It’s a strange day when Gypsy Rose Blanchard misses her mom.
Early this summer, news of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s pregnancy caused mixed reactions among her supporters.
Some fear that she is making a mistake — or several mistakes. And others are just happy that she’s finally getting to make her own choices after losing her entire life to an abusive mother and then to an unjust legal system.
Ms. Rose Blanchard has other things on her mind. Including sorrow that, of all people, her dead mother won’t be around.
Why does Gypsy Rose Blanchard miss her mom?
On Wednesday, October 16, Ms. Rose Blanchard spoke to Nick Viall on his The Viall Viles podcast.
The 33-year-old is currently pregnant, expecting a daughter with boyfriend Ken Urker. One year ago, she was still behind bars, losing years of her life to the prison system over the death of Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard.
“I mean, for me, it is heartbreaking because I do, from time to time, think about what could have been,” Blanchard admitted. “And it makes me sad.”
“So, I kind of put that in the back of my mind,” Ms. Rose Blanchard stated. “And so, I mean, there has been questions on social media.”
She explained: “Everybody asked the question, you know, ‘What are you gonna tell your daughter whenever grandma isn’t around?’”
Blanchard provided the answer: “My response to them is that Kristy has become more of a mother to me than my own mother was,” she said of her stepmother, Kristy Blanchard. “Kristy is going to be grandma.”
Is this hypocritical of her, all things considered?
It’s actually extremely normal for survivors of abuse who have escaped — one way or another — to have thoughts of their abuser, to miss aspects about them, and to wonder what things could have been like. (Imagination is generally healthy — it’s only dangerous if it leads someone to reconnect with an abuser)
Part of this is because of the psychological damage that abusers do to their victims. Whether partner violence or a parent who poisons and disables their child due to an extreme case of Munchausen’s by proxy, abusers dominate their victim’s thoughts — often for years or decades. That can be hard to shake free.
Another part of this phenomenon is just that it’s very normal to wish that people in your life had been better people. For Ms. Rose Blanchard to wish that her mom had been a decent human being and could one day be a grandmother makes perfect sense.
Because our criminal justice system often makes a mockery of the term “justice,” Ms. Rose Blanchard had to spend eight years of her life behind bars.
The court sentenced her to 10 years in prison for conspiring with then-boyfriend Nicholas “Nick” Godejohn to murder her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard.
Blanchard is another high profile case of an abused child who saw only one escape after everyone else in her life failed her.
Now, she has a (mostly) fresh start
Unlike other cases, like the Menendez brothers who continue to serve their unjust prison sentences, Blanchard was able to leave prison in December of 2023.
Since then, she has appeared on reality television, experienced sudden social media stardom, and rethought a toxic marriage. And, of course, she and her boyfriend are now expecting.
We cannot expect Ms. Rose Blanchard to make the same choices that other people would. She has lived a very different life. However, for the first time in her life, she’s able to make her own choices. That is a good thing.
