After coming out with the news to her family, “one person after another—and there were many—came to my room trying to convince me that having a baby at this point in my life was a terrible idea,” she says. The topic of a termination was put forward.
Home “felt like a prison without a smartphone or connection to the outside world. My team believed everyone outside of the inner circle was a potential threat,” she explains. “They went so far as hiding my pregnancy from my sister, claiming, ‘It’s too risky to tell Britney about the baby.’ I needed her more than ever and she wasn’t able help me in my most vulnerable time.”
At the time, Britney’s “condition” was “spiraling into something more concerning,” she writes, in an extract from Things I Should Have Said. “They were concerned her instability at that time made her untrustworthy. I went along with what my team told me to do because I was a minor and didn’t want to create any more issues. Britney learned of the pregnancy when the article was released. To this day, the hurt of not being able to tell my sister myself lingers.”
Spears, now aged 30, announced the book in October, explaining at the time that she began writing it shortly after her Maddie, then-aged 13-year-old, had a near-fatal ATV accident in 2017.
“I owe it to myself, my younger self, and to my daughters to be an example that you should never edit yourself or your truth to please anyone else,” she explained in an Instagram post, announcing the book. “I know I still have ALOT of learning to do, but I feel like finishing this book gave me closure on this ’30 year long’ chapter of my life, and hopefully helps anyone else out there who forgot their worth, lost their voice, or is trying to break an unhealthy cycle in their life.”
Things I Should Have Said is set to be released on Jan. 18, 2022 via Worthy Publishing.
