Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Appearances
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So growing up, my mom always used to tell me that Christy was like the homewrecker. It's she's the other woman. Like she was always branded the other woman.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
We are friends on Facebook. Okay. So we communicate through Facebook. We have met once. Okay. Earlier in the year. Okay. We all got together and, you know, it was great to have, like, my dad had been wanting a relationship with all three of his daughters. Okay. And so one day when I was in town, my sister Facebooked me and she's like, I'd like to meet you. Okay.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And so it was great because I had me, Mia, and her there.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I would say she keeps her distance in a way that she has a family. She has a son. Sure. So I think all of the media stuff really just kind of puts her in a protective mode, which is understandable.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, well it was, um, we're actually very close in age. Oh, okay. So like really close by a couple months. Okay.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So, I mean, it was, I mean, he was 17 years old when my mom got pregnant.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, he's in his eighties, so I'm not really even sure if he even knows about the book.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So he would have been, you know, roughly around the same 17 or 18 when, um, my other sister's mom got pregnant as well. Okay. So it was one of those things that he's so, he was so young. He's trying to do the right thing. Right. Um, He's paying child support on one kid. Right. Now has to pay child support on another kid. So, I mean, I just chalk it up to like, he wasn't ready to be a dad.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And yeah, we had those conversations since I've been released. Yeah. And he's been very open and honest with me. And he's like, to be honest, I was just trying to do the best thing for y'all at the time. And he's like, I was not mature enough to be a father yet.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It was. I really felt that way. I also like... When I was little, my mom was like my best friend. And that's what I chalked it up to. I didn't go to school. So growing up around other kids was very rare. There may have been the neighborhood kids, my cousins, but few and far between interaction with kids my age. And so when I was little, my stuffed animals, my Barbie dolls, my mom was my...
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
my social life. So that's what I grew up knowing. And then as I got older, I felt it was almost like being sheltered, but also taking the part of a partner or spouse in a marriage. So all of her stress would be shared to me. And I was kind of expected to carry all of this and be that person that she needed me to be.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yeah. It's like having a bad marriage without the sexual part of it.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Absolutely. Like I feel like – I don't think there's anything wrong with a close relationship with your parent or your daughter. Right. But there's a line. Yeah. Between normal and weird. Yeah, yeah.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
You could be that person that they come to. For sure. And be that person to lean on. Absolutely. But to say best friend, like, no, you go to school. Right. Make your own friends. Right. You know, but I'm here if you need me.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It is. It's not something that I really tell everybody or talk about because, I mean, it's pretty embarrassing.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Unfortunately, I can't. While I'm on parole, I can't have communication with them. But after I'm off parole, I can't.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, well, my mom never weaned me off the baby bottle.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So, um, I, you know, I was given formula through the feeding tube, but also my, my comfort. I never like took to a stuffed animal or a blankie or anything, but I, I loved the bottle. Okay. And so, um, like strawberry PediaSure was my favorite. Um, and my mom never said, oh, you're too old for that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
She just let me continue on the bottle. Sure. To the point where I think that that's why my teeth were buck teeth. My original teeth were bucked and just out of alignment. Sure. Yeah. But even up until the night before the crime, I was still very much like that was my source of comfort, you know?
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So it's like I'm taking, I'm addicted to narcotics and I'm also sucking on a baby bottle to give me comfort.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It's very bizarre. It's very bizarre now looking back on it.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yeah. It's two ends of a spectrum and somehow I landed right between them.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It's like I had taken the narcotics. I didn't pack a baby bottle. I just kind of left my old life behind entirely.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It was. It was liberating, but also scary. It was new territory. Like for me, when I'm trying something new or I'm entering into a zone that I've never experienced before, I get a lot of anxiety about it.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I didn't even know who they were. So I want to make it clear that when I grew up, like, okay, so most parents, to kind of discipline their children, you know, they're like, oh, the boogeyman's going to get you. Right. Okay. So my mom never said the boogeyman. My mom said the state boogeyman.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So I grew up being afraid of people that I thought were bad people that were going to take me away from her. And they were called the state. And so what I didn't know back then was she was telling me to be afraid of CPS. Right. And I didn't know that then. It wasn't until after I got out of prison that I kind of figured it all out. Right, right. And so when they came, I didn't know who they were.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
For me, I spent eight and a half years locked up total. Okay. And then the remainder of the year and a half on parole.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I'm like, do they work with the police? And they're asking me questions like, do I have bruises on my arms and legs?
