Singer and actress Mary J. Blige is opening up in the latest Issue of People Magazine about facing herself in the mirror every morning and learning that “no one can love me like me.’

“Sometimes my eyes are all closed up,” she says. “But I strain to see myself. It’s not about the vanity of it, it’s about how we’re strengthened. no one can love me like me. Nobody can.”

She continued,

“I do it in my prayer time. There’s no makeup, no nominations for an award. It’s just me and God. And the beauty of being able to say, “I appreciate my life.” To look in the mirror, my eyes are half closed, and say something to myself that I never even believed.”

On newsstands now.