“Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker,” writes Dr Lilly Jay about Wicked
You probably have never heard of Dr Lilly Jay until quite recently, and that’s for good reason.
She is the ex-wife of Ethan Slater, Ariana Grande’s new boyfriend, and a clinical psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health – meaning her patients are new moms facing problems in the first year following the birth of a child or during pregnancy.
Jay was thrown into the limelight, despite removing all her social media accounts at the age of 18 to appear as anonymous as possible for her clients, after her ex-husband left her and quickly pursued relations with the songstress.
With an unwanted spotlight now beaming on her personal life, she has written a 1,807-word memoir for The Cut explaining how she has been unable to ‘escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker’.
That movie was Wicked, which both Grande and Slater starred in, and where they met.
“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,” she writes.
Dr Lilly Jay and her now-ex-husband Ethan Slater pictured together in 2018, the year they were married (Mike Coppola/WireImage)
“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.
“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.”
She explains how the situation she finds herself in, as a single parent with a new child, is similar to the issues many of her patients have – only that her baby is of good health.
“I confidently moved to another country with my 2-month-old baby and my husband to support his career. Consumed by the magic and mundanity of new motherhood, I didn’t understand the growing distance between us,” Jay confessed.
She continued: “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. This, I tell myself, is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide.
“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.”
She went on to explain how both herself and Slater, whom she was married to for six years between 2018 and 2024, both ‘fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time’ but that their parenting time ‘is divided’.
Adding: “If I can’t be invisible anymore, I may as well introduce myself.”
