Jennifer Hudson Admits Her Precious Seed Saved Her Life After Tragedy

Jennifer Hudson Tells Glamour Magazine Son Saved Her Life After The Murder Of Mom, Brother & Nephew In 2008

Jennifer Hudson sat with Glamour for an interview to detail life after Dream Girls and gives props to her 6-year-old for keeping her alive.

The Grammy and Oscar winner begin to detail her role in an upcoming Spike Lee film, Chiraq, then broke down why she connected so much to the character. Hudson says losing her mother, brother and nephew back in 2008 makes her feel undeniably close to women who have lost children. She also says having a son of her own a year after the family tragedy save her life.

Via Glamour:

“There’s a scene where we’re all holding up boards with [photos of] our slain children on them. I turned around, and it’s a sea of real women [as extras] holding pictures of children they actually lost,” she says. “I’m a character holding a picture of a little girl, but in real life I have the same story.”

Hudson, of course, is talking about the 2008 murder of her mother, brother, and nephew, who were shot by her sister’s estranged husband—a subject she rarely discusses. “It’s frustrating as hell to me to have somebody who ain’t lost nothing try to talk to me about it,” she says. “I want to say, ‘Don’t even bother, because you know nothing.’ But you never know how much you can get through until you’re going through it.”

I went from being an aunt, having a mom, and being a child to not having a mom, becoming a mom, and raising my own child,” she says. “I tell David [now six] all the time, ‘You saved my life.’ ” After he was born, she and fiancé David Otunga moved from Florida back to Chicago—it’s the place she will always call home. “Here I get to take off Little Miss Celebrity and be normal, let my feet touch the ground,” she says. “I feel like it keeps me me.”

J-Hud knows how to make tragedy look like triumph.