Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been very publicly processing her journey through finding a new normal following her release from prison in December 2023 after serving a seven-year sentence. In the time since, the 32-year-old has taken social media by storm, only to later delete her accounts. She’s boasted about living her best married life, then separated from her husband. Now, Blanchard will package her story into a more coherent format with My Time to Stand, her first memoir.
“I am in love with the title of my book not only because it addresses the question I get most, but because in our pain and struggle we can find what it is that we want to stand for,” Blanchard shared in a statement to People. “That inside our stories, if we dare to sit in the stillness of them, our purpose can be revealed. And we all have a purpose. That’s what I hope people will take away from my book.”
The book — written with Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani — will arrive via BenBella Books in January 2025, just over a year after her release from prison.
Blanchard served nearly eight years in prison for her role in the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. She suffered physical and emotional abuse from her mother for most of her life through what experts believed to be Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder in which caretakers induce or lie about sickness in others.
According to legal testimony, Dee Dee raised Blanchard to believe she was physically disabled and mentally ill. In 2015, Blanchard conspired with her then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to murder Dee Dee and later escaped to Wisconsin together.
“As a survivor desperate to figure out ways to inspire others to find hope, it’s necessary to face inward—to question, to be introspective,” Blanchard explained. “In processing and retelling my memories, so much more truth has been revealed to me, including the victimization of the other people in my family and community. I hope to engage readers by describing my journey, instead of explaining it. In that way, others might see themselves in my story, too, and relate.”
She added: “Only because I did the work, did my time to stand finally come. Now, I can stand with other victims as they take steps toward doing whatever work is necessary to stand for themselves. My Time to Stand is about reclaiming my footing so others can be inspired to walk a life of purpose and meaning and build a future sturdy enough so others can stand for something, too.”