Collin Gosselin Tells Jay Shetty He Hasn’t Seen Mom Kate Gosselin Since She Institutionalized Him Days Before His 12th Birthday. He Is Now 22 And His Memoir Drops Tomorrow, 10/13.
· Thought Catalog
Updated 53 minutes ago, October 12, 2026
“So They Get Me Up, Put Me in the Ambulance. I’m Asking My Mom Like, ‘Mommy, Where Am I Going? Where Am I Going? What’s Going on Right Now? Where Am I Going?’, and she’s just looking at me with a blank stare. Like a blank stare, almost a little bit of just frustration in her eyes, but a blank stare, and she doesn’t say anything. They put me in the back of the ambulance. The last thing I see before the ambulance doors close in the bay there in the hospital is her face. And that’s the last time I’ve seen my mom in person at 11 years old. I’m 22 now, so it’s the last time I’ve seen her in person.” —Collin Gosselin on On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Collin Gosselin says the last thing he saw before the ambulance doors closed was his mother’s face, a blank stare as he asked her where he was going and she said nothing.
He was 11, four days from his 12th birthday, when he says Kate Gosselin came home, threw him to the floor and bound his wrists and ankles with zip ties while two nannies stood by. He says she later clipped the ties off, saw the marks they left, and handed him sweatpants and a long-sleeve shirt to cover the bruises before paramedics arrived. She told them he was irrational and had run away.
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That day in roughly 2016 was the last time he saw his mother in person. He’s 22 now.
On Jay Shetty’s On Purpose, Collin says he spent close to 20 months inside a behavioral facility with limited contact from home. What finally got him out, he says, was a note he smuggled to his father Jon: “I’m counting on you to get me out of here. Daddy, I love you. Save me.” Jon later won custody of Collin and his sister Hannah.
His memoir, In the Shadow of Eight, reaches shelves on October 13, a day after the interview dropped. A decade on, he and Kate still haven’t been in the same room.
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