Toni Braxton, Opens Up on Health Issues, having an abortion,plastic surgery & going Broke

Toni Braxton is survivor. She grew up poor, and her parents' religious cult forced her to speak in tongues. She hated her wide nose and tiny breasts. She’s had to declare bankruptcy twice. She’s divorced, has an autistic son, and has been diagnosed with Lupus, a debilitating chronic inflammatory disease.

But in spite of all the trials and tribulations,  Braxton is considered one of the best R&B singers around, with six Grammy awards under her belt..

Now Braxton has written a memoir describing her tumultuous life, Unbreak My Heart, published by It Books, an imprint of Harper Collins. ‘I’m looking ahead with that ultimate hope - that peering back at my past heartbreaks will ultimately lead to healing’, she writes in her memoir.

Toni admits her tiny boobs made her so unhappy she she had a boob job. 'Before I got the breast implants, my stylist would use duct tape beneath my tiny boobs to make it look like I had cleavage', she reveals. She adds that she regrets not getting lipo on her thighs

+

Toni’s life began in Severn, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, in a two-bedroom trailer with turquoise shutters. With some money in the bank, she got a nose job in 1992.
‘I have sometimes wondered whether God was punishing me for the abortion I had years ago by allowing my son to have autism. Or by giving me so many health issues’, she writes.

Toni Braxton's health kept deteriorating with the pressure to perform and stress over her deteriorating marriage. 

Toni needed weekly iron transfusions but she was still exhausted. She was rushed to the hospital with symptoms of a heart attack.

  

Meet the Braxtons: Front row from left: Evelyn (Mom), Tamar, Michael Sr. (Dad). Back row from left: Trina, Toni, Towanda, Traci, Michael Jr. (aka Mikey)

1

Oh baby: Toni fell hard for Keri Lewis, a keyboardist and producer. They married in 2001 and she had son Denim eight months later. She had gotten pregnant before but decided to have an abortion because she was taking Accutane for acne, a drug that has since been taken off the market for causing birth defects

At eight years old, Toni faked speaking in tongues and quickly learned that ‘the ties that bound us together became the ties that strangled us’, she writes. ‘Our family had fallen into religious extremism’.

Their spiritual pursuit alientated Toni from other children her age. Her clothes were homely, her mother fixed her hair in a ponytail right on top of her head, and her studies suffered with so many siblings at home. Her parents could not focus on enforcing the children to study

Her parents’ religious journey took them through two more repressive churches before they landed at an organization called Truth Foundation. Despite the repression, the family learned that the girls could sing – Trina, Traci, Tamar, Towanda and Toni -- and they performed at area churches.