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And did you? I didn't. I didn't at that point in time. I didn't. However, they weren't asking me the right questions. And that is kind of like where I fell through. That's kind of like where I put a lot of like guilt on me is because I'm like, why didn't I just tell them this?
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Exactly. So I'm like, you know, even though at this point I would have been a teenager.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
But having the mindset of someone much younger because I was sheltered to be that way.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It was always like every year of advancement was like two years knocked back down. Okay. So it was progressive. Right. You know, when I was 10, she would say I was nine. So it started with one year and then two years and then it just progressed to more years as I got older.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And it's really shocking to me because even in certain medical records, there is descriptions of certain illnesses. So my mother described me as paralyzed from the waist down. But in certain transcripts, there is quadriplegic, paraplegic. So it is like there's a difference in the two. So if you're a doctor, my eyes would be looking at that and automatically want to correct what's wrong.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So it's like the medical records are basically scattered to the wind in inaccuracy. And it's so hard to piece together any sort of sense.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. She did not transfer them to one hospital to another. So when the doctor, the new doctor would ask for old records, she would claim that they were all, you know, washed away in Hurricane Katrina because back in 2005, you know, There was still that transfer from hard copy records to computer.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I don't know. We've been talking about it. Yeah, because where is Ken from? He's originally from Georgia, but he's moved around a lot. So he's lived in Dallas. He's lived in Seattle. Right. So he's moved around a lot.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
There would be times. So like if she had to go run an errand, there was times as I got older.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
That I did want to stretch my legs and get out of the wheelchair. And so, you know, some of the most freeing times that I had was I would play CDs on the boom box and just dance. Yeah. That was my freedom. Did she know that you were doing that? She didn't. She did not because I would be in trouble for walking even inside the house.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No, because I still like every once in a while I would move my legs here and there. Not meaning to, but, you know, she would have to correct me and be like, stop moving your legs.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I mean, I always knew that I could walk and I've always been honest about that. But it was and I and this goes right into the title. This is why I wanted to have the word stand in the title is because, yes, I knew that I could walk. However, my mom didn't let me get out of the chair. Um, so it was like, I was forced to be in the chair.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Absolutely. That's where I feel like, you know, maybe in a sense, the system failed her. Yeah. And the way we grew up in southern Louisiana, particularly in my family, we don't talk about mental health.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Growing up in the 90s, it wasn't really talked about. Right. You're either labeled weird or just... Different. Crazy. Crazy. Like those are the terms that you grew up with in the 90s. Right. And sadly, you know, she would have needed therapy. She would have needed medication. But she didn't get those things.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
He didn't know. I didn't tell him a lot. I didn't tell him I had a feeding tube. I didn't tell him about necessarily how weird my life was and how different it was. There was certain things that came up in conversations like I could walk. Um, and obviously, cause I ran away that night. Um, but he was oblivious to a lot of what was going on.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I mean, it was a, I had a crush on him. Right. Um, and I think he thought that I was cute, but it wasn't. To the point where it was a relationship.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I don't like saying that word. I don't like labeling someone anything. I don't like labels put on me, so this way I don't put labels on other people.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. So, um, once my mom brought me back home after running away and catching me with Dan, um, that's whenever she started to like call the people that like knew about it in a very vague way.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And so she claimed that Dan kidnapped me, that he took me to somewhere and that like, I was safe. I was found, um, Um, all the while I was chained to a bed at this time.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No. Um, we had a text exchange like the day that I got arrested. Um, and he was, he had texted me and he's like, everybody says you're missing. Are you okay? That was the text. That was the text. Okay. And I never had any communication since.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It wasn't house arrest. I think I found out that it was like probation.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
