encouraged by the progress being made in science and medicine. “We just have to know our status first of all and seek access to the proper treatment,” she said. “The thing that keeps African Americans from empowering ourselves is ignorance; the things that keep us from eradicating this disease and stopping people from spreading this disease are ignorance and fear.”
Besides eradicating HIV, Essence makes time to keep her body healthy as well. As we all know, exercise isn’t just good for the body, it’s also beneficial to your emotional and mental health. For Atkins, she tries to start each day with a good workout.
“The mornings are times when I like to just stretch, meditate and then go for my cardio,” she explains. “It’s great time for me to think about my day and plan a strategy for the task that is at hand. I run. Running isn’t really about the exercise for me, it’s more about the release — although it, of course, has the added benefit of being a calorie burner! When I run or jump rope — another thing I like to do in the morning — the consistency helps me get in a place where I can get my mind focused.”
Keeping her body and health is important since the star is now recently single after a divorce from seven years of marriage.
Because Atkins’ marriage seemed to be like a fairy tale with a happy ending, it was quite a shock when she shared the news.
“I am going to be entering the dating world after nearly a decade,” Atkins said. “I’m in the process of getting a divorce, sadly. It’s weird because literally, three weeks after filing, I got this job where I’m playing a newly divorced woman who’s co-parenting with her ex that she still loves, but they’ve somehow realized that they’re not meant to partner together anymore. It was kind of this weird, amazing moment the universe was like, here’s art imitating life and we’re going to talk about this and you’re going to explore it in a really humorous way.”
The actress married her ex-husband Jaime Mendez in September 2009 after meeting on Valentine’s Day in 2008 through Match.com (yes, the online dating site). The pair have a 4-year-old son together named Varro. As for dating? Atkins reveals she has some days when she thinks she’s ready to search for love again, then other days is far too intimidated by changes to traditional dating rules to jump back in. “I feel like ‘Oh yeah, I’m ready!’ And then I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’m not!’” she said. “I’ve turned 40 since I’ve dated. I don’t know, people don’t talk anymore, they text. They only call if it’s a dire emergency. I have no idea how to go about it.”
Atkins was a Hollywood newbie, and single, when she first became involved as an HIV/AIDS ambassador nearly a decade ago, making her among the first celebrities to heed the call to action to spread the word among African Americans about the importance of testing and treatment. And although juggling the demands of motherhood and her career, she has vowed to remain vigilant — which includes appearing in a series of PSAs that she shot later the same afternoon of the interview. “The longer we’re silent, the more people die. I don’t have that luxury,” she said. “We don’t have that luxury.”