Britney Spears Says She’s “Lucky to Be Alive” After Years of Family Mistreatment

Britney Spears said she is “incredibly lucky to even be alive” after years of mistreatment by her family, addressing her trauma and lingering fear in a new Instagram post shared Wednesday night.

In the message, Spears reflected on isolation, forgiveness, and the lasting emotional damage she says resulted from her family’s actions during and after her controversial conservatorship. Accompanied by an image of a child holding a parent’s hand, the singer framed her comments around the human need for connection and the harm caused when that bond is deliberately severed.

“As people, all we really want is to feel connected to each other and never feel alone,” Spears wrote. She criticized what she described as a pattern of isolation imposed under the guise of help, saying that being cut off from loved ones left her feeling “unbelievably left out.” While she acknowledged the possibility of forgiveness, she made clear that forgetting was not an option. “We can forgive as people, but you don’t ever forget,” she wrote.

Spears went on to make one of her starkest statements yet regarding her past, saying, “I’m incredibly lucky to even be alive with how my family treated me once in my life, and now I’m scared of them.” The post suggests that, years after the end of her conservatorship in 2021, the psychological impact continues to shape her sense of safety and trust.

The singer also expressed frustration over what she views as her family’s refusal to accept responsibility for their role in the conservatorship, which controlled nearly every aspect of her personal and professional life for 13 years. “No matter what [God] says, they will never take responsibility for what they did,” Spears wrote, framing the lack of accountability as a source of ongoing pain.

Spears has frequently returned to social media in recent months to address unresolved family tensions. In December, she posted a photo of a Christmas tree alongside a sharply sarcastic message aimed at relatives she accused of causing “unbelievable trauma, the kind you can’t fix.” In November, she briefly deactivated her Instagram account following a series of posts responding to allegations made by her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, in his memoir.

Federline’s book, You Thought You Knew, released last fall, revisits the couple’s highly publicized relationship and divorce, and includes claims that Spears has publicly denied and criticized. Those allegations added another layer of tension to an already fraught public narrative surrounding the singer’s personal life.

Spears addressed many of these issues in her own memoir, The Woman in Me, published in 2024. The bestselling book detailed her experience under the conservatorship, which she described as deeply dehumanizing. Spears wrote that the court-ordered arrangement reduced her to “a sort of child-robot,” leaving her disconnected from her identity and autonomy.

In the memoir, Spears also recounted agreeing to the conservatorship in part to maintain access to her children, describing feelings of betrayal by family members and recalling how she learned about the #FreeBritney movement while confined to a rehab facility against her will.

Although Spears has not announced new music or professional projects tied to her latest comments, the post underscores how the legacy of the conservatorship continues to reverberate in her life. More than two years after its termination, Spears’ reflections suggest that healing remains an ongoing and complicated process, not only shaped by legal freedom, but by unresolved emotional wounds within her family.