We were lucky to catch up with TyShonnia Cunningham recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, TyShonnia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers

I was scheduled to speak at a women’s event and when I arrived I was told at the entryway I was late and therefore they wouldn’t allow me to get in. I stepped away gracefully and by the time I reached my car the MC came out yelling my name and for me to come back. She apologized because they thought they were expecting a woman’s group and not an individual. She nervously laughed and apologized again and we proceeded in to attend the ceremony.

TyShonnia , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is TyShonnia Cunningham, I am an entrepreneur. I am a life coach and a chemical dependency and substance abuse counselor. I have dreamed of being a life coach since I was a 18 year old single mother. My mother was on drugs as I grew up and watching her struggle and the things that she went through my goal and desire was to be able to give back and help and assist women in her situation young mothers who needed help and guidance and support who didn’t get it from their family because of their bad choices and many mistakes that were made along their journey. I hold women support groups bi-monthly and I don’t mind doing life coaching with someone who really needs the help and support. It makes me feel whole inside and I love giving back. My biggest dream is to continue doing what I’m doing and to elevate to bigger and better things to widen and brighten my company as to where I’m able to do this to provide as much support help and resources to many women that have come a long way in that are in need of it.
I strive to provide the support and guidance that I so willing that I wish I had received from someone during my time as a young team mother. Things are so hard yet very different back then and by the grace of God and people who did pour into me I made it but today is a different time and I will do my part to be a help and assistance to pour into as many women and young mothers as I can.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I have heard many times in my life that not everybody is for you and sometimes it really didn’t make sense to me but as I started thriving and gathering things and getting things together for my business, supporting my business and reaching out to others who may be able or willing to assist and guide me along this journey
During this time I was asked by someone close to me why do you want to be a life coach? Why do you want to do that, that’s something everybody wants to do. It hurt me very badly in a way to where I felt for a while why am I doing this if somebody else is doing it and everyone else can do it why should I continue on this journey. I thought about it and I thought of my goals and I thought of the lives of the women that I had touched and reached out to and connected thus far so I share that to say no matter what someone may say to you or no matter what someone has said to me I suck it out I did think about it and pondering but in the end I still won because I continue on my journey and I will still continue on my journey, I will continue to fight and strive and get through the struggles and the determination to do what I want to do. I will continue to pour into as many women as possible, reach and assist, uplift, support, and love as many women and young adult women as possible to help them understand you are not your past you are not your mistakes you are not what you’ve been through. Nobody can do what you do, loke you!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson that I have learned during this journey is that you can’t trust everyone. I shared my dreams some of my dreams some of my workshop information with someone close to me at my church, I explained to her the workshop letting her know I’d love to help motivate and encourage them through this workshop. Well needless to say that not only eas I then turned away but they stopped responding to my emails wouldn’t return my calls, the however they did utilize a good portion of my workshop within some of the summer program that they do have and they do every year with the young adults females. So be careful with who and what you share because you never know what their intentions are.