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Ashley Tisdale is summoning up strength on social media.
On Friday, Jan. 9, the actress shared a cryptic Instagram post captioned “Find your strength within,” amid the ongoing conversation surrounding her “toxic” mom group.
Tisdale, 40, shared a video of herself doing yoga with a desert landscape visible behind her. “Find your strength within. Coming February 1st. @beingfrenshe,” she wrote in the caption, tagging her wellness brand Frenshe.
The post comes amid the fallout of Tisdale penning an essay for The Cut titled “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group.” The mom of two initially opened up about the experience in a candid blog post titled “You’re Allowed to Leave Your Mom Group” in December 2025, which quickly went viral.
“When I became a mom, I craved connection almost as much as I craved sleep. So I did what a lot of us do. I joined a mom group,” Tisdale wrote. “But here’s the thing nobody prepared me for: Mom groups can turn toxic. Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behavior. I know this from personal experience.”
The following month, in January 2026, Tisdale expanded on the post with a personal essay for The Cut. She kept the women from her former friend group anonymous, instead framing the experience as a reminder that it is okay to walk away from relationships that no longer feel healthy.
“If a mom group consistently leaves you feeling hurt, drained or left out, it’s not the mom group for you,” she wrote. “Choosing to step away doesn’t make you mean or judgmental. It makes you honest with yourself. It’s also worth remembering that friendships, like all relationships, have seasons.”
After Tisdale published her story in The Cut, Hilary Duff’s husband Matthew Koma took aim at Tisdale’s essay. Duff was allegedly a member of the mom group that was the subject of the High School Musical alum’s essay.
Koma, 38, posted a photo of himself photoshopped onto Tisdale’s body, on his Instagram Stories on Tuesday, Jan. 6. In the photo, he is seen sitting on a couch next to a houseplant, while wearing an all-black outfit paired with rose-tinted sunglasses.
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Koma added The Cut’s logo and a fictional headline to the photo, which read “When You’re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers,” with a sub-headline that read, “A Mom Group Tell All Through A Father’s Eyes.”
In the days following, Meghan Trainor, another member of the alleged group, chimed in with a video on her TikTok, and commented for the first time on the drama on Thursday, Jan. 8.
“Me finding out about the apparent mom group drama,” Trainor, 32, wrote across the video, which included a clip of her sitting at her computer. The mom of two could be seen typing and looking animatedly at her screen, appearing shocked. The video was set to her new single, “Still Don’t Care,” off her upcoming album Toy with Me, which drops on April 24.
When the drama began to go viral, a source told PEOPLE that the mom group drama stemmed from a “misalignment of values.”
“It was a misalignment of values that Ashley decided to make public,” a source close to the group told PEOPLE exclusively. “Friends naturally drift apart. It didn’t warrant a dramatic breakup text.”