That was the first time. So that was with Dan. Yeah. Okay.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I did. So – It was the community, the housing community that was right on the side of the Habitat for Humanity community.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So it was literally up the street. Okay. And I knock on the first person's door that I see. And you're like, my, my. I'm like, my, I called him my boyfriend.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And I was like, my boyfriend is in the hospital. Can I get a ride? They didn't know who you were? They didn't know who I was. But I was, I was, I wore a long blonde wig. I had, I still remember what I was wearing. I had a long blonde wig. I had a oversized, like too big of a red bra. It was like two sizes too big. A black tank top, jeans that were too big, and a Harry Potter hoodie.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
They're like, okay. I mean, it was a nice man. It was probably like 2 o'clock in the morning. And he gave me the ride. He took you? Yes.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yeah, well, he was released within 20 minutes. Oh, okay. And so his cousin was there with him. Right. And so his cousin had drove us back to the friend's house that he was staying at.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
They were asleep when we got there. It wasn't until the morning where the man, the husband, comes in the room and asks me my name. And stupid as all I can be. I'm like, Gypsy, I'm Dan's girlfriend.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So when I say, you know, eating certain foods for the first time, it means that I've never tried it before. Okay. So certain foods my mother never let me eat or the majority of my nutrition came from my feeding tube.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
She did. She did. She's like, if you come back with me, I'll let you have a friendship with him. I'll let you see him. I'll let you talk to him. Just come back with me. And I believed her. And I came. I went back with her.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yes. So, I mean, that was definitely like a cracking point is that I never submitted. I guess you can say fully to the idea that this was going to be my life.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Exactly. I'm like, okay, well, maybe if I make certain differences. So I pack a bag in the middle of the night. I'm going to attempt to leave to just go anywhere. Because at that point, I hadn't texted with Dan. So I had no idea where he was. But I was just going to run. And just see where. And see where I was going to be homeless. I didn't care what I had to do. I was just going to go.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It failed as well. She found my backpack. And that's whenever there was a standoff. And that's whenever I shot her with the BB gun.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, so she had bought that because, um, she had told me it was to keep Dan away.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Uh, no, I knew it was a BB gun, which, you know, in certain, um, documentaries and, and transcripts and stuff like that. Um, some people are like, oh, well she, she didn't know it was a BB gun. No, I knew it was a BB gun. Okay.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I didn't. I stayed in the wheelchair the whole time.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I have no idea. When you are in a state of being so afraid –
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
logic goes out the window right um so i i may have been touched on this in the book where the night of the crime i was going around the house taking pictures off the wall of me because i thought well maybe the police won't know i live here yeah you said that in the book all logic just goes out the window so in that moment it was complete survival mode nothing made sense so
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Get out of the wheelchair. Yeah, that didn't cross my mind. It's like stay in the wheelchair, stay in the wheelchair. Right. I'm not programmed.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I was, you know, up until the prime itself.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So my mom was around the house. You know, we still lived together. She and I had a joint laptop that we would share together. And electronics was difficult for her to let me use. Right. Because of what happened in the past. Right. So electronics was just something that was definitely a hot button issue. Right.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So, I mean, there was a little bit of manipulation on my part and I am not, you know, too good to own up to that where I did. And you feel like the situation where my mom didn't know that I was on Facebook. But how?
