Singer Kim Davis, whose ex-husband was killed in 2005 in front of her eyes by her boyfriend at the time, is now nominated for a Juno award. (Micheal Peake/QMI Agency)

It was her darkest hour.

Stabbed three times in the face as she tried stop her boyfriend from killing her estranged husband, Kim Davis could never have imagined the triumph of her life today — nominated for her first Juno Award and an inspiring role model for abused women.

No, five years ago, Kim Davis was in a far different place.

The background singer and mother of two young children was estranged from her husband Mohamed Hussein. The Scarborough high school sweethearts had married young and then grown apart, but they remained close friends.

Davis thought she’d found new love with local hip hop artist Clinton “Mikey G” Gordon. “The first six months were great and then it was just hell,” she recalls. “But it turned into a very violent domestically abusive relationship.”

Hussein was worried about her. In the early morning of Nov. 26, 2005, when the 24-year-old couldn’t reach Davis on the phone, he rushed over to her basement apartment to protect her.

“He really cared about me,” explains Davis, 28. “He had ‘Family First’ tattooed across his back.”

That devotion would cost him his life before her eyes.

In the angry altercation that followed on her driveway, Hussein was stabbed seven times by Gordon, including a fatal blow to his heart. When Davis tried to intervene, her nose was broken in four places by her boyfriend and her face slashed three times.

Born in Toronto to South African parents, she’s a beautiful, strong recording artist and it’s so hard to imagine her then, trapped in an abusive relationship and witness to her ex-husband’s violent murder.

“I was at the darkest, lowest point of my life,” she recalls.

Davis testified at Gordon’s second-degree murder trial, reliving the abuse she’d suffered at his hands, reliving the moment he killed her kids’ loving father. Gordon was convicted in 2008 of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison.

It was her children and her music that delivered her from that dark time. Her eyes alight when she talks about her daughter Jazzmyn, 8, and son Kareem, 6, their names tattooed across her left bicep.

While on her hands are the tattoos of musical notes, her other salvation.

She began writing a journal about her pain. The words became lyrics that became songs and a New York producer she’d met encouraged her to move from background singing to becoming a recording artist in her own right.

“It seemed so impossible. I had kids. It didn’t seem feasible as a career,” she says, shaking her head. “Slowly, here I am. I don’t even know how I got here.”

In the summer of 2006, the singer-songwriter recorded her R & B songs on rented equipment in her basement and released them as Live Love Learn last May, with her song My Angel dedicated to Hussein.

Her single Hush featuring reggae artist Sizzla got her an invitation to New York. On her way into the city from JFK airport, she couldn’t believe what suddenly came on the cabbie’s radio. It was her song on the world famous Hot 97.

How far she had come from that black hour on her Scarborough driveway. And it was only the beginning.

On March 3, the independent artist who would “love, love, love a recording contract” learned that her song Show Me the Way has been nominated for a Juno as best reggae recording of the year.

“It means that all of this hard work is actually being recognized,” says Davis. “It means the world to me.”

Now happily dating rapper Jonny Roxx, she speaks out against domestic violence and tells her harrowing story at high schools throughout the city as a warning to other young women.

“If this can happen to me,” she says, “it can happen to anyone.”

The inspiring singer insists she is a work in progress, just like the tattoo on her neck.

It once said “Mikey G” but the ugly memories of that violent time in her life have been inked over by a beautiful butterfly.

“It’s all about where you’re from and where you’re going,” Davis explains. “It could have ended for me, but I pulled myself together and focused on being the best mother and the best artist I can be.”

Read Mandel every Sunday, Thursday and Friday. michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca or 416-947-2231