Lily Jay has broken her silence on a subject matter that is both very personal and quite public.
As most celebrity gossip fans know at this point, Jay is divorced from Ethan Slater, an actor who plays the character of Boq in the smash hit film Wicked.
The couple split last year, right around the same time that Ariana Grande divorced Dalton Gomez.
Grande is now dating Slater, with rumors swirling over when, exactly, the co-stars started their relationship.
“I really never thought I would get divorced. Especially not just after giving birth to my first child and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity,” wrote Jay in an essay published on December 18 for The Cut.
Jay and Slater are parents to a two-year old son.
In her very personal essay, the clinical psychologist never cites Grande by name.
But she talks openly about what it’s been like to see her name in tabloid headlines, along with endless chatter over her ex and one of the country’s most famous celebrities.
“In the countless hours I spend rocking my son to sleep, pushing his stroller, marveling at his sweaty little hands grasping a crayon, I work diligently on my private project of accepting the sudden public downfall of my marriage,” Jay wrote.
“This, I tell myself, is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide.”
Jay says she has remained focused on her life as a mom to her young son, adding that “motherhood, I have learned, fills your time but not your mind” and stating:
“Slowly but surely, I have come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high-school sweetheart, a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child.”
The Broadway actor’s divorce from Jay was finalized in September, a dozen years after they began dating and nearly six years after their November 2018 wedding.
Also… six days after we first saw stories about Slater getting together with Grande.
Elsewhere in the essay, Jay admitted the following:
“No one gets married thinking they’ll get divorced, in the same way we don’t board a plane expecting to crash. But I really never thought I would get divorced….
“In this season of shock and mourning, over a year after the end of my marriage was made public, I deeply miss the life of invisibility I created for myself as a psychologist specializing in women’s mental health.”
Jay tries to seek solace away from the spotlight, she says; a spotlight she never asked for and certainly does not desire.
“As for me, days with my son are sunny,” Jay wrote. “Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker.”
The promotion for Wicked, of course, has been as prominent as any movie in recent memory.
An especially private person, Jay went on:
“If I can’t be invisible anymore, I may as well introduce myself. You know how a sponge is most effective at absorbing liquid when it’s already a bit wet? Maybe we can think about my messy not-so-personal life in that way: a dose of my own loss, rage, powerlessness, sadness that helps me hold yours.
“So consider this essay my message in a bottle sent out to sea to maybe wash up at my patients’ feet someday: I’m sorry I can’t be invisible anymore.”
Careful not to hurl her ex too far under the bus, Jay also wrote of co-parenting and of Slater:
“While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided.”
You can visit The Cut to read Jay’s essay in full.