I’M KASSANA - CREATIVE LIFE COACH, ARTIST & DESIGNER.
In pictures of me, especially when I was younger than 5, I see my courage & curiosity.
There’s my ½ smile, and there are my hands that seem always poised to make something. Embedded in my memory are gestures of creativity - my father’s hands in the air as he told a funny story; my grandmother’s fingers carefully feeling the ripeness of a peach before cutting into it; the sound of my mother’s scissors across the black formica table, cutting a line that was straight and true; my uncle’s house that smelled of fresh bread, ripe tomatoes and oil paint where every wall was a celebration of humble utility; where sculptures and masks stood on flat woven rugs over rough wood floors; where texture and color were celebrated and brought out to play and where rules were allowed to be broken or simply disregarded.
While this was my landscape as a child, I also took in the other unspoken messages.
Sensitive but feisty, Jewish but not Jewish enough, I felt the insecurity of being an outsider, the anger of injustice, the underlying ghