Caitlin Green

And when they're all part of this group together, it's like they're stronger together than they are individually.

And so they get more eyeballs on them together than they do individually.

So she said that what was really happening was something that I think a feeling many people are familiar with mom group or not is the feeling of everyone's hanging out without me.

So she joined the group.

They started inviting her to events and then the social media of it all ruins things because she would notice that they were all posting hanging out an event.

hanging out at someone's house, going to dinner, and she wasn't included.

And that started to hurt her feelings, understandably so.

She felt like they didn't make a big enough deal about one of her kids' birthdays.

She just said she started to feel like it was mean girl high school stuff.

And so she announced her departure in the group chat.

Instead of just doing the usual, like, I'm going to phase this out.

I'm going to spend less time and energy here.

She announced, this is really toxic.

I don't want to be a part of it anymore.

And then there's a fallout from it.

Well, that was the thing that I think landed for a lot of people who weren't a fan of the essay that she wrote.

It was that this is a one sided essay, right?

No one else is getting what the other moms experienced in this group.

And everyone having been a part of a friend group in their life knows how it feels and it sucks to feel left out of things.

But you also know what it feels like to be accused of leaving someone out of things when that either wasn't your intention or when you're just really saying what it comes down to is it's not that deep.