Jennifer Hudson sits down for a new interview with British newspaper The Guardian only weeks before her next film, the big-screen adaption of Cats, hits theaters on December 20. In it, the Oscar winner opened up about her mother, brother, and 7-year-old nephew being murdered by her sister Julia’s estranged husband, William Balfour, in 2008. For the tragic shootings, Balfour received three consecutive life sentences.

The Chicago singer tries her best to pay tribute to her late relatives. She recounted some of the things she’d learnt from her Queen, saying. “She used to tell us: ‘No matter what you put your mind to, you can do.’ She said: ‘I think you can act.’ Or, ‘Jenny, I think you can draw.’ I’m like, ‘Whatever, Momma,’” Jennifer recalled. “One of my other favorite things she’d say is, ‘Whatever makes you happy. As long as you’re happy, Momma’s happy.’ And that’s how it should be. No one knows what makes you happy, and who’s to say what you should and shouldn’t be? You know your value. Just because you value one thing, someone else may value another thing and you should respect that. And my mother – I can just see her saying all that.”

Jennifer admits that she still gets upset when she thinks about her deceased relatives, but she depends on her mother’s wisdom to get her through. “I think I attribute that first to God, next to [the fact that] when you experience trauma, it comes and goes. It’s always there. But it’s a matter of how you deal with it,” she said. “. It would be worse, to me, not to press forward. I’m hearing my brother’s voice say, ‘Jenny, knock it off!’ He would be angry at me for giving up. Or all the things that my mother instilled in us. She prepared us. She would say, ‘You know, I’m not always going to be here and I want you all to be able to make it.’ She used to say, without family, you have nothing, which is why it’s so important to take care of family. So if I’m doing that, I know I’m pleasing my mother.”

The singer and actress also said that the Julian D. King Gift Foundation, which they founded in her nephew’s name, helped her cope with her grief.

“Because he was strong and very smart. So to live in a way that honors them is what presses you forward. Not to mention, thank God, that I have a child to live for.”

Hudson is the mother of David Otunga Jr., a 10-year-old son she shares with WWE superstar David Otunga. In 2007, Hudson and Otunga divorced.

She maintains a strong relationship with her sister Julia, who resides in their hometown of Chicago in a home purchased by the singer and actress. Hudson characterized her brother as a “character” school bus driver.

Hudson also revealed in the same interview that her late father, a Greyhound bus driver, fathered 27 children. She hasn’t met all of her siblings, although she is acquainted with “quite a few.”

She said, “Eleven girls, 16 boys. I’m the youngest, or at least in the last two or three. And it was always my dream — because I love family — to have a giant table with all my siblings. Just imagine the giant table!”