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Jamie Lynn Spears opens up like never before.
The “Zoe 101” alum sat down with ABC News’ Juju Chang for her first TV interview about her new memoir, “Things I Should Have Said,” out Jan. 18, and discussed her life and family — including her relationship with her pop sister star Britney Spears.
Now 30, Jamie Lynn cited her daughters Maddie, 13, and Ivy, 3, as inspiration to share her story.
“It was really important for me to honor my voice first,” she told Good Morning America exclusively. “I have to or how else can I expect my daughters to stand up for themselves?”
Her relationship with her sister Britney
Jamie Lynn said she “adored” Britney when they were growing up, adding that her sister “feels like another mother”.
Over the years, Jamie Lynn wrote in her book, she saw Britney’s behavior change, using the words “volatile,” “paranoid” and “spiraling” in the pages to describe her sister. As for Britney’s mental state now, she said she “can’t really speak for anyone else’s state of mind.”
“I don’t think it’s fair,” she said. “But I am allowed to say how I felt in them [moments], because it matters. What matters is that I was in pain.”
Britney’s conservatism began in 2008 and, despite being heavily scrutinized over the years, has stuck. Things began to change last June, however, when the “…Baby One More Time” singer asked a judge to end what the singer called her “abusive” conservatorship and criticized their father, Jamie Spears. The conservatorship was terminated in November.
“I was happy. I was,” Jamie Lynn said when asked how she was feeling after the Conservative disbandment. “I was 17 years old when it was put on. I was about to have a baby so I didn’t understand what was going on. Nor was I focused on it. I was focused on the fact that I was 17 years old, about to have a baby. I understood as little of it then as I do now.”
Jamie Lynn said she didn’t want to be involved in managing her sister’s estate as part of the conservatorship, explaining, “It wasn’t like me controlling funds or anything like that.” However, she said she supports Britney in other ways.
“I’ve always been my sister’s biggest supporter,” she said. “So when she needed help, I created ways to do it. I did everything I could to make sure she had the contacts she needed to move forward and end this guardianship and just put an end to this for our family. If it’s going to cause so much controversy, why continue?”
“Everyone has a voice and it needs to be heard,” she continued, adding that she even spoke to her sister’s previous legal team and it “didn’t end well” for her. Jamie Lynn said she’s taken the steps to help, but it’s up to Britney to “walk through the door.”
Last July, Britney took to social media to say she was “hurt…deeply” by Jamie Lynn’s tribute performance at the 2017 Radio Disney Awards, in which Jamie Lynn performed a medley of remixed versions of Sister’s hit songs you are
“Honestly, it was a bit confusing for me and I actually talked to her about it. I was doing a tribute to honor my sister and all the amazing things she did,” Jamie Lynn said of the incident. “I’ve made it clear that I don’t think she’s personally upset with me about it. Honestly, I don’t know why it bothers her.’
With that seemingly behind them, fans are still speculating about a rift between the sisters after Britney unfollowed her younger sister on Instagram. But that doesn’t bother Jamie Lynn, who said she still has a lot of love for Britney despite their complicated relationship.
“That love is still there. 100 percent. I love my sister,” she said. “I’ve only loved and supported her and done what was right by her and she knows that, so I don’t know why we’re in this position right now.”
Britney and Jamie Spears did not respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
Pregnancy and family pressure
When Jamie Lynn was 16 years old, she revealed to her family that she was pregnant. The public announcement came in December 2007, several months before Britney’s conservatorship was put in place. Jamie Lynn said the intense scrutiny she faces rivals the media circus that follows her famous sister’s every move.
“I look back and think, ‘Wow, how is that acceptable?'” Jamie Lynn said. “Why are you here but to embarrass me and take advantage of a young girl who is already going through something so traumatic and so deep and personal? We say we’re doing better, but now we just go into the Instagram comments and do it.”
Before sharing her pregnancy with the public, Jamie Lynn said at the time that she felt pressured by family members and the management team to make the “problem” go away, she wrote in her memoir.
“I think the easiest thing then would be like, ‘Let’s just get this over with and go back to being the perfect little sister, because that’s your role,'” she said.
To this day, Jamie Lynn says that the conversation she had then with the people around her still makes her emotional. But today she is glad she was able to speak.
“I just like it, thank God I like it, you know, thank God I stood up for myself and said exactly what I wanted,” she said.
Jamie Lynn said she was eventually sent to a remote cabin in the Northeast to avoid the news leaking out, and had no phone or contact with the outside world for weeks.
“It felt like you were almost suffocating,” she said. “I felt like what am I going to do, I was a kid and maybe that’s in my best interest and maybe that’s what I have to do because of course I don’t want to be, you know, hounded by the paparazzi or the tabloids or I let them control my narrative. But I felt like I was really alienating myself.”
Maddie was born in June 2008 and left Hollywood to raise her. Jamie Lynn’s second daughter, Ivy, was born in April 2018.
Her path to healing, self-discovery
In 2017, Jamie Lynn’s world changed forever when Maddie suffered a near-fatal accident.
“The biggest thought that I think stays with me, that seems to haunt me, is that when I was trying to save her — when I thought I had lost her — I was so afraid that her last thought was, ‘Why didn’t mom save me?””
“I just hope she knows that, as I was doing everything in my power if this was the last thing she lived,” she recalled thinking.
Jamie Lynn said she expected the worst case scenario and asked a priest to come pray for Maddie in the intensive care unit.
As the priest began anointing her head with oil and reading the last rites, Jamie Lynn remembered her daughter sitting up and kicking.
Maddie recovered from her injuries, and Jamie Lynn said the experience brought her closer to God and forced her to reexamine her entire life — including her own struggles with anxiety, depression and OCD, which she had suppressed for years.
“It was really like to the point where the panic attacks were all-consuming, where I count, I touch the doorknob seven times,” she said. “It was consuming my life to the point where it physically took over me and I went and finally talked to a therapist.”
Jamie Lynn said through therapy and medication that helped her find stability in her life.
“I think when your worst fear happens, you’re a lot less afraid of everything else,” she added. “I think it made me reevaluate everything and who I was as a person and where I needed to be better.”
“Things I Should Have Said” by Jamie Lynn Spears is out on January 18th.
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