Two years ago Toni Braxton wasn’t sure that she’d ever make another CD.

Although she had settled some legal issues with her former manager Barry Hankerson and had survived some financial setbacks, the Grammy-winning singer developed a life-threatening heart condition in 2008, near the end of her two-year run as the headliner at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

She was afraid—very afraid.

“I was low,” she says wistfully. “The lowest I had ever been.”

Braxton was initially told she’d have to have a heart transplant, but fortunately that diagnosis was premature. She was suffering from microvascular angina, a disease that impacts the smaller heart valves. After nearly two years of therapy, increased exercise and medication, Braxton is feeling much better and says she’s now capable of performing three or four 90-minute shows a week.

“It’s going really well,” she shares. “I’m very excited.”

That’s why her latest CD, Pulse, which debuted at No. 1 on the R&B charts when it was released recently, is aptly named. Braxton now has one and has learned to breathe again. Additionally, she’s currently taping a reality series for Bravo called Braxton Family Values with her four younger sisters and recently wrapped The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, an interactive family film by the marketing genius behind Teletubbies and Thomas the Tank Engine, out this fall.

Pulse, however, is a testament to her current condition as well as her survival skills. The Maryland native is currently writing the most difficult chapter in the book of her life. Although her career is back on track, her nine-year marriage to Keri Lewis, formerly of Mint Condition, has hit the skids and the two legally separated late last year. Braxton, 42, is aptly calling this chapter of her life “newly renovated.”

She might have been on Dancing With the Stars, but Braxton is probably better suited for a spot on Survivor.

“I don’t always keep it together,” Braxton shares when asked how she survives the tough times. “I have days that I really lose it, some days that I’m not well prepared, some days that I want to scream and have screamed. I think you just have to try and balance it, and when you feel like screaming, you have to do it. You just have to let it out. I don’t have a recipe for balancing it yet. I don’t think anyone does. I don’t think you can.”

Trying to sort it all out is even more daunting when you’re a celebrity and a mother of two young energetic sons—including one with special needs. In 2006 Braxton discovered that her youngest son, Diezel, was autistic. He is now doing well in therapy and attending a mainstream school, but there had to be some days when Braxton’s signature tune “Un-Break My Heart” felt more like an anthem than a stirring ballad.

“When you’re an entertainer and a mom—oh God, it’s really rough,” she states emphatically. “Women who have done this—well, those are the ones I want to take some lessons from. They made it just seem effortless. It’s a hard gig just trying to balance it all. It’s important for me to be a good mom, but I love doing what I do. I love being an entertainer, and there are moments when I just feel like I have to choose. And I do choose. I always choose my kids. There have been moments when I felt like I chose my career, and I hated how that made me feel.

“I’m being brutally honest saying the things they tell you not to say in Artist Interviews 101, but I have to be honest. I feel most rewarded when I’m a mother first.”

And like any good mother, Braxton is very protective of her cubs. Motherhood has made her very selfish when it comes to Denim and Diezel—so much so that Braxton says she can totally relate to those crazed mothers she used to watch in Lifetime movies—the ones who would kill anyone who messed with their kids.

“I get it,” she says. “I would do the same.”

And like any good celebrity mother, she tries to shield her kids from the media, which is why she hasn’t publicly divulged the reasons why her marriage stopped working. Fortunately, Braxton and Lewis have found ways to keep working together professionally and personally.

“It’s really challenging for me to talk about,” says Braxton. “It’s not that I have anything to hide. It’s only because I have kids and I think when you have kids and you’re married, your personal life can’t be public any more. My kids, my older one—he can read and he has friends who can read and will ask him questions about his parents. I feel it should always come from me before they read or hear about anything.”

Well, they probably got wind of that kiss she shared with Trey Songz at the Soul Train Awards last year after the Atlantic Records label mates performed “Yesterday” off of Braxton’s upcoming CD. That smooch went viral even though Braxton says they only did it because the show’s choreographer suggested it as a way to sort of lighten up the song.

Even though Braxton said the kiss lasted less than a second in real time, “The pictures stopped it in time.” Bowing to the age-old show biz adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, Braxton says she wasn’t bothered at all by the headlines suggesting her brief lip lock with a hot R&B singer was more than it really was.

“I was actually flattered a little bit because Trey’s 12!” she laughs.

The only headlines Braxton wants to make these days, however, have to do with Pulse. Her sixth studio album and first in five years promises to be a major part of her renovation as an artist. She’s always been confident in her abilities, but now she’s even more comfortable in her skin and not sweating the fact she can’t hit some of the notes she used to hit in her twenties. It was originally scheduled to be released in March but was pushed back when seven of its 10 tracks were leaked to the Internet.

“I came up with the title for two reasons,” says Braxton, who collaborated with other artists like Robin Thicke, Songz, Usher and Mo’Nique for her debut disc on Atlantic. “The first reason is personal, because I got ill and had the heart situation two years ago and I got scared. It scared me a lot, actually, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to work again. Then I got inspiration from this older lady in cardiac rehab and she helped me find my will to go on, because I was very depressed and down.”

Now that her health has improved, Braxton is considering going back to Vegas, where she also owns a home.

“I think I’m healthy enough to do it,” she says. “They’ve been asking me recently. I’m definitely considering it. I really loved doing Vegas. I loved being in one spot with my kids and family. That was comfortable for me.”

She’s apparently at ease with probing cameras, too. Her Bravo reality show is tentatively scheduled to hit the air this summer. It will focus on the lives of Braxton and her four younger sisters—Traci, Trina, Towanda and Tamar. Big sis will be calling the shots as executive producer.

“I promise you will be entertained,” she says.

Hopefully that will be the case and viewers will see a happier, healthier Braxton by the time the show airs. Maybe her marriage woes will be resolved and there will be fewer bumps in her seemingly perpetually bumpy road. Braxton, however, is thankful for her blessings. She’s motivated by her work with Autism Speaks. She’s grateful for her kids and thankful that she still has a career after all the drama.

And, even though she’s getting older, she’s definitely getting better. She’s got a banging body that she works “very hard” to maintain. She’s an even better performer and a more evolved woman—a completely different person than the one she was before her health crisis.

She can breathe again.

“I hate to have regrets, but there are things I wish I had done differently and also some people in my life I wish I had never met,” she said. “But, if I hadn’t met them I wouldn’t be where I’m at today. You have to take the good with the bad, but I hate that, though. There are some people that I wish I could beat them down!

“I love that I’m more determined now because I’ve had a few boo-boos that could have made me throw in the towel. There have been moments when I’ve felt like that, but being a mom and looking at my kids makes me push more, push harder.”