Gypsy Rose Blanchard Released from 10-Year Prison Sentence Early After Mother's Murder: 'I'm Ready' (Exclusive)

Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been released from prison after serving eight years for her role in her mother's murder.

Gyspy was released from Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri around 3:30 a.m. local time, the Missouri Department of Corrections confirmed to PEOPLE.

"I'm ready for freedom," Gypsy tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview, conducted just before her early release. "I'm ready to expand and I think that goes for every facet of my life."

Ozarks First and the Springfield News-Leader previously reported in September that the Missouri Department of Corrections said Gypsy, 32, was granted parole and was set to be released in December.

Gypsy was sentenced to 10 years in prison in July 2016 after pleading guilty to murder for her role in the fatal stabbing of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard.

By the time Gypsy was released, she served 85 percent of her sentence, as her time spent in the Greene County Jail before the Missouri Department of Corrections contributed to her overall sentence.

After Dee Dee Blanchard was found dead in June 2015, Gypsy, who was 23 at the time, and her boyfriend at the time, Nick Godejohn, were both charged with murder.

Now, "No one will ever hear me say I'm proud of what I did or I'm glad that she's dead," Gypsy tells PEOPLE. "I'm not proud of what I did. I regret it every single day."

Following their arrest, it was revealed that Dee Dee had fabricated all of her daughter’s medical issues and that Gypsy was a victim of Munchausen by proxy syndrome — a rare form of abuse in which a guardian exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy.

Dee Dee had convinced everyone in their lives that she was a terminally ill teenager with the mind of a 7-year-old who suffered from muscular dystrophy, leukemia and other ailments. "I would voice concerns, being like, 'I really don't feel like I need this,' and she would get really, really upset with me and start manipulating me," says Gypsy.

Gypsy had claimed that her mother wouldn’t allow her to speak during doctor visits and told her that if she ever tried to escape, police wouldn’t believe her story.

"I was very sheltered" explains Gypsy, who was never enrolled in school and was largely kept from having a relationship with her father Rod, stepmother Kristy and her half siblings. "I was limited in what I could watch and the exposure I had to other kids. What I knew of the outside world was only in Disney movies and those don't talk about warning signs of bad parents."

In November 2017, Gypsy told Dr. Phil McGraw that she didn’t “believe [she] deserve[d] as many years as [she] got.”

“I believe firmly that, no matter what, murder is not okay," she said at the time. "I do believe that I do deserve to spend some time in prison for that crime. But I also understand why it happened, and I don’t believe that I’m in the right place to get the help that I need.”

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Today, she's much more reflective. "She didn't deserve that," she says of her mother's killing. "She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn't educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior."

Gypsy's boyfriend, Godejohn, 32, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2019 following his trial conviction for first-degree murder, the Springfield News-Leader, KY3 and KOAM reported at the time.

Godejohn met Gypsy online and traveled from Wisconsin to see her in Missouri. According to Gypsy's testimony in court, she had “talked him into it.”

That's another regret she has. "If I had another chance to redo everything, I don't know if I would go back to when I was a child and tell my aunts and uncles that I'm not sick and mommy makes me sick," says Gypsy now. "Or, if I would travel back to just the point of that conversation with Nick and tell him, 'You know what, I'm going to go tell the police everything.' I kind of struggle with that."

Gypsy and Godejohn have since separated and Gypsy is now married to Ryan Anderson, a Louisiana teacher she wed behind bars last year. She tells PEOPLE, "We're in love."

She adds, "When I'm at home with my family, with my husband's arms around me and I'm surrounded by my loved ones, that is when I will be happy."

Now, as she prepares to tell her own story in Lifetime's gripping new docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, premiering Jan. 5, she's opening up about her shocking journey to help others.

"I want to make sure that people in abusive relationships do not resort to murder," she says. "It may seem like every avenue is closed off but there is always another way. Do anything, but don't take this course of action."

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a six-hour special offering unprecedented access to the most popular victim of Munchausen by Proxy, premieres Jan. 5 on Lifetime at 8 p.m. ET/PT.