Jennifer Lopez is proud to be able to navigate her children through difficult times.
Mother to 17-year-old twins, Max and Emme, whom she shares with ex-husband Marc Anthony, Lopez gets candid about being honest and sharing life changes with her teens.
“I had a really tough year. Unexpected things happened,” Lopez said in a new interview with El Pais. “And so, I read a lot of books. I did a lot of self-introspection. I did meditation. I prayed a lot. I wanted to improve my relationship with God. I wanted to kind of really solidify the family unit that is me and my two children, my twins.”
So when a series of lows happened, including a canceled tour and her divorce from Ben Affleck, she strengthened her relationship with her children by talking to them.
“I said, ‘I promise you, this is a difficult time, but you’re going to see that I’ll come out the other side stronger and better.’ I promised them that and I did it,” Lopez said. “And they feel it now. That gives me a great sense of peace in my life.”
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Raymond Hall/GC Images Jennifer Lopez and Emme Muñiz are seen on April 3, 2025 in New York City.
Lopez and Affleck famously dated and later called off their engagement in the early 2000s. They got a second chance at love when they rekindled their romance, marrying in Las Vegas in July 2022. However, Lopez filed for divorce in August 2024, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for their separation. The superstar would go on to cancel her summer concert tour shortly after.
Amid the hardships, Lopez said that she and her children really are stronger and better because of them.
“I’m happier that I’m a step further along than I was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago… I’m proud of myself for that and I’m proud that I was able to navigate my children through difficult times, that they’re stronger and better because of it,” she said.
Lopez also reflected on being a working mother and the guilt that sometimes comes with that.
“They probably didn’t get as much of me as they wanted, right? Because when you’re a working mom — and so many working moms out there know this — you always have that guilt. ‘I should have been around more. I shouldn’t have left at all. I should’ve just stayed home,’” she said. “But they got the experience that they got. And you always do your best as a mom.”
Now as they prepare to go to college next year, she said, “Looking back on it, it was an amazing experience. And I was glad that I was able to take them around the world.”
Also looking back at her own growth, she touched on the hard times and mistakes that she’s made in the past. She noted that she’s dug deep and looked into the patterns she doesn’t want to continue happening in her life.
What she’s learned is to be more self-aware and learn from the experiences.
“Everybody goes through hard times in their life. And it’s what you do in those moments that really does define you. Not the relationship, not the man,” she said. “What defines you is what you’re doing with the experiences that you’re faced with. I take those experiences — whether they’re good or bad — and I bind them.”
Ben Affleck is opening up about the end of his marriage to Jennifer Lopez. The Oscar winner talked about his divorce in an GQ interview published March 25. “There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue,” Affleck said, explaining there is nothing specific to blame for the end of their relationship.
She also puts them into her music.
Lopez, who released an album and documentary about her and Affleck’s love story in 2024, revealed that she’s been working on new music about love and “trying to figure it out.”
“My records are going to reflect that, too. I have a few songs that I’ve been working on and maybe I’ll debut them soon,” she shared. “And those will be very indicative of what I’m feeling now, which is kind of free.”
Lopez previously spoke about her divorce with Nikki Glaser for Interview Magazine, in which she said her “whole world exploded.”
“I’m like, ‘That’s not what I thought it was going to turn out like,’” she said in October 2024.
As for Affleck, the actor has continued to praise Lopez, saying in a March 2025 an interview with GQ that she is “somebody I have a lot of respect for.” Most recently, Lopez’s twins also attended the premiere of Affleck’s new movie, “The Accountant 2.”
“Jennifer Lopez is spectacular,” he told “Entertainment Tonight” on the red carpet. “Great to my kids, great ongoing relationship with them. I love her kids, they’re wonderful. She’s enormously important, tremendous person of a lot of integrity who I adore and I’m grateful to. I’m thrilled that the kids are here with me and that’s the kind of thing like, the relationships that you can have with children like that — that’s the joy of my life.”
This article originally appeared on TODAY.com. Read more from TODAY:
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