Toni Braxton doesn’t pretend that her struggle with lupus has been easy. In fact, the Grammy Award-winning singer told HuffPost Live that balancing her busy schedule while battling the disease isn’t always possible.

“Some days I can’t balance it all. I just have to lay in bed,” she said. “Pretty much when you have lupus you feel like you have the flu every day. But some days you get through it. But for me, if I’m not feeling well, I tend to tell my kids, ‘Oh mommy’s just going to relax in bed today. I kind of take it easy.”

She said it starts to get “challenging” when work comes into play and she has to fight through the illness with a smile.

“That’s the toughest part, when I have to perform. So often, when it’s like that, it’s a lot of, ‘You sing!’ to the audience, you know. They kind of help me out a little bit without realizing it,” she told host Nancy Redd.

Even with the illness, Braxton says she has never let it force her to cancel a show.

“I’ve never done that. Even if I can’t perform, I still figure it out,” she said. “Sometimes I look back [at] that evening [and] I go, ‘How did I get through that?'”

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Toni Braxton here.

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