Ever since the release of thirty-two-year-old, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the pseudo-celebrity has fallen down quite the spiral. The sudden renewed attention after years of not receiving any was enough for her to act out in many ways. People who have gone through traumatic situations often make decisions that may seem odd from an average person’s point of view. Her disturbing childhood has foreshadowed the chaotic four months she’s had after being set free from prison. 

     Blanchard went through a very distraught life. She is a Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy victim, which is a mental illness and form of child abuse. According to MedlinePlus, it’s when “The caretaker of a child, most often a mother, either makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick.” Blanchard’s mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, spent twenty-three years relentlessly poisoning, injuring, and lying to her daughter. She told Gypsy that she couldn’t walk and needed to use a wheelchair, had leukemia, and required a feeding tube. She even hid the truth about her age. But, she did not hide her from the public. She used every possible benefit she could from her daughter’s fake disabilities like Make-A-Wish trips and even a new home from Habitat for Humanity. 

     Once Blanchard had reached her teenage years, the urge to start being rebellious overtook her. She joined a Christian dating site, where she then met Nicholas Godejohn. The two hit it off and began to form a relationship. She had told him the truth about her troubling life, and the two conspired a plan to murder Blanchard’s mother. In June of 2015, Godejohn appeared at his girlfriend’s house and stabbed her mother. After the crime was committed, the couple escaped to his home in Wisconsin, where they were then found and charged with the murder. Blanchard was sentenced to ten years in prison, and Godejohn is serving life.

     On December 28 of the past year, after serving eighty-five percent of her jail time, Blanchard was released and the media went wild. She has done several interviews, made many social media accounts, and been captured by the paparazzi numerous times. As she became more willing to open up, she shared a Lifetime docuseries called, “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.” This gained her a lot of attention when speaking about her life, especially her love life. She married Ryan Scott Anderson in July of 2022 while she was still in prison, but he was not the first fiancé she had had. She was engaged to Ken Urker, whom she had met through a pen pal program in 2017, and he proposed in October of 2018. The relationship was broken off later the next year, around the time she met Anderson. The two seemed to be deeply in love based on her posts and messages on social media. She posted several selfies and photos of the two on Instagram and defended him after he endured hate comments on one of his posts. After almost two years together, Blanchard filed for divorce against her husband, and only three days after the breakup, she requested a temporary restraining order against Anderson. Recently she was spotted out with her ex-fiancé after getting matching tattoos. Every day new rumours and information are released about Blanchard. She even revealed to People that she’ll be undergoing rhinoplasty surgery.

     After a chaotic beginning of the year, Blanchard continues to publicly share her life and story regardless of how it’s received. The rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper to fall down. It is no shock that a severely traumatized woman is making bizarre decisions, and the media just keeps influencing it. The praise she keeps receiving is a large factor in why she continues to do the things she does. Just like many other abused children, for example, Britney Spears or Amanda Bynes, Blanchard acts out because it is the only way she’s ever known how to get attention. The way she behaves is just another outcome of her heartbreaking childhood.