Gypsy Rose is the biggest story of our generation. It’s full of twists and turns, love and hatred. But, it really stems from just a girl. A girl who had a mom that loved her. Who wanted to have friends, who wanted to be liked for herself, not out of pity.
For those who don’t know, Gypsy Rose is a woman whose mother suffered from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome. Patients who have this illness project sickness onto a loved one in order to keep them close or to make sure they’re needed by them. This is what Clauddine Blanchard or Dee Dee suffered from.
Her daughter, Gypsy Rose was a healthy little girl born in Golden Meadows, LA. Since the day she was born, her mother started placing horrible diseases onto her. Some of these included: leukemia, asthma, epilepsy, muscle dystrophy, brain damage, sleep apnea, hearing, and vision impairment.
Gypsy began talking with boys online out of curiosity because of how isolated her mother kept her. She met Nicholas Godejohn in 2012 and the two began chatting online. They first met in-person at a screening of Cinderella. After the first meeting they hatched the plan to murder Dee Dee. Later, Gypsy admitted that it was her idea to commit the murder, but that Godejohn actually carried out the stabbing. Gypsy mailed him money to travel to Springfield, Illinois where she was living, from Wisconsin, where he was living at the time, and stole a knife from Walmart for him to use. Dee Dee’s body was found on June 14, 2015.
Gypsy ended up submitting a guilty plea to second-degree murder and served an eight year sentence. She was released from prison on December 28, 2023. While she was in prison, a docu-series was made about her story named “The Act.” This gained her popularity beyond what she could possibly imagine. She accepted interviews with different news broadcasters in prison and now has a TV show coming out named “The Prison Confessions Of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.”
Throughout the course of Dee Dee and Gypsy’s relationship as mother and daughter, there were a lot of complex emotions. Near the end, Gypsy resented her mother for not letting her live her life, trapping Gypsy by her side. On the other hand, she loved her mother. She knew that if she rebelled, her mother would go crazy and she didn’t want that. It was a delicate balance between love and resentment.
Although she grew up in unimaginable circumstances throughout her childhood, she has now come out of prison with a well articulated and developed perspective. She wants to tell her story in her own words which she is doing via her very active social media accounts. She is also bringing awareness to diseases like Munchousen by Proxy syndrome and how much of a toll it can take on an individual’s life.
