Jennifer Hudson’s mother, brother, and nephew were brutally murdered back in 2008 and now she is opening up and speaking for the first time about the tragic events during a tearful interview on “VH1′s Behind the Music: Jennifer Hudson.”

Per MTV:

“It’s all a blur. It was surreal,” she said in the episode. “It was like I was outside of myself. For almost two weeks straight … [I was] inside one room with just family and friends coming in and out. I prayed when I’d get up in the morning and prayed before I laid down at night.”

Hudson barely addressed the murders until her first public appearance after the tragedy at the 2009 Grammys, where she thanked ‘my family in heaven, and those who are here today’ after earning Best R&B album and performed a moving rendition of “You Pulled Me Through.”

“I was definitely thinking of my family when I was singing that song,” she said. “I could hear my brother in my head, like, ‘Jennifer, you need to kill this, you need to get up and do it.’ I knew he would be disappointed if I didn’t do it justice.”

Every day, Hudson says, she gets a little stronger. Now her 10 month old son David Jr. with her fiance David Otunga is a driving force behind her emotional recovery. Little David, “reminds me of my nephew,” says Hudson, and he also helps her remember her mother.

“In so many ways I channel [my mother] because she was such a great mom.” She said her son “makes me feel like the most special person on earth. I want him to get the same love and the same upbringing my mother gave us.”

The bodies of her mother, Darnell Hudson Donerson, and older brother Jason Hudson were found inside Hudson’s childhood home on Chicago’s South Side in 2008. Her seven year old nephew Julian King was reported missing soon after and later found dead in an SUV on Chicago’s West Side. All three died from multiple gunshot wounds and charged with the murders was William Balfour, the estranged husband of Hudson’s sister Julia. Balfour was on parole at the time after serving almost seven years in jail for attempted murder, carjacking and the possession of a stolen vehicle. He’s now awaiting trial at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, Illinois.

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Images Via: WENN.com, VH1