Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom

by Gypsy-Rose Blanchard

I had no frame of reference or context for what led the general viewing public to form their opinions. I was not consulted or compensated in any way for the series or other various shows, articles, or podcasts about my life. It’s been fairly quiet for a while now, as my release date approaches, so I have gotten a head start on thinking about what I’d like to say and the best way to say it.

This is why I think people should read this book. Dramatized versions of stories made for shows and TV are exaggerated and not always accurate to actual events. And in this case, they can be exploitative.

Gypsy: I just never felt I could get clean enough. Getting baptized was about renewal. I felt clean every time. Every time I felt like a bad person, I’d want to get baptized. Like little things made me feel bad. If I would tell her a lie, keep a secret from her, small things, if I talked back to her . . . I’d want to be baptized. Growing up with a mom who had schizophrenia, who saw shapes and shadows and heard voices, I felt like

This is what scrupulosity looks like. Religious OCD. It’s debilitating.

my mom had a judgment of me, when she would be listening to the voices in her head. She told me, “There are eight voices in my head and seven of them don’t like you.” I thought being as clean as possible would get her to accept me. But by the time we got to Springfield, we were back to being Catholic.

Continued from the other quote. More Scrupulosity.

Gypsy: For me, it’s the other way around. Trust has to be there before faith happens. If I don’t trust you, I’m not going to have faith in you or in the

I actually like this interpretation.

idea that you are safe to have in my life. Having faith in someone else means I know their intentions are pure, and they have that love and that care for me in the same balance as I have for them. For example, I have faith that Kristy is going to be the best mother to me that she can be and treat me no different than her own biological children, because she has already taken those actions and shown me through those actions that this is the case. I’m very much an action person. I used to take people at their word, and their word would wind up empty. There was no action to it. The action must happen for the trust to form, and then the faith develops. The more the cycle goes, the stronger the faith becomes.

Gypsy: Faith is having a feeling that you are safe. And that what is making you safe has the power to see you through anything. It’s kind of like you are in the palm of God’s hand. You can go through a hurricane, you can go through a tornado—any kind of storm—but God has you in the palm of his hand and he won’t let anything happen to you. You are safe. That is faith to me. I feel like I have been put through a lot of storms, and yet I am still not broken. I am not a broken person. I am worthy of being loved; I never had that self-worth before. I am not damaged; I am safe.

Honestly, the details of this are more nuanced than what I’d normally hear in church. Here she comes to the conclusion “I am worthy of love”, which is often the opposite of what you here in religious spaces.