Gypsy Rose Blanchard shared a message of self-love and positivity on Tuesday (May 7), while reflecting on her transformation.
“There is a beauty in the struggle of overcoming your past. #selflove,” Blanchard captioned side-by-side photos on Instagram.
The first photo was taken in 2009, when Blanchard was 18, and shows her in a wheelchair, holding a stuffed giraffe, outside a hospital. The second image shows her now, aged 32, with her newly dyed blond hair and surgically reconstructed nose.
The post comes after a number of changes in Blanchard’s life since her release from prison in December. She served seven years of a 10-year sentence for her part in the murder of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. For years, Dee Dee convinced people her daughter was terminally ill with the mind of a 7-year-old and suffered from various ailments and illnesses, including muscular dystrophy and leukemia.
Following her release, Blanchard filed for divorce from her estranged husband, Ryan Scott Anderson, and started to rekindle her relationship with her ex-fiancé, Ken Urker. She also underwent cosmetic nose surgery.
Blanchard has also been thrust into the spotlight thanks to the Lifetime docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and the upcoming follow-up series Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up.
Last week, Blanchard, a Louisiana native, traveled to Los Angeles to attend the Lifetime’s Television Academy For Your Consideration event, where she promoted the upcoming sequel series.
“I’m very much an introvert,” Blanchard said at the event, per People. “And so coming out and this media storm hit me, and I was… At first, I really, really was touched by the positivity that people were showing me. And then as social media began and how it always does, it turned negative. It started to have a negative effect on my mental health.”
Blanchard briefly deleted her social media profiles before recently returning to Instagram and TikTok.
Speaking to People about her new look, she said, “I felt like, you know, going into prison, growing my hair out, that was me evolving into my own back then, but then coming out of prison was another evolving moment for me. So I think that right now I’m very comfortable in the way I look, and I’m proud and I have confidence now.”
Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up, Premieres, June 3, Lifetime
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