Britney Spears has detailed how she wants to move forward now that she’s been freed from her conservatorship.
In a two-minute clip posted Tuesday on Twitter, the pop star said she was enjoying small freedoms since the restrictive legal arrangement was dissolved on Friday. It had controlled her life for more than 13 years.
She said she wanted her story to make a difference for people like her who are suffering under a “corrupt system” and thanked followers of the Free Britney movement for fighting for her freedom when “my voice was muted and threatened for so long.”
“I’m just grateful honestly for each day, and being able to have the keys to my car and being able to be independent, and feel like a woman, and owning an ATM card, seeing cash for the first time, being able to buy candles,” the singer, who turns 40 on Dec. 2, said.
“I’m not here to be a victim. … I’m here to be an advocate for people with real disabilities and real illnesses,” she added. “I’m a very strong woman. So I can only imagine what the system has done to those people. … Hopefully my story will make an impact and make some changes in the corrupt system.”
Spears’ case has brought international attention to conservatorships, often applied by family members to adults with mental illness, intellectual disability or cognitive impairments such as dementia.
An estimated 1.3 million adults in the U.S. are controlled by guardians or conservatorships in a system that advocates have described as ripe for abuse and financial exploitation.
Spears hinted in her caption that she may be up for one of Oprah Winfrey’s classic, intimate interviews.
Representatives of the talk show host did not immediately return requests for comment.
As for her supporters in the Free Britney movement, “you guys rock,” Spears said, thanking them for bringing public awareness to her situation.
“I honestly think you guys saved my life,” she said.
Spears was placed under the conservatorship following a series of mental health crises in the mid-2000s, which included two involuntary hospitalizations. She was silent for years about the arrangement, which was largely controlled by her father, Jamie Spears.
However, following vocal protest from the #FreeBritney social media movement, a New York Times documentary and a highly publicized series of court proceedings this year, Spears revealed she was deeply unhappy with her treatment, detailed the disturbing lack of control she had over her own body, life and finances, and sought to be released from it.