It may not shock you to learn that Jennifer Lopez is a busy woman. Between her movie career, her fragrance, lifestyle and beauty brands, and the recent attempt with partner Alex Rodriguez to try and buy the Mets, she’s got a lot going on. But 2020 has slowed Lopez and her partner down quite a bit. The mom of two recently revealed it took quarantine to help her to realize what wasn’t working in her family life.
In fact, she says that 2020 has allowed her to slow down and spend more time with her two kids, who are growing like weeds. (Her daughter Emme is old enough that she joined her onstage at the Super Bowl last year.) When quarantine hit, it gave her the opportunity to slow down for once and see what was going on with herself, her kids and their relationship, revealing,
It was just a real eye-opener and a reassessment, to really take a look at what was working and what wasn’t working. You thought you were doing OK, but you’re rushing around and you’re working and they’re going to school and we’re all on our devices.
In a special profile over at the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Lopez got surprisingly candid about what was and wasn’t working in regards to her home-life balance. She says before quarantine she thought things were going smoothly: Her kids wanted for nothing and had a lot to look forward to. However, she wasn’t always spending the time at home she could have been. She noted:
We’re providing this awesome life for them, but at the same time, they need us. They need us in a different way. We have to slow down and we have to connect more. And, you know, I don’t want to miss things. And I realized, ‘God. I would have missed that if I wasn’t here today.’
We’re all juggling a bunch of balls on any given day and trying not to drop any. That was true before quarantine, during quarantine and will remain true after the events of 2020 are well behind us. But there’s that whole concept (and I’ve seen it attributed to both James Patterson and Nora Ephron) about how some balls are made of glass and some are made of rubber. The gist is: It’s OK to drop the ones that are made of rubber, but if you drop the ones made of glass, they’ll shatter. The ones made of glass are more fragile, more important, but it’s not always easy to spot which priorities are which.
When rubber and glass becomes muddled, sticking the landing becomes even harder. Jennifer Lopez, at least, seems to be looking at this year like a reset. She’s had time to figure out which balls are what and move forward with a more organized plan. That’s one way of taking this year in stride and moving forward and I’m glad she’s had the time to really sit down and figure out the best ways for her family unit to thrive. That’s a silver lining to 2020 if I’ve heard one.
That doesn’t mean Jennifer Lopez is totally ignoring her career, however. Next up, her new movie Marry Me is expected to be hitting theaters on May 14 of next year. To see what else is (hopefully) coming down the pipeline in 2021, take a look at our full schedule.
