The Woman in Me

During the years of her conservatorship, Spears’s two vacations a year with her sons are very important to her. The year her album Glory comes out, her tour and promotion schedule prevent her from taking her vacations. The following year, her team initially tells her she can have the whole summer off. However, when her Vegas shows come to an end, she’s told that she has to go on tour again that summer; if she refuses, she will go to court. Spears reluctantly goes on tour, hoping for a vacation with her sons later in the year.

The tour is hellish and tightly controlled. If they want to leave their hotel room, Spears and her dancers have to give security two hours’ notice. Jamie still forbids Spears to change up her show or do anything differently. When she finally gets home from the tour, she starts to plan her holiday with her sons. Her father tells her she can only have three weeks off, after which she must start preparing for a new run of shows in Vegas.

In October of 2018, Spears attends an event at the Park MGM hotel in Las Vegas. Hundreds of fans gather to watch her perform. She appears on stage very briefly but immediately gets in a car and leaves without performing or speaking to the cameras. Unbeknownst to her fans, Spears was supposed to announce her new Vegas show at the event. She refused, not wanting to do the show, but the act of saying no—of asserting her own will—resulted in her family disappearing her from the event as quickly as possible.

Spears makes plans for the Christmas holidays, but her father tells her that her sons do not want to see her and that they’ll be spending the holiday with him. She starts rehearsing for the very Vegas show that she’d tried to say no to doing. Going over choreography one day, she refuses to do a move that looks challenging. Although she’s done it in the past, she feels her body is aging and no longer comfortable with the movement. She doesn’t think refusing to do the move is a problem, but her team seems uncomfortable, which worries her. A day later, her doctor tells her that they found energy supplements in her bag again and accuses her of “doing way worse things behind [their] back” (183). He also tells her that she is not doing well in rehearsals. Spears is furious. She is told that she is being sent to a treatment facility and that she has to take psychological tests before she goes. 

She takes the tests, which supposedly measure her cognitive abilities. Her father tells her that she failed the tests and has to go to a mental health facility because there is “something severely wrong with [her]” (184). Spears is devastated and scared. No one will tell her how long she will be admitted to the facility. Once she gets there, she’s prevented from leaving for several months.

The mental health facility forbids Spears to bathe in private or shut the door to her room. She’s required to go to sleep at 9 pm, receives several hours of mandatory therapy a day, and is only allowed to see her sons for brief visits on the weekends. The hospital takes her off Prozac and prescribes lithium. The lithium makes her feel lethargic and disoriented. Spears does not understand why she is being treated like a criminal. She is completely isolated and alone—only interacting with doctors and security guards. After two months, Spears is moved to another building in the facility where there are other patients. She is relieved to be around people again. She begins to believe that it is God who is getting her through this experience.

Spears begs her father to let her go home. He tells her that it is out of his hands and that it is up to the doctors to help her now. Jamie Lynn tells her to stop fighting their father because there is nothing she can do about it. She does not understand how her sister and father “developed such a good relationship” (192).

One of the nurses at the mental health facility shows Spears a video of a woman talking about Spears’s conservatorship, wearing a t-shirt that says “#FreeBritney.” Spears realizes fans are wondering if she is being held somewhere against her will, and feels relieved and grateful to have support.

Spears is finally released from the facility and allowed to go home. Her family arrives to visit her, and her father tells her how proud he is of her. Spears sees through him, knowing he’s eager for her to start making him money again. Spears is still taking lithium and feels like “a shell of [herself]” (195).

Jamie Lynn and her daughters also come to stay, and Spears is perturbed by how chipper she is. Later, Spears’s father gets into a fight with her 13-year-old son, Sean. Sean locks himself in the bathroom, and Jamie breaks the door down and shakes him. Federline files a police report, and Jamie is barred from seeing both of Spears’s sons. Spears knows that she has to end the conservatorship.

Spears starts using Instagram to find artists and musicians who inspire her creativity and help her rediscover how to express herself. She gets to spend two or three days a week with her sons, which also helps her rebuild her life.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hits, Spears becomes extremely isolated. She cannot see Asghari or her sons because they do not live together. She visits her family in Louisiana, where she learns that her parents threw away years of poetry and other personal writing and the dolls that she collected as a child. She decides that she never wants to see her parents again.

On June 22, 2021, after some discussion with her lawyer, Spears calls the police to “report [her] father for conservatorship abuse” (202). The period of time following this call, before the conservatorship ends, takes an emotional toll. Her sister publishes a book about her, several new documentaries about her life are released, and her father still legally has control over her life, career, and finances. She feels betrayed that so many of her friends talked about her in documentaries without talking to her first or asking how she felt about it.

On June 23, 2021, Spears addresses a Los Angeles probate about her conservatorship. She feels nervous, especially because she has asked for the hearing to be open to the public. She describes the challenges of life under the conservatorship. The judge thanks her for sharing her story, and Spears feels optimistic that people are at last starting to listen to her.

Spears finally learns that she is allowed to hire her own lawyer. Her new lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, files a motion to remove Spears’s father as her conservator. When that motion succeeds, he petitions to have the conservatorship ended entirely. Spears is in Tahiti when Rosengart calls her to tell her that she is a free woman. Relieved to finally have control over her own life again, she hopes that her story will “make an impact and make some changes in the corrupt system” (209). 

Since the dissolution of her conservatorship, Spears has begun rebuilding her life. She goes on vacation with her sons, listens to music, and records songs again, just for herself. She records a song with Elton John and is proud of its success. She’s happy to have done something on her own terms again but decides that she’s not ready to focus on her music career yet. She wants to take time for herself and slow down. She marries Asghari and feels relieved that they can build a life together outside the constraints of the conservatorship.  

It saddens Spears that her relationship with her sister, Jamie Lynn, has deteriorated so much. She is hurt by the book that Jamie Lynn released while she was fighting the conservatorship and accuses her sister of telling salacious and harmful stories about her. Spears’s anger begins manifesting as migraines that seriously limit her ability to live her life. She describes them as “just one part of the physical and emotional damage [she has] now that [she is] out of the conservatorship” (214).

Spears enjoys being an adult woman with freedom to live as she chooses. She is not sure if or when she will return to her music career. She and Asghari decide to have a baby, and she conceives but miscarries early in the pregnancy. Spears feels uncertain of how her family will respond to her memoir, but she believes that she needs to tell the truth of her own story in order to be free.