Sometimes You Just Want Someone to Hear the Whole Story
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I have been watching Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s interview on the We Need To Talk podcast, titled “No One Has Really Listened To Me… Until Now”, and I keep thinking about how powerful it must feel to finally have someone sit across from you and actually listen. I remember seeing pieces of Gypsy’s story on the news years ago, but I did not pay much attention to it. I was in a completely different headspace then, interested in different things and dealing with my own life in ways I did not fully understand. Watching her speak about her journey now, especially about how her story was told while she was in prison, has affected me differently. She spoke about things being added to her story that never happened and how painful it was to have people form opinions about your life based on things that were not true. That part really stayed with me because I know what it feels like to have people say things about you that did not happen, particularly when you are not mentally strong enough to defend yourself. There is a particular kind of helplessness that comes with being misunderstood when you are already struggling to understand yourself.
Trauma has a way of distorting the way we see ourselves, other people, and even the choices we make. Listening to Gypsy talk about her relationships made me uncomfortable in a very personal way because I recognised something in her that I have recognised in myself. I have often been drawn to men who need fixing. The broken man. The complicated man. The man with wounds I somehow believe I can love enough to heal. I do not completely understand why I have repeated that pattern, but I have finally become aware of it, and I think awareness is where we begin to change the things we once thought were simply our personality. So when Gypsy spoke about her love for Nick Godejohn, I found myself trying to understand it rather than simply judging it. Considering everything she had experienced and the way her mother had affected her confidence, self-worth, and understanding of the world, I can understand why attachment to someone could have felt like love, safety, or even an escape. Trauma does not excuse every decision we make, but it can help explain why choices that look incomprehensible from the outside can make sense to someone living inside a completely different psychological reality.
It also took me back to a period in my own life when I first went on Facebook. I was not there because I was looking for strange men or because I wanted to get myself into situations that could have been dangerous. I went there because I was hurting and feeling misunderstood. I had experienced something deeply traumatic that I had not told anyone about because I had convinced myself that it was partly my fault. Looking back, I can see how vulnerable I was. When you are carrying something you are ashamed of, something you cannot explain, something you believe you somehow caused, you can start looking for understanding in places where you are not necessarily safe. You can become desperate for someone to see you, even if the person seeing you is not good for you. That is one of the things trauma has taught me. It does not always make you behave like the person you believe you are. Sometimes it makes you reach for whatever gives you temporary relief from the loneliness of carrying something you cannot put into words. I am living proof that trauma can change the way you move through the world, and healing has involved learning to look at those younger versions of myself with compassion instead of disgust.
I have complicated feelings about Gypsy’s imprisonment and the circumstances surrounding what happened to her mother. I personally struggle with the idea of looking at someone who had experienced such profound psychological manipulation and abuse and then reducing her entirely to the worst thing she did. I do not think that means there should be no accountability for what happened, but I also believe that justice becomes complicated when the person standing before you has spent years living inside circumstances that profoundly damaged her ability to understand herself, her choices, and her freedom. I find myself wondering who Gypsy might have become if she had grown up with the support she needed, if her father had been more present in her life, if her family had been able to recognise what was happening, and if her mother had received the psychological care she needed. These are impossible questions because we cannot go back and rewrite someone's childhood. But perhaps that is what makes her story so heartbreaking. Sometimes we are looking at the consequences of wounds that began long before the moment everyone else became interested in the story.
What surprised me most, though, was how emotional I became when Gypsy spoke about holding her baby when she was only two weeks old. She described looking at this tiny, precious person and being overwhelmed by the thought that anyone could ever want to hurt a baby. She spoke about seeing herself in her baby and wanting to give her daughter the love she never received. Something about that broke my heart. I immediately thought about the first time I held my own daughter in the hospital. I had dreamed about being a mother for so long, and when I finally held her, I understood that motherhood was also an opportunity to do better. Not because I believed I would be perfect, but because I knew there were things I wanted to give my child that I had learned to value through my own life. There is something almost sacred about looking into the eyes of a baby and realising that this little person has entered the world completely dependent on you for love, safety and tenderness. I have always loved children, and becoming a mother made that love feel different. When I look at a baby, I see something that reminds me of God's greatness. I see how small we begin and how much love we are capable of needing.
Perhaps that is why this interview affected me more than I expected. Beneath all the headlines, documentaries, prison sentences, relationships, and public opinions is a woman who is trying to understand herself after living through circumstances that most of us will never fully comprehend. I am not interested in pretending that every decision she made was right, nor do I think understanding someone's trauma requires us to erase the consequences of their actions. But I do believe there is value in allowing people to tell their own stories, particularly when so much of their identity has already been constructed by other people. Sometimes what a person needs is not another person telling them who they are. Sometimes they need someone to ask, What actually happened to you? That question feels very different. It does not immediately demand a defence. It creates space for complexity. And perhaps that is what I saw in this interview. A woman trying to put language around a life that other people have spent years explaining for her.
I am now curious to watch Mommy Dead and Dearest because I want to understand more about the story beyond the pieces I have encountered over the years. I know I will probably come away with even more complicated feelings, but perhaps that is the point. Life is rarely as simple as the headlines make it seem. People can be victims and still make harmful choices. People can make terrible decisions and still have parts of themselves that deserve compassion. People can be deeply damaged and still be responsible for what they do with their lives afterwards. And sometimes becoming a mother makes us look backwards at the child we once were and realise how badly we wanted someone to protect us too. Watching Gypsy talk about holding her baby made me think about the quiet promise so many mothers make when they first hold their children. I will give you what I can. I will learn what I did not know. I will try to do better. And perhaps that is one of the most beautiful things about motherhood. We cannot change what happened before our children arrived, but we can decide what kind of love they will know while they are here.
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