ELLE’s February cover girl on motherhood, heartbreak, and the future of her career. Lawdz is she looking gorgeous or what?

On competing with twenty-something pop idols as a 40-year-old mom:
“This is what I do—what, because I have kids and a husband now I’m not supposed to be me? I’m a more heightened me if anything. Hyper J.Lo. Everything I wanted before, I want twice as much now. And that doesn’t mean material things; it means to explore more, to think more. Being an artist doesn’t start because you’re 21, and it doesn’t end because you’re 51. You are who you are until the day you die.”

On betrayal:
“This is something I haven’t been through once in my life. This is something I’ve been through a few times in my life. Where you really have your eggs in one basket and that breach happens and you know you should go but you’re still in love and you just don’t know what to do. It hits you because it’s not like you’re a cheater, and a liar, and I hate you, and you’re no good, and I’m leaving. It’s not that. It’s like, I’m tormented. Even though you’ve done this and I know it, I still don’t know what to do. I know I should go, but I don’t want to. And that’s why it’s such a fucked-up thing.”

Read more interview here