By Krystal Sieben 
Ever since Ashley Tisdale wrote about leaving her toxic mom group, I have noticed something shift among women my age, moms in our 40s who built friendships through school drop-offs, soccer sidelines, neighborhood walks, and birthday parties.
Here is the thing….no one wants to be labeled the “mean girls mom group.”
Recently, I was out to dinner with a friend when she shared something that stuck with me. A woman had quietly left their local moms’ group and later treated them as if they were exclusionary. The final straw? She had sent a group text at dinnertime and no one responded.
I know my friend. She is intentional, kind, and so not the type to be a mean girl. I also know the women she surrounds herself with reflect that same energy. So I found myself wondering what actually happened here.
Why did this mom feel so left out?
It is incredibly easy to plant a narrative in your mind about someone being the bad guy. Once that narrative is there, everything filters through it. A delayed text response becomes proof. A missed invitation becomes evidence. A side conversation becomes confirmation.
Maybe this mom had been feeling on the outside for a while. Maybe she never quite felt woven into the group. Maybe at every gathering she felt slightly beyond the bubble, whether she actually was or not. When that group text went unanswered, it cemented a story that had already been forming.
But sometimes people are not mean. Sometimes they are just busy. Or sometimes, they are carrying a heavy invisible load, one no one sees.
There are days I open a text from someone who is not in my immediate inner circle, fully intending to reply. Then one of my three kids needs something, dinner burns, the dog runs off, my sister calls, someone cannot find their shoes, and the text quietly slips into the abyss of my mental to-do list. It is not personal. It is survival.
We have all felt left out. And if we are honest, we have all left someone out too, intentionally or not.
I think as mothers, we have to model the kind of grace we hope our kids will extend to others. That means pausing before assigning motive. That means checking our insecurities before labeling someone a bully. That means asking ourselves, Is this fact or is this a story I am telling myself?
It is not anyone’s job to answer every text within minutes or manage the emotional temperature of an entire group chat. It is our job to show up authentically, to be welcoming, to be kind.
But it is also our job to bring our best selves to the table without assumptions.
What if that “mean girl mom group” really is not?
What if they were just at dinner?
What if they were overwhelmed?
What if you misread silence as rejection?
What if instead of getting mad, you found something else to keep your mind off it?
Is it worth giving people the benefit of the doubt? Is it worth resisting the narrative that makes someone else the villain, especially when it may simply be a misunderstanding?
Assumptions rarely build community. Grace often does.
by Linda Tang 
by Tiffany Reiger 
by Amanda Crews 
