Book Review: My Time to Stand by Gypsy Rose Blanchard | A Story That Raises More Questions Than Answers

My Time to Stand: A Memoir by Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, Melissa Moore, Michele Matrisciani
Published by BenBella Books on December 10, 2024
Genres: Biography & Autobiography
Pages: 264
Format: Audiobook
Where to buy: Affiliate Link

A victim of her mother’s Munchausen by proxy and child abuse survivor, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard’s unique and controversial case made headlines across the world.

Now, she’s finally free to start living her life on her terms—and to tell her own story as only she can.

Forced to use a wheelchair in public and endure a lifetime of faux illness, fraud, and exploitation, Gypsy was subjected not only to her mother’s medical, physical, and emotional abuse, but deprived of childhood milestones. Prevented from attending school or socializing, Gypsy’s formative years were defined by pain and isolation.

After serving 8 years in prison for the role she played in her mother Dee Dee’s murder, Gypsy is embracing her fresh start—and reminding all of us that it’s never too late.

In this revelatory, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful memoir, Gypsy shares the painful realities she grew up with and the details of her life that only she knows, including:
The abusive cycle that began with Dee Dee’s abuse by her father
Gypsy’s fear that continued unnecessary surgery would leave her truly disabled
How she coped with guilt and accepted responsibility for her mother’s death
Memories of her final days in prison
What she learned upon reviewing her own medical records for the first time
How it felt to finally see her family again as her authentic self

Featuring Blanchard family photos and new facts about Gypsy’s life that she previously kept private, My Time to Stand offers an unprecedented look at the real Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, proudly embarking on her ongoing journey to recovery and self-discovery.

This isn’t a D.N.F.—it’s an N.D.F.: Narcissistic Dumpster Fire.
My Time to Stand: A Memoir by Gypsy Rose Blanchard is so full of contradictions, I’m half convinced the co-authors were actively working against her.

Here’s the problem: when it comes to Gypsy Rose Blanchard, facts are optional. They don’t matter to her, and they definitely don’t matter to her “gyp-babes.”

It’s not just contradictions on the page—though there are plenty of them. Outside the book, through records and the Freedom of Information Act, the story starts to fall apart entirely. What you’re reading isn’t just inconsistent—it’s fundamentally unreliable. And once you start noticing it, you can’t unsee it.

The memoir constantly shifts between Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s version of events and what is actually verifiable. One paragraph states something as fact, then the next subtly contradicts or reframes it. If you’re not already familiar with the case, you might not notice—the inconsistencies just slip by. That’s what makes it so frustrating: the book invites you to trust it, but sidesteps any real reckoning with the truth whenever it’s exposed.

Take the idea of control. Throughout My Time to Stand, Gypsy Rose Blanchard leans heavily into the narrative that she was completely controlled—isolated, unaware, and unable to act independently. And to be clear, that was part of her reality. That’s not up for debate.

But the memoir doesn’t just present that reality—it leans on it so heavily that it starts to erase everything that doesn’t fit. Step outside the book, look at documented messages, online activity, and the level of planning involved, and a different picture emerges. One where there’s more awareness, more communication, and more agency than the memoir is willing to acknowledge.

And that’s where things stop lining up. You can’t have total helplessness and calculated action coexist without addressing the contradiction. But instead of confronting that tension, the book just… ignores it.

One of the most striking contradictions isn’t just in the memoir—it’s in a private video she sent to Nicholas Godejohn. In the clip, Gypsy Rose Blanchard admits that she deliberately misled her mother into thinking she couldn’t walk. According to her, Dee Dee didn’t realize she could actually walk until 2011, years after the wheelchair narrative had taken hold. (YouTube)

It’s hard not to pause here. If she knew she could walk, how does that align with the memoir’s repeated portrayal of helplessness and total dependence? If anything, she’s the one who manipulated DeeDee.

This isn’t about assigning blame. It’s about pointing out that the story she tells on the page doesn’t completely match the story she tells elsewhere—and that gap is exactly the kind of contradiction that makes the memoir so difficult to untangle.

The contradictions continue even after the murder, during her time in prison. In post-release interviews, Gypsy Rose Blanchard has claimed she was denied one-on-one therapy, portraying herself as left to cope with trauma on her own. But according to a former cellmate and the official policies of the Missouri Department of Corrections, therapy is offered to all inmates, with mental health evaluations conducted on intake and ongoing therapy available to anyone who requests it. (doc.mo.gov, news.meaww.com)

That doesn’t mean she participated in therapy at all, but it does raise questions. If therapy was available, why describe it as categorically denied? Once again, the story she tells publicly—and in the memoir—doesn’t fully line up with documented policy.

Ultimately, if everything she had said about her mother were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true, I think I could have some empathy for her. Especially if she had carried herself with grace and humility once released. Instead, a brain-dead society threw her into internet stardom, and she revealed her true colors fairly quickly. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to like her. Hell, I wanted to root for her to pull her life together. But this is just one train wreck after another.

Posted By: msdravenrahl · In: Book Reviews · Tagged With:General Reads