We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Erkkila a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Emily , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We believe kindness is contagious and so we’d love for you to share with us and our audience about the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

In July of 2007 the Angora Fire, thundered though the forest, into my neighborhood and burned our home along with 253 others. It wasn’t the biggest or the most destructive in the wildfires on the West, but it was the one which destroyed my home and gave me the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. It wasn’t any one person that did something for me, it was hundreds of people’s kindness that I experienced in the weeks following my home’s destruction. My husband and I were celebrating our 1st anniversary by backpacking into Desolation Wilderness. On our hike out we scrambled over boulders and swam in clear granite pools of the Sierra Nevada. When we arrived at the car we also saw a huge plume of smoke erupt from the general direction of our neighborhood. We immediately started joking about our house burning down, but as we drove closer we could see that it wasn’t a joke at all. The fire was in our neighborhood. We were able to drive to our house before the police closed the road. As we turned down our street there was a crown fire in the trees around many of the homes. The plan was to get my car and go, I was in a total state of fight or flight. My only thoughts were, 1. My house is going to burn! 2. My house will never burn! 3. Get me out of here so I don’t die! I grabbed my file of important papers like birth certificates and passports and we drove away. After a sleepless night staying in the home of a dear friend, we would wait in a long line with our neighbors to find out that our home had been assessed as “completely destroyed”. In that moment it was very clear it was just “stuff” that had been lost. I was grateful to be safe and alive. It was also really hard not to be completely overwhelmed about not having a home, or a bed, or underwear. I thought of the cedar chest my grandparents had given me for my college graduation, my grandmother’s pearls, my childhood patchwork quilt. I thought about our mortgage. How do you do pay for a house that no longer exists? With all this weighing on my mind and heart, I’m pretty sure it was the day my hair began to turn the shade of silver it is today. This is also where the kindness starts pouring in, every person I knew was offering us a place to stay in their homes. People were offering the clothes off their backs and the money from their checkbooks. It was like the sky opened up and kindness and generosity came pouring down. It was before texting and what I remember specifically was our phones ringing off the hook with people asking if they could help in anyway. My brother driving all the way from Arizona with his car full of house plants for me to restart my plant family. I remember my boss letting me take the whole week off and letting me use sick leave instead of vacation time. My friend opening the door to her downstairs apartment and saying, “It’s yours for as long as you want.” Another dear friend meeting me in the parking lot to give me stacks of beautiful clothing she had collected from the community she thought would suit me. A check arriving in the mail from a family member for $777 with the note “lucky 7’s” on it. This was also when my coworker told me that the company I worked for offered free counseling for employees. She gave me the number and this was the first time I saw a therapist, unlocking much emotional work and much goodness. Volunteers set up what was like a free thrift store where fire survivors could go and collect donated items. Many businesses in town offered free merchandise from their vendors and I still go out of my way to shop at those stores remembering their generosity. The Red Cross gave us shovels to dig through the burned remains of our home along with generous gift cards. I will be forever grateful for all who opened their hearts to me in the aftermath of the my house burning. After about 8 years we built a new home on the very spot where our original house stood. This new house stands as a reminder of all the kindness that was shown to us during this life changing time.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am blessed to wear many hats in my life and business. I am a partner, mother, parent coach, teacher, learner, nature lover, friend, daughter, sister, auntie, and seeker of goodness in the world. I became a parent coach after working as a preschool teacher at a parent cooperative preschool where parent education was offered. I saw the positive impacts of parent education on family life. I felt the spark of inspiration and joy when parents shared their concerns with me and we worked together on solutions. I wanted to take my love of and experience in working with children and families and let it grow into something more. After the height of the pandemic, I decided to pursue a certification in parent coaching. I found a excellent program through the Parent Coaching Institute (PCI). In this program I completed 100 hours of practice coaching and a year of academic work related to families, parenting styles, and positive psychology. I completed the program in 2023 and launched my company, Wildroots Parent Coaching shortly thereafter. The type of coaching I offer is for parents of children birth through adolescence. This flavor of coaching is special because I focus on the strengths of the family unit and the individuals within, essentially we look for where the life is in the family. Together we collaborate to find solutions to their parenting concerns. This can include, digital literacy, power struggles, food issues, friendships, sibling issues, academic struggles. Each coaching session is designed to help the parent find their path to being the parent they want to be. I love working with parents to be sure they are taking time to fill up their souls so they have the energy to parent well. Someone recently asked me, “who needs parent coaching?” My answer is, “everyone who is a parent, it’s the biggest job we have and we all need to take time to process and grow.” In coaching I am most proud of the work I do with my clients who come to me bringing their vulnerability and their hope. When I see a client have an “ah-ha” moment in our coaching this is when I feel the most proud of my work or when the parent shares with me how a technique we came up with together helped them be more of the parent they want to be.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

The book that has had a major impact on my philosophy for time management with my business is, “4,000 Weeks, a Mortal’s Guide to Time Management”. In this book Oliver Burkeman uses humor to cut right down to the numbers, if we live to be in our mid 80’s our life span is only 4,000 weeks. He argues as humans we are limited by this, there are simply things that we will never do. While this sounds at first like it’s defeating, it’s actually liberating. It’s liberating because it helps me narrow in on what is important and spend my time doing those important things. Some of the suggestions include, confronting your limitations, limiting your bucket list (or to do list) to only 3 things, watching for the pitfalls of convenience, paying yourself first, and becoming a better procrastinator. I would recommend this book for the work it does to flip the notion of productivity and time management on its head. I work from home at my business and live a full life outside of my business. This often causes me challenges for how to spend my time. The idea specifically about paying myself first with my time has been so helpful in narrowing my priorities and being less hard on myself when my to do list remains only half way checked off each day.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I feel really vulnerable sharing the story of the lesson I chose to unlearn. It wasn’t until I was nearing the end of my training to be a parent coach when I realized, a lesson that I had somehow learned in my life was, “I am not good enough”. I had started to doubt if I had chosen the right career to pursue, this was not a new experience for me. As I looked back over the jobs I have had in my lifetime (including being a parent, in my opinion the most important job of all) I began to see a very strong pattern of not liking the work because I didn’t believe in myself. When I finished my student teaching in college all set to be an excellent elementary school teacher my fear told me I was too young to be good at it. In an office job I told myself, “I’m not good with numbers”. As a preschool teacher, I told myself, “I’m not giving these kids what they need.” In my parenting, I thought, “how come I can’t help my kids get along or why can’t I be a more organized parent”. Over and over again the real message was, “I’m not good enough at ……. fill in the blank.” Wow, this was hard to realize it was frustrating. My deep rooted thought and belief that I wasn’t good enough had manifested in me finding and leaving one job after another and doubting myself as a parent in unwarranted ways. I resolved to unlearn this. It’s a work in progress and I still have those old thoughts. I have decided I’m not allowing those thoughts to hijack me and my potential anymore. I’m just done with that. When I catch myself in habituated thoughts like these, I take a deep breath and say, “I’m choosing to see myself as brilliant and capable.” The truth is that I am both of those things. I loved this quote my Marianne Williamson when I first read it when I was in my 20’s. It’s only now in my 40’s where I feel as though I am more able to live this way.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You’re playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson, “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles”

Contact Info:

• Website: wildrootsparentcoaching.com
• Instagram: @emilyerkkila.com