Britney Spears is opening up about her conservatorship like never before. The Woman in Me author, 41, is telling her side of the story in her memoir, which will reach shelves on October 24.
“I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child robot,” Britney wrote in one excerpt from the book, obtained by PEOPLE. “I had been so infantilized that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself. The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
The “Gimme More” hitmaker continued that it’s “hard to explain” how “quickly [she] could vacillate between being a little girl and being a teenager and being a woman because of the way they had robbed [her] of [her] freedom.”
“There was no way to behave like an adult, since they wouldn’t treat me like an adult, so I would regress and act like a little girl; but then my adult self would step back in — only my world didn’t allow me to be an adult,” Britney explained. “The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time. I felt like I was being deprived of those good secrets of life — those fundamental supposed sins of indulgence and adventure that make us human. They wanted to take away that specialness and keep everything as rote as possible.”
In a powerful conclusion to her explanation, Britney noted that the conservatorship “was death to my creativity as an artist.”
In 2008, Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, became her conservator, which granted him and a lawyer control over the pop singer’s finances and personal life. In 2021, Britney gave her testimony to a judge, and the conservatorship was terminated in November of that year. Since then, the “Womanizer” artist has spoken out about the ordeal via social media. Additionally, Britney got married to her former longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, in June 2022. However, the two recently announced they were divorcing after 14 months of marriage.
Nevertheless, Sam has shared nothing but positive comments about his estranged wife. He told TMZ on October 13 that he will be “the first one in line to buy [her memoir],” which he has “already” read.
Fans of the Grammy Award winner have awaited the release of her book. While delving deeper into her story, Britney noted in the memoir that she is “finally free” to tell everyone what happened “without consequences from the people in charge of my life.”
“It is finally time for me to raise my voice and speak out,” she added. “And my fans deserve to hear it directly from me. No more conspiracy, no more lies — just me owning my past, present and future.”
