Britney Spears praised the #FreeBritney movement as she recalled learning about the group of supporters for the first time while in rehab in 2018.
Spears, in an excerpt from her memoir “The Woman in Me” shared by The New York Times, explained that a nurse showed her clips of fans backing the movement while she stayed at a $60,000 per month rehab facility in Beverly Hills, California.
“That was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen in my life. I don’t think people knew how much the #FreeBritney movement meant to me, especially in the beginning,” wrote Spears, who gave a heartfelt shoutout to the movement’s “constant resilience” back in 2021.
Spears, whose memoir is set to drop Tuesday, was initially placed under conservatorship in 2008, where her father, Jamie Spears, and a lawyer were granted control over her finances and other aspects of her personal life.
She explained that she was prescribed lithium while at the rehab facility and was limited to an hour of television prior to a set bedtime at night.
“They kept me locked up against my will for months,” she wrote. “I couldn’t go outside. I couldn’t drive a car. I had to give blood weekly. I couldn’t take a bath in private. I couldn’t shut the door to my room.”
Spears added that a nurse at the rehab facility was “the only one who was real as hell” and showed her videos of the #FreeBritney supporters, according to an excerpt from the memoir shared by Time magazine.
“Everyone who spoke out for me helped me survive that hard year, and the work they did helped me win my freedom,” she wrote. “Toward the end, when the court hearings were going on, seeing people advocating for me meant a whole lot. But when it first happened, that got my heart, because I was not okay, not at all.”
By late 2021, a California judge dissolved the conservatorship, a decision that led to cheers and celebration from #FreeBritney supporters outside a courthouse in Los Angeles.
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She also explained how she felt after hearing about her conservatorship’s end.
“I felt relief sweep over me,” she wrote. “The man who had scared me as a child and ruled over me as an adult, who had done more than anyone to undermine my self-confidence, was no longer in control of my life.”