Jennifer Lopez hasn't forgotten where she's come from. The mom of two opened up earlier today about motherhood and growing up in the Bronx. While being honored at Variety's Power of Women gala for her Lopez Family Foundation, she talked about being pregnant at the same time as her sister Lynda Lopez. "During that time we started talking every day, sometimes staying up until the wee hours of the night discussing how having children would change our lives and what we were going to do," Lopez said. "It was just like when we were kids, sharing a bedroom in the Bronx—sharing a bed in the Bronx with our other sister, all three of us!—talking about our hopes and dreams."
She continued, "We were both fortunate to be in the care of great doctors who kept us properly informed every step of the journey. The experience made us think a lot about how different it was for some people, which we knew from growing up in the Bronx."
From those talks and the the birth of Lopez and Marc Anthony's twins, Emme and Max, she created the Lopez Family Foundation.
"I've been a mother for six years and there isn't a single moment of the day that goes by that I don't worry and every mom knows this feeling and that's one of the reasons we started the Lopez Family Foundation," the American Idol judge said. "We wanted to provide every mother and child with the health care education that we all deserve." Fellow honoree Viola Davis also talked about growing up poor. "Although my childhood was filled with many happy memories, it was also spent in abject poverty. I was one of the 17 million kids in this country who didn't know where their next meal was coming from," said the How to Get Away With Murder star, who was celebrated for her work with Hunger Is. "And I did everything to get food. "I've stolen for food. I jumped in huge garbage bins with maggots for food," she continued. "I had befriended people in the neighborhood who I knew had mothers who cooked three meals a day for food and I sacrificed a childhood for food and grew up in immense shame."
Davis said she joined the Hunger Is campaign with the Entertainment Industry Foundation and the Safeway Foundation because of the program's goal to completely end hunger.
"[It] was the word 'eradicate,' get rid of—not by 30 percent, not by 20 percent, not by 50 percent, but to do away with because everyone should be a child and should grow up and have a chance at the American dream," she said. "I'm very honored to have this award…And really it is my honor to serve."
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