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It was like Christian Mingle or something like that. And I'm like, my logic was, oh, a Christian guy would be like a good guy.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So the salivary glands isn't exactly part of why I had the feeding tube. Okay. So the salivary glands was taken out after the feeding tube was already placed in. Okay. But what your salivary glands do is produce saliva. So often you'll see me drink, lick my lips. That is often a sign that my mouth is really dry because without the two salivary glands in my neck, I produce less saliva.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. He had those with other ex-girlfriends. Who reached out to you. Who reached out to me to warn me that he was like that. And I'm like, oh, it's just, you know, it's a scorned ex-girlfriend. And I just kind of like brushed it off. Like, oh, whatever. Like, they're just talking smack.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I mean, of course, later on in the relationship. But I still was in the mindset like, well, this person loves me. This person is giving me attention. Like, this person loves me for me.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So exactly. I think I romanticize the idea of, you know, being my man's savior just as much as he was mine. Right. So it was like the beauty and the beast syndrome.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yeah. I mean, I mentioned it. I mean, therapy wasn't really something I was talking about or in at that time. Right. But I often expressed that I wish that we could have a normal relationship is what I would call it.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And all of that is factual evidence, and it's in Facebook messages. There is actual proof that these things were said. Whether or not those case files are released to the public, I'm not sure. But there is a paper trail.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I couldn't even... Not a lot of people know about that stuff because what is in a confidential case file, because he is still going through his appeals, so there is a portion of case files that are not out to the public. Okay. So that's why I think a lot of people are just like, okay, it's one-sided. And then...
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
In my opinion, whether it was conscious or not, I feel like maybe we manipulated each other.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
He often talked about fantasy violence. So I think it was more along the lines of fantasizing about what I would let him do to me in terms of how far would I be willing to go.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So a lot of times for certain pornographic photos or videos, if my mom went to Walmart, it was done while she was out of the house or while she was asleep. So I could get out of bed for a few minutes without her noticing, depending on how much she was under influence of Ambien.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yeah, we typically went to bed together. Everything we did together, shower time, bath time, sleep time, like everything was together. Wow.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. And I broke up with him after he said that. We had a huge argument after that. I broke up with him. I'm like, I'm done. I called him a bunch of names. I was like, I am never going to let you do that. So you just lost me. And then he basically talked me back by saying – I would never do that. That was my other personality, but I would never let him do that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So I got back together with him based on his promises.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I mean, of course. Yeah. I just, I couldn't imagine putting myself in a position to be that close to someone that has that level of instability.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
You have to very much be aware of who you're talking to because you just never know what their frame of mind is.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It's not for me. I'm not going to knock it for everybody. Right. For some people it works, but I'm not one of those people. Yeah.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
She knew that we were in a relationship. She didn't know the ins and outs of our conversations or our plans or whatever.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I wasn't told. So I had no idea what the side effects would have been.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Everyone has passed away. Yeah. She, ironically enough, she passed away in June around the same time that the anniversary of the crime happened. And it was overdose.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
You cannot. You could watch a bereavement video that is sent to the prison. And you can watch it with a chaplain, but you can't attend a funeral.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. So I don't display the correlations. My doctor said not cause, but correlation between the microdeletion and these illnesses.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. So that's the thing. So my father just got recently tested for it. Okay. To see if it came from him or from her. Okay. Like a carrier. Exactly.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No. Once they're out, it's taking organs out of you. You can't regrow them or put them back in.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
There's no way to test my mom. Even with like remains or something? Even with that, we need her blood. Okay. And so there's no way to know. But my doctor did tell me that it could be inherited or it could develop on its own. So it could be possible that neither parent had it and it just developed in me.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
My child, my daughter, has a 50% chance of inheriting it from me. Okay. Now, I got retested because I was tested in 2012. But because of everything that my mom said and did, I was not going to just go on... that test result from that long ago. So I got retested a few months ago and it still came back positive. Okay. So, um, I'm speaking with a geneticist now to kind of know, um,
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
where to go with that. And also what that means for my future children.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, so it could be that, you know, my daughter might get it. She might not, but if she does, then at that point we'd have to watch her growth. Okay. Because it's not, it's not something like down syndrome where, you know, the quality of life that is associated with this is a, A gamble. Right. You don't know what you're going to get.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No, it wasn't because of the bottle. You know, what's interesting is in the medical records, there's no clear answer for why they were extracted. I read that. Now, what we can speculate on is lack of good nutrition. We can speculate medication.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. So we can only really kind of speculate why by seeing other facts. So it's probably a strong possibility that certain medications wore the enamel down or had certain effects. I also grew up with acid reflux.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Okay. You know, the doctor gives you a specific routine on what you can and cannot put through a feeding tube or, you know, they don't recommend putting regular food through a feeding tube because it often gets stuck in the feeding tube itself.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So, I mean, there's probably a contributing factor of things.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Well, he was there when I took the test. Okay. So I had got a blood panel done. The results came back. My doctor called me, and she said, you are positive for the microdeletion test. That was a hard pill to swallow because I was really, really hoping that was something that my mom made up or that was just falsified. So this was the one thing that I actually do have.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And it was really heartbreaking because it's like we're both super hopeful. But that does kind of impact how many kids will we have because every child that we have, that's a 50% gamble.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if that's possible or not. But there is after she is born, then we can do genetic testing for her and then get answers from there.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Ken has been tested as well. Okay. And his came back. He has negative for everything. Like good on the genetics.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Before we got this news. I mean, we were thinking two more kids. Yeah. Yeah. But now knowing this information, we have to have a heavier talk about it.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It is unpredictable because I'm looking at like my heritage. So it's like I'm looking at my grandmother. She didn't display any symptoms. My mother didn't display any symptoms. I don't display any symptoms. So it's kind of like I hope the odds are in her favor is what I mean. So we're looking to the positive side of it until someone tells me that something is wrong. I'm just going to go on.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yes. So I did take a pre-birth paternity test. Okay. And came back in to the father, which I always knew that. But in the state of Louisiana, the laws are very sort of backwards. Yeah. They need to be changed. They're not female friendly. But if you conceive a child within the marriage... It does not matter if the father is not the husband, but the husband is presumed to be the father.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Legally, until paternity is established, which it already has, but it's according to the courts, it might need to be a court-issued paternity test. Okay. So we might need to take another one once you're born. Um, but after that it's the paternity affidavit and all that, that you were just talking about.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, we don't have to talk to each other. We haven't talked to each other in a while. Um, he reaches out every once in a while.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, he's still very much healing. Okay. Um, and so, um, it's to tell me he misses me or, um, I had my hair dyed back to Brown. He's like, you look so beautiful. Um, I, since our divorce is tomorrow, I did offer like a sit down to give him closure because the last time he seen me was I was walking out the door.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Well, it's not exactly right now. I've been working on it for about three years. Okay. The portion that was the final pieces was editing, and that came after I got released.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I think that the word correction often means to stop or to prevent. And prison definitely does that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I mean, obviously because of, you know, the situation, he's not, he's not thrilled, but he did say whatever would give me closure. He accepts. However, Ryan has rejected my offer. And so he doesn't want to have a sit down because it would be too emotional for And I get that. I totally get that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So a lot of phone calls between Melissa and Michelle and a lot of the calls are recorded. So we were able to get transcripts from that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And use those. So I would just tell my, you know, tell my stories, tell stuff about what happened and everything. And we use that as a foundation. So we were able to kind of build off of that. But building a framework was much more difficult because it's kind of like, okay, where do you want to start? There's such a big timeline. There's so much to talk about.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And documentaries, you only get, what, an hour, two hours at most to kind of sum everything up. You have to sum up a whole 24 years of time.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No, I knew Melissa since 2019. She had been speaking with my family since 2017. Okay. And so I developed a friendship with Melissa. And so I had a comfortability from there because she has been through a lot herself. Mm-hmm.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
effort? I think for some, I think it is very much based on what the inmate wants.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
um and so we had a lot to talk about and i i developed this connection with her that allowed me to trust her enough to be like okay i'm gonna start letting you in yeah on the deep stuff yeah um are you allowed to make money in prison so like could you have written this and published it from prison and then made money off of it i don't believe so oh that's interesting i don't believe so okay so you had to wait i think it
