Jon Gosselin Shows Support for Collin Gosselin’s New Tell-All Memoir
Collin Gosselin is speaking his truth, and his dad, Jon Gosselin, fully supports the move.
Collin Gosselin announces memoir about growing up on reality TV
On Wednesday, the former Jon and Kate Plus 8 cast member announced his new memoir, In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood.
“For a long time, I wasn’t sure I’d ever tell this story,” Collin wrote on Instagram. “Growing up, millions of people watched my life on television. People felt like they knew me. They knew my family. They watched me grow up. But there was so much they never saw.”
“For years, I kept those experiences to myself,” he continued. “Some because I was afraid. Some because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. And some because I just wasn’t ready.”
“Writing this book forced me to revisit some of the hardest moments of my life, but it also gave me something I’ve been searching for for a long time: my voice. This isn’t the story people think they know. It’s the story I’ve lived,” Collin concluded.
Jon hasn’t commented directly on Collin’s announcement. But he did reshare his son’s post about his upcoming book on his own on Instagram Story. In the past, Jon has been supportive of his son’s decision to share the story of his traumatic childhood.
‘Jon & Kate Plus Eight’ star has a ‘secret childhood’ marked by abuse
In recent years, Collin has been open about his experience growing up on his family’s reality TV show. After his parents, Kate and Jon Gosselin, divorced, Kate got custody of their eight kids. Collin has said that his mother was abusive and made him the scapegoat among his seven siblings. Eventually, she had Collin institutionalized for what she claimed were severe behavioral issues.
In his memoir, Collin says that what viewers saw on Jon & Kate Plus 8 was “curated joy.” But behind the scenes, things were very different. He has a “secret childhood lived in the gaps between the frames,” per the book’s synopsis. Now, he is “sharing the truth about being held down, the basement cell where he was hidden for years, and the cocktail of powerful antipsychotics forced on an 11-year-old boy. This is a reckoning with the dark side of fame: the systems, the entourage, and the institutions that allowed one boy to be erased. This is the never before told story of how he escaped and found his way back from the dark.”
Collin is estranged from his mother, and she has not commented on her son’s memoir. In 2023, after Collin went public with his abuse allegations, she said in a statement that her son had a “distorted perception of reality.”
“I believe Collin remains a very troubled young man who continues to need a lot of help,” she added, after defending her decision to have her child institutionalized. “His brothers and sisters and I have not been directly involved in his life due to his history of unpredictable behavior and violent tendencies towards us.”
In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood will be released October 13 from Grand Central Publishing.
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