertainty, vulnerability and out-of-control hormones — those are the “emotional echoes” between high school and being a new mom, Tisdale French said.
She said she still has no idea why she seemed to have been frozen out of the group. "Why me? The truth is, I don’t know and I probably never will."
She wrote that she wasn’t willing to put up with exclusion from a group of fellow moms any longer. She texted her group chat: “This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.”
Some moms reached out to make amends, but Tisdale French wrote that she still questioned their behavior.
“To be clear, I have never considered the moms to be bad people. (Maybe one.) But I do think our group dynamic stopped being healthy and positive — for me, anyway.”
Tisdale French said that she’s not alone in mom friend group drama and that other mothers reached out to her after she first shared those ideas on her blog. “I’m far from the only mother who’s been brought to tears by members of a group that’s supposed to lift everyone up.”
Representatives for Tisdale did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tisdale French rose to fame through breakout roles on the Disney Channel, beginning with “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” and later as Sharpay Evans in the “High School Musical” movie series. She also recorded three studio albums, including her debut record, “Headstrong.”
She now runs the lifestyle brand Frenshe, which features a lifestyle blog and a body care line.
