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Willa Ford was one of the hottest singers to hit the scene in the early 2000s alongside Y2K-era rivals , Christina Aguilera, and .
She was also friends with and posed for Playboy magazine in March 2006.
But she suddenly stepped away from music. Ford turned to interior designing and some acting, even playing Playboy pinup in a 2007 biopic.
Now the former pop icon, 45, has revealed the scary health crisis that brought her back to music and inspired her first album since her 2001 debut Willa Was Here, which spawned the one-hit wonder I Wanna Be Bad.
In an interview with People, Ford spoke about the psychogenic non-epileptic seizures – aka PNES – she started to have in December 2023.
They happen because of psychological stress, not sudden and abnormal electrical discharges in the brain, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
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Ford - who was - couldn't drive or work when hit by an attack, but she didn't give up.
Willa Ford has revealed the scary health crisis that brought her back to music and inspired her new album amanda - her first since her 2001 debut Willa Was Here (pictured on February 12)
The pop icon of the early 2000s revealed she started experiencing psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in December 2023 (pictured during her return to the stage on January 11)
'The seizures are what made me decide I wasn't done living,' Ford told the outlet.
The one-time Dancing with the Stars contestant discovered her seizures were triggered by a past trauma she had experienced in her early music career, so she turned to songwriting as a way to cope.
'That’s all I could do,' Ford explained.
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Ford discovered her seizures were triggered by a past trauma she had experienced in her early music career (pictured signing copies of her Willa Was Here album at an event in 2012)
Ford, Jenny McCarthy, Amber Smith and Adrianne Curry at the Lingerie Bowl
The interior designer was featured as Scott Disick's sidekick during the first and only season of E! series Flip It Like Disick in 2019
Ford has been married to former NFL player Ryan Nece since April 2015 and they have two children (pictured on February 5)
'It doesn't help me at all to get back [at] this person. It only helps me to be healed and move forward. It ends with me. It happened. I've dealt, I've forgiven, I've moved on,' Ford said, adding that her new album amanda offers glimmers of her past traumatic experience.
