My Sister, My Shadow, My Gypsy Rose
Is it just to murder your abuser?
Trigger warning: child abuse, childhood sexual abuse, incest, physical abuse, murder
I am connected to Gypsy Rose Blanchard. The evil we each endured at the hands of our mothers marks us forever, and if we’re not careful, it threatens to consume us. I’m worried for her.
On February 22, 2022, I published I Survived A Mother (I believe has) Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. I had just seen The Act on Hulu, the fictionalized account of Gypsy Rose Blanchard — the girl medically abused and psychologically tortured by her mother, Dee Dee. It helped me put my childhood into words. I had no idea there was a term for my mother’s illness. Still, there it was, in all of its Patricia Arquette glory, Munchausen’s by Proxy, now called Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another. According to the Mayo Clinic, it’s “when someone falsely claims that another person has physical or psychological signs or symptoms of illness or causes injury or disease in another person to deceive others.”
Suddenly, I no longer felt alone. I had a sister. While the specifics of our mothers’ abuses varied, Gypsy and I shared a common truth, a secret known only to us–mothers can be monsters. I’d struggled to understand it for years, laboring beneath the illusion we all share: mothers are good and…
