Chap­ter 37 marks a shift in my jour­ney as a per­former, where I began to grap­ple with the restric­tions placed on me and the way I expressed myself on stage. For so long, I had been told that my hair, my move­ment, and my per­for­mance were key to my appeal. The ener­gy of a per­for­mance was sup­posed to be reflect­ed in how I moved, how I danced, and how freely I let my hair fly. But dur­ing my Las Vegas res­i­den­cy, I found myself wear­ing tight wigs, danc­ing in a way that kept my hair still, and doing every­thing I could to avoid the very thing that was expect­ed of me. I want­ed to rebel, even if only in my own mind, and by with­hold­ing the exu­ber­ance I was known for, I was pun­ish­ing not just the peo­ple con­trol­ling me, but also my fans. I real­ized now that I had been sleep­walk­ing through much of the past thir­teen years, and it was the trau­ma of being con­trolled that made me with­draw from the ener­gy I once brought to the stage.

I was trapped in a con­ser­va­tor­ship that stripped away the free­dom I once had as an artist. Freedom—true freedom—is what defines an artist. It’s not just the music or the per­for­mance but the abil­i­ty to cre­ate from a place of gen­uine pas­sion, to express one­self with­out con­straints. Under the con­ser­va­tor­ship, I wasn’t allowed to tru­ly be who I was or to explore my full poten­tial. But things began to change when I start­ed pro­mot­ing Glo­ry. With the release of the sin­gles, my pas­sion start­ed to reignite, and I found myself con­nect­ing more deeply with my per­for­mances. I began to wear high heels again, some­thing I hadn’t done in years, and I start­ed to feel like the star I had always been meant to be. It was dur­ing this time that I tru­ly felt the audi­ences lift­ing me up again, feed­ing off the ener­gy I was putting out. My per­for­mances became less about fol­low­ing orders and more about recon­nect­ing with the joy I had once felt.

As I gained more con­fi­dence, I began to rec­og­nize the pow­er of being in front of an audi­ence again. There’s a unique kind of con­nec­tion between a per­former and their audi­ence that is dif­fi­cult to describe to any­one who hasn’t expe­ri­enced it. The best way I can explain it is that it’s like electricity—this cur­rent that flows from you into the crowd and back again, cre­at­ing a loop of ener­gy and emo­tion. For a long time, I had been on autopi­lot, mov­ing through my per­for­mances with­out feel­ing the ener­gy of the crowd. But slow­ly, I start­ed to believe in my abil­i­ties again. I had kept this grow­ing belief a secret, even from myself, but now it was start­ing to feel real. As I found a sense of per­son­al free­dom again, I start­ed dream­ing of a future where I could return to being the artist I always knew I could be. The idea of start­ing a fam­i­ly with Hesam, and imag­in­ing a future that was free from my fam­i­ly’s con­trol, began to feel like a pos­si­bil­i­ty. I had spent so many years under the weight of the con­ser­va­tor­ship, but now it seemed like the bar­ri­ers could final­ly come down.

Look­ing back, I real­ize how over­whelm­ing the con­ser­va­tor­ship was. At the begin­ning, I was con­sumed with doc­tor appointments—doctors con­stant­ly vis­it­ing, and my life was dic­tat­ed by their sched­ules. Despite this con­stant med­ical over­sight, I was still denied the basic auton­o­my to make my own deci­sions, like being unable to get my IUD removed when I asked. The con­ser­va­tor­ship had its phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty mea­sures, with guards every­where, but it had a dev­as­tat­ing impact on my men­tal and emo­tion­al well-being. The lack of con­trol over my own life made me feel trapped in a bub­ble, safe in one sense, but iso­lat­ed in every oth­er way. The very struc­ture that was sup­posed to pro­tect me had stripped away my abil­i­ty to feel joy, cre­ativ­i­ty, and con­nec­tion with myself.