Having spent decades performing for rapt audiences from the stage, Britney Spears has more recently been entertaining (and sometimes confusing) her millions-strong fandom via scantily clad dance videos and career musings on social media. Her latest lengthy post is right up there with some of her most unexpected riffs, as it touches upon past traumas that she may not have spoken publicly about before in her bombshell-dropping memoir, and she claims she feels like she experienced brain damage at one point during a particularly troublesome time.
The pop star has been in the middle of many headlines as of late in connection with You Thought You Knew, the soon-to-be-published memoir penned by her ex Kevin Federline. The former rapper makes certain claims in the book that have caused eyebrows to raise, such as saying Spears watched their sons sleep while holding a knife, which sparked a financially motivated response from Spears’ camp. (He also claims she cheated on him by kissing a female dancer during a European tour.)
While not directly responding to any of the book excerpts from Federline’s memoir, Britney Spears took to Instagram to talk out a few somewhat stream-of-consciousness comparisons between Angelina Jolie’s live-action Maleficent movie and her own life, in particular the idea of a vengeful man burning off and taking away the character’s wings. (She does say that it doesn’t have any relevance to her, but it’s hard to read into her tone there.) In her words:
I had a traumatic experience as some of you know at the end of my book where for 4 months I no longer had my private door and illegally was forced to not use my feet or body to go anywhere… for a person like me who understands the sacredness is god speed… it did more than hurt my body… trust me there’s ALOT I didn’t share in my book and still things at this very moment I’ve kept hidden because its incredibly painful and sad.
Spears made claims in the past that she was confined to chairs for upwards of eight hours a day during her four-month stay at a treatment center in the thick of her conservatorship, and has said that she lost the use of her lower extremities during that time, which appears to be what she’s referring to with the above message.
She followed that by explaining how much it damaged her mentally and physically to allegedly be kept from dancing for so many months on end, and seemed to imply that her sporadic dancing vids are ways for her to celebrate her freedom.
I do feel the logic and mindfulness in my body as ONE was 100 percent murdered and destroyed I couldn’t dance or move for 5 months… anyways I know my post and dancing seemed silly but it made me remember how to fly.
Stemming back to the Maleficent comparison, Britney Spears talked about having felt as if her wings had been destroyed by others, saying:
I do feel like my wings were taken away and brain damage happened to me a long time ago 100 percent… I have of course moved on from that troubling time in my life and I’m blessed to be alive.
As far as what kind of brain damage Spears would have suffered, it’s unknown, and it’s unlikely she’ll specifically address that in one of her next social posts, though not impossible. If her fans make enough noise to gain the attention of her publicist, manager, etc, then it’s plausible she could return to that subject in the future.
Spears also veers into a seemingly unrelated question about visiting the Vatican, possibly in relation to her past thoughts about getting married in the Catholic Church, and Vatican-related pictures. But I’ll cop to possibly just personally missing the point here:
still to this day I haven’t flown like I use to do you think if I go to the Vatican I might find something quite interesting there??????
If we all wake up in 2026 to Britney Spears soaring across the country via a pair of highly advanced bioengineered wings, I think we should just let her fly, ya know?
In the meantime, Kevin Federline’s memoir You Thought You Knew goes on sale on Tuesday, October 21, though he insists money isn’t the driving factor behind him writing it.