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It kind of depends on what you're writing about.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
If you're writing a book on poems, I'm sure you could probably do that. Okay. But if you're writing like your life story, I think that is – where it gets a little sticky.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So if the inmate wants to better him or herself, it will be productive. And if not, then they're just spending wasted time.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So Melissa is. She has podcasts. She has had multiple documentaries. She's written a couple of books. She's very successful. And I think that Her area is telling people stories that sometimes just go unheard. Right. And that might mean going and interviewing an inmate. Yeah. A prisoner.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
they did i tried my best i never really talked about it i didn't tell anyone i was trying to keep everything kind of hush hush yeah um i wasn't trying to be um famous or or anything i was just trying to do my time right so i stayed often very quiet to myself if i had an interview i'd go up to visitation do my interview then come back people would ask me and i'm like oh yeah i just i went up to visitation i wouldn't be like oh so i did this and this and yeah no did
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So it goes both ways. So a interviewer or a journalist has to contact the prison, do a request to interview me, and I have to accept that request.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
You know, I think it's the talk of the camp of the day if they find out. But most of the time it's just kind of like there's a few kind of famous inmates that was in my prison with me. Oh, interesting.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No, no. She was convicted of killing a woman that was one of her best friends out of a lover's quarrel. I feel like that sounds familiar. Renee Zellweger played her in a TV show called The Thing About Pam. That came out a few years ago.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
We were on the same wing and everything. Same housing unit.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So right now I'm kind of looking at vocational. So I'm looking at doing like cosmetology. So I'm kind of looking in that direction. Yeah. Because I want to do something with a skill. Yeah. Because it's kind of like I'm 33 years old. Most of my life has been so sheltered, you know. eight and a half years of it was in prison. So it's kind of like, what am I good at? Yeah. What can I do for a career?
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I don't even know what I have an interest in. I like hair and makeup, but you know, it's kind of like anything beyond that. I'm like, I don't even know.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I really hope people take away from the book. Like the point of the book is not to rehash my story. Okay. The point of the book is to give hope to the people that are currently going through my story. Right. People that have no idea what Munchausen by proxy is because I didn't. People that are in domestic violence relationships. Right. they could relate to the mindset that I was in. Absolutely.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
You know, I don't ever want people to read this and be like, oh, I am inspired to go commit a crime. That is not the point of this book. Right. So the point of this book is about survival. And whether you have been through domestic violence, sexual abuse, child abuse, I feel like we are all part of a family in a sense. It's a camaraderie. We could understand each other's thinking.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And that's something that I think is super important because it's like we all have our haters. We all have our naysayers. And to the ones that are like, well, you knew you could walk the whole time. Why didn't you just get up and run away? But they don't understand the mental prison that is abuse.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So I read a lot of like educational books. So it's like always trying to like advance my education. So like, uh, dictionaries, uh, psychology books, things like that. Um, I'm also like a sucker for like little factual books. Yeah.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I, you know, it's an endless journey of forgiveness. Just when I think that I've gotten to a point where I have given her entirely and I'm healed, I have a setback. So I have learned that it's going to be a journey. The way I feel is like I feel more humanity towards her. I feel like I don't want to bash her. I don't want to villainize her.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
In the beginning, I was so eager to just tell the truth, tell my story, you know, tell what happened. I didn't realize that she would be branded a villain after that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It's like I didn't brand her that myself. I never say I hated her or I wanted her dead or anything. I just wanted out of that lifestyle. So, you know, now almost 10 years later... I feel more pity and more, in a sense, understanding of everything that she went through to make her that way.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So I first met his mom back in 2019 when we were engaged the first time. And so I already had like a relationship with her and she's amazing. And then this year I got to connect with his dad, his stepmom, his sisters and brother.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And they've always been super supportive. Okay. But it's like every time that you meet someone new, it's kind of like I will – I'm not going to believe the headlines. I'm not going to believe any of that. I'm not going to go off of social media. I'm going to meet you and decide what I think about you in person.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And so I think they like me. I hope they like you.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I told him I'm not going to put words in his mouth if he wants to propose. That's his decision. It falls in his court at that point. He knows I love him. He knows where my heart is.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No, we are solid. We're doing really, really good in our relationship.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So, I mean, like right in the next street. Okay. But his family is kind of spread out. So his mom's in Texas. His dad's in Florida. He has sisters in Kansas City. Oh, wow. So some in Kansas.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I think that, you know, obviously we wanted and we meaning me and my co-authors wanted to convey a sense of urgency. Okay. Because a lot of people can't put themselves in the mindset of where I was at with the abuse and how desperate I felt. So having a statement like she was going to cut my throat, that statement stands out a lot. And so it transports the readers into my mind and emotion.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I mean, I'm sure there's about 200 of them, but I can't go in there. You're like, I'm not going through this.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So it can be found anywhere books are sold, online, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever. And I hope everybody enjoys it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And so that's why it was so important to kind of say that and then go into the details of what I meant by that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I do. Yeah. I just feel a little bit more humanity towards her now because –
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
after going through all like the research with family members i started to learn that she seemed very self-isolated um she was just not someone that had a social life herself um you know it was very much keep us in a tiny bubble do you think that that was intentional and she was aware of it or do you think it was more like she didn't really know that she was doing these things I think maybe both.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Okay. I have feelings about both. So, I mean, I think that it was intentional to not correspond with our family, not correspond with my father. And so I think that that part was intentional, but I don't think that maybe she was aware how that affected me in a negative way.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Like the, the rapper still learning about this. Yeah. Like someone else brought that up too.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I haven't noticed any so far, which I feel like I'm blessed for that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
You know, going under anesthesia, I – when I was a kid, I was a kid. I didn't ask questions. Right. So it's like all the side effects and everything, all the dangers was told to my mom, not to me.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I absolutely do think that it was an addiction to painkillers.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It was originally my first exposure was from pain medication from after having surgery.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
was um it was challenging at times because I had to kind of ask for information from family members because like I know I know my side of things but I don't know the full picture so I had to talk to family and to talk to you know friends um to get a lot of information that I didn't know about right so do you ever talk about your relationship and where they stand today with
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And so that was accidental. So it started off with, okay, they prescribed me this pain medicine. Oh, it makes me feel different. It makes me feel kind of numb. And so after that point, that's when I slowly started to take more and more and more and slowly abused it.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
It's hard whenever you have someone, you know, there's nobody there to tell you to stop or to pull you away from the edge, but instead encourage. So my mom was on pain medication herself as well as Xanax. And so she would give me what we call a cocktail. And so that would be a mixture of oxycodone and Xanax together.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yes. I mean, downers for sure. I've never tried uppers, but I have had downers. And it put me in a state of numbness. And I liked being there.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
I mean, I definitely feel a lot of regrets because that's, you know, not behavior that I would ever condone or am proud of. But it does put it in perspective as to like what mind frame I was in.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No, no, I would never. Like, I can't imagine like that.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, we were in a car accident in 2001 and it left her with, um, an injured leg.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Um, and her leg had never healed back fully. Right. So she still had like the pins and screws and plates and hardware to kind of keep her leg, um, in place. Um, And she suffered from daily pain. I won't say that she abused them.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
She didn't abuse them. I think she took them as prescribed.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Correct. And dosage makes a big difference. I was around 95, 90 pounds.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Yes. Laura, Christy, and my mom all knew each other.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
claude or laura do you talk about that at all um laura has passed away she passed away a few years ago um i don't speak with claude um we live like literally one town apart um but i haven't run into him since since i was actually little so do you know how he feels about the book Um, I honestly don't know how he feels about the book.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
So, I mean, it was a small town. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like everybody knows everybody. So, yeah, they kind of grew up together and went to school together and stuff like this. So they were always friends. And when my dad started dating my mom, Christy was still just a friend. Um, but my mom always felt like there was maybe something more and that jealousy kind of grew from there.
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
And there was always contention between the two. Did you know that before writing the book or did you, I knew that from, I did know that because often my mom, um, would say really mean things about Christie, um, to me growing up. So yeah, I knew that they did not, or at least I knew that my mom didn't like Christie. So,
Barely Famous
Surviving Control with Gypsy Rose Blanchard
No, no. She was very civil. She's like, I thought that your mom was a nice woman. It wasn't until after I started dating your dad that there was this back and forth tension.