Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Kohler.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a social worker. My mom was an active volunteer in the community, and she got our family engaged in working with and supporting the local homeless shelter. I spent many afternoons after school at the shelter, playing with young children while their parents attended interviews helping stock the kitchen, or work with my larger family to remodel some of the rooms there. Helping others seemed like the only way to live my life, and while I knew that I wanted to work with kids and be a helper, it was my experience at the homeless shelter that helped solidify my desire to become a social worker. Upon graduation from undergrad, I found the jobs of interest in my field would not actually provide a wage that I could live on independently. I ended up taking a career detour for a few years and worked for a large tech company. This allowed me to gain some financial freedom and further highlight my desire to do more and the need I had to help people to fill my soul. I applied for grad school, purchased a home, and moved back to Michigan, where I attended grad school and started my true career path as a social worker. Since earning my degree, I have lead research, written articles, provided home-based services, and now serve as a group practice owner where I provide outpatient therapy to pregnant and postpartum women as well as employee 4 social work clinicians providing outpatient therapy both in our office and online.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Life as a social worker has certainly not always been a smooth ride. In school, we are often encouraged to practice self-care, which feels so important, but I didn’t get the messaging in a way that truly stuck. As women in society working in a helping profession, I find that we are often expected to work for less, provide services at lower rates, and sometimes even free. This felt in constant conflict with the need to also find balance and maintain some financial independence as a young woman on my own. As I explored other job possibilities, I found myself loving home-based Infant Mental Health work. I was 7.5 months pregnant with my second daughter and was told that the contact my employer held was being taking back and all of those at our agency would be subject to reassignment or able to apply for our jobs at the larger organization. While this news came at a terrible time and felt like a gut punch to my life plan and financial stability, I ultimately took the leap and opened my own private practice just three months after my second child was born. I had a lot to learn, and the income fluctuated greatly, it has been such a wonderful experience, and I am so grateful for the push to do more for myself and my community.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Chestnut Services is a therapy practice with a focus on providing high-quality, holistic mental health treatment. As social workers, we all come to the work with a passion to serve others, create safety build trust, and ultimately help clients find their inner strengths and parts that allow them to heal through past trauma and life experiences. We know that all individuals have the capacity for healing, and together we can help them get to the next chapter in their life story. We are most proud of the high-quality services that we provide and are able to serve clients across the state of Michigan while being conveniently located in the heart of Leelanau County for local residents of our beautiful peninsula (the pinky).
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I most certainly would not have gotten to where I am today as a group practice owner and well-known perinatal mental health provider in my community without the help of mentors, colleagues, and the clients with whom I have had the pleasure of sitting. Julie Ribaudo was my mentor in grad school and is still a dear colleague that I look up to in her work. She challenged me to grow both personally and professionally to meet the needs of clients in my work. Upon moving back to Northern Michigan, Julie connected me with Joan Shirilla who is a wise and experienced clinician and amazing mentor. She continues to provide support to me in my work and I am forever grateful for our relationship. Maggie Sprattmoran, a local Leelanau County resident has been pivotal in my work within and across the county and growth in providing rural social work services. She is creative and intuitive and has helped me find both of those qualities within myself as I have grown into this work. My colleagues and dear friends Andrea Russell and Amanda Stowe are my frequent go-to’s and some of my biggest supporters and collaborators and for them, I am eternally grateful for our friendship. And, of course, my husband and parents, who have always whole-heartedly believed that I can do anything I set my mind to, have been a huge part of the delivery in what I have created. But most importantly, I would like to acknowledge the clients that I have had the privilege of sitting with holding space for, and listening to while they share some of their most vulnerable experiences and thoughts with me. It is because of them, the relationships we have build, the repairs we have made, and the challenges we have faced, that I have grown into who I am today as a mentor, therapist, business owner, and advocate.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.chestnutservices.org
