A Woman of Courage and this is her story!

This is not Tunisha but one of our great female officers 

Hi Tunisha, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about yourself and your life as a single mother. We have so much to talk about let’s start at the top! 

 Tunisha, can you tell my readers a little about yourself?
Tunisha: I am 30 years of age; I have 3 children ages 14, 08, 02. I am originally from Connecticut. I have resided in Georgia since 2005. I have a career in law enforcement and I have been in law enforcement for almost 5 years now. I go to school full-time; I am working on my Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice. I will have my degree by the summer of 2011. I purchased my first house when I was 28. My hobbies include reading books, exercising, traveling, watching television, cooking, spending time with my kids and family, and I can’t forget sleeping.



You are a police officer is that correct?
Yes, I am a Police Officer in the state of Georgia


 How long have you been a police officer?
Tunisha: It will be 5 years in April that I will have been an officer

Why did you want to become a police officer?
Tunisha: There really was no specific reason, why I became a police officer. I don’t think I have some type of heroic story like some people. But, I was involved in a very toxic and abusive relationship and I decided to take a stand for myself and I took action by divorcing and I moved to Georgia to be closer to my immediate family. At the time, I think as a young mother, you need family support rather it’s to help with child care or just plain out mental support. Once I moved to Georgia, I realized that I didn’t have anything because I had given everything up upon divorcing. So, I just started applying at whatever places I thought that I was qualified for and law enforcement is just what the Lord had for me at the time.


 WOW, you are very busy lady with three children ages 14, 8 and 2. How do you balance your work life, being a mother and try to have a personal life?
Tunisha: Wow, that’s a very good question, but it’s funny that you ask that. I used to have a hard time balancing my life at times. However, I think the biggest thing that has become a key thing for me to begin to at least balance my life and general things with my kids, is learning and recognizing who I am as a WOMAN. Which I think is very important for any female rather you have kids or not. As I got older, I really thought I knew who I was but, it wasn’t until I really started getting older and began to feel a shift in my mind set, which was the beginning of me understanding who I was as a woman. I began to embrace who I was and I began accepting the things that I have been through and seeing the importance of certain things about my kids and their personalities. It may not have been the dream household, but it was the start to a functioning and structured household. After, I continued to bring structure to my household and push my kids to obtain some type of independency while at home. I began to assess my personal life. I think when I first moved to Georgia, I spent so much time trying to work and accrue back everything that I had lost after my divorce. I forgot all about my personal life, so I didn’t have one for a while. By the time, I started meeting people; it was like a foreign world to me. There were a few times, when I would go out on dates and guys would ask me, what I liked to do for fun and I would simply answer by saying “I don’t know because all I do is work and take care of my children”. They would look at me like I was strange but what they didn’t know, is that I really had no idea what I liked versus what I didn’t like because I had forgot about myself. So, once I continued to search myself, it also helped to put things in perspective even with men. It made a difference in terms of what I did or didn’t expect from them rather it was sexually or not. At the start of my career, I have run into several men that have a problem with the fact that I am a police officer. They would feel intimidated, there were times when I would spend more time on a date trying to re-assure someone that my work and personal life, were separate entities, to the point where I had to tell myself that if I have to re-assure a man that he doesn’t have to be intimidated by me in a relationship, than I didn’t need to be with them. After a few dates, I began to learn that I can’t down play myself for anyone, because I am who I learned shortly that I have to have someone on my level and that knows that regardless of what either one of us do, I am a lady first and a woman first.


 Were you ever married to your children’s father?
Tunisha: No, I was never married to any of my kid’s fathers, but I have been married before


Do you have a good relationship with your children's father?
Tunisha: I have a very good relationship with my oldest sons’ father.



What level of involvement does the father play in your children's life?
Tunisha: My kid’s fathers play little to no involvement in my kids’ lives.

 You put your life on the line while you’re working, how does this affect you with being a mother?
Tunisha: My job affects me a lot as a mother. Everyday that I get up to put my uniform on I place my self and my kids in jeopardy. I was involved in an incident last year, where I was shot at by a guy that I was chasing. Luckily, no bullets struck me, but I think that incident put my mind back in perspective to allow me to know that people that commit crimes, don’t care about what you have at home. They just don’t want to go to jail and they will do anything under any means necessary to make sure that it doesn’t happen.

Do you find dating as single a mother to be a hard thing to do?
Tunisha: Yes, I do find dating s a single mother to be very difficult. I think in today’s day and age. Females either don’t trust men or we trust men too much to soon, we kind of do not have a gray area. In my case I don’t trust them at all. I have a daughter, and I am terrified of anyone doing anything to her or my son’s. It’s also hard because most men don’t understand just how much being a single mom entails. I have grown through trial and error to stand for something because I am tired of falling for anything and I think with this, it has weaned a lot of people away from me, which is what I want. Men, have become spoiled and its kind of like you have to jump through hoops and do tricks in order to get a man to stick around, and I just don’t have the energy for that and it’s not me. I am very old school with my ways and most men have been pampered by other to the point where they feel like that is not needed.

Last year I posted an article called “Single moms raising girls to remain single”! I received many comments about that article and from what I could tell it made other single mothers start to really question their selves. For me I just wasn’t just thinking about my daughter but also for my son, but of course it would be more emphases for our daughters. What are your feelings about this?
Tunisha: I don’t really have much of a feeling on that one. But, I do think as a single mom, it’s also important for single moms to teach their daughters how they should be treated by a young man or even by a grown man. A single mother should also teach her daughter, how she should carry herself as a young lady/lady. When a single mother has a potential male that she has decided to get serious with its also important for their daughter’s to see how she should be treated. I remember growing up in a two parent household; most people around me would have thought that the way my mother carried herself that as her daughter, I knew what I needed to know as a young lady and that was so far from the truth. I learned about life and how to carry myself as a young lady into developing into a woman on my own. I was never taught how to deal with men, how to put on makeup, how to respect myself so that others would respect me, I learned these things through trial and error in my own life. I am not saying that my mother was not a good mother, I just think as a mother, she didn’t know how to teach me, because her mother never taught her, so it was really a cycle.


Of course being a single mother doesn’t mean we can’t still have hopes and dreams. We both know that yes, maybe it does make things we would like to do a little harder at times, but I wouldn’t change my life for nothing in this world! Can you relate?
Tunisha: I feel that if I could go back and change my life, I would. I think the biggest thing that I would’ve changed it would have been the people that IO chose to have kids by. I think when we decide to carry a child by a man, we need to really think about the traits that child could possibly carry from the men that we choose to lay down with. I will be the first to say that I did not make eh best decision in terms of who I chose to have kids by. I don’t regret my kids, because I love them, I just regret their fathers, because the areas where my kids fathers have fell short, it has caused me to have to pick up the slack. Sometimes it can be very, very, very hard to take on more responsibility than you can really handle. I know God won’t put more on you than you can bare, but I could use a little help at times because I get weary sometimes. I took on a lot of responsibility at a young age. I had my first child when I was in the tenth grade; I was a baby having a baby. I set myself up for things that I shouldn’t have been concerning myself with. I grew up to fast and I missed out on a lot of my childhood, because I had grown up dreams. There area certain thing that I just can not teach my sons’ and having positive active fathers around definitely helps hands down.

At this time are you currently working on any projects?
Tunisha: I am working on purchasing my second house and being able to train and complete at least 2-3 marathon races this year. So the projects that I am working on are more personal ones more so than anything.


Thank you so much Tunisha!
If you have any further questions for Tunisha please send them to me at www.theessenceofone.gmail.com