Gypsy Rose Blanchard shares how she shot down her mom with BB gun: ‘She was making me play Russian roulette’

Gypsy Rose Blanchard shares her story in the upcoming memoir, My Time to Stand, detailing her abuse under her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the woman whose life story amassed millions through documentaries and dramas, is stepping forward to share her perspective in her memoir, My Time to Stand.

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard's memoir, 'My Time to Stand', co-written with Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani, details her abusive upbringing under mother Dee Dee Blanchard and her involvement in Dee Dee's murder. The book will be published on Dec. 10. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)(Getty Images via AFP)

Co-authored by Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani, the book dives deep into her life under the control of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who manipulated and abused her through Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The memoir, set to hit the shelves on Dec. 10 by BenBella Books, chronicles the events that culminated in Dee Dee’s 2015 murder—a crime Gypsy participated in to escape her mother's grip.

“It brings me a lot of pride and joy to have this exciting moment,” Gypsy told People Magazine and reflects on her fraught relationship with her mother. “You want to do your story [justice], you want to tell it with as much honesty and vulnerability as possible. So it was quite a rollercoaster ride.”

By the time Gypsy was 23, she had started resisting her mother's control in ways that grew more overt and desperate. She had tried to escape twice, both times unsuccessfully, and their relationship had devolved into escalating physical confrontations.

Gypsy Rose breaks silence on mother's twisted games of control and manipulation

“I’d shot her with a BB gun,” Gypsy writes. Despite her resistance, “She’d chained me to the bed. I was getting older and much harder to control. The older I got, the more physical and harsher her punishments became. She stopped letting me use my custom-made Jazzy HD power wheelchair because she couldn’t control it. I sensed she was becoming more erratic, more desperate..”

Dee Dee’s dominance extended to every aspect of Gypsy’s life, including unnecessary medical procedures meant to reinforce the façade that Gypsy was severely ill. This control reached a sinister peak when Dee Dee sought to subject Gypsy to an exploratory throat surgery, claiming it was necessary to address her “high-pitched” voice. Gypsy, however, saw it as another reckless and harmful act designed to exert dominance.

“Was this the plan for the rest of my life? To cut me up and open, piece by piece, just because she could?” Gypsy wrote in her memoir. “She was making me play Russian roulette with scalpels instead of bullets.”

Gypsy’s defiance and attempts to break free from her mother’s control became increasingly bold, and she fatally shot her, and Gypsy's memoir doesn’t shy away from these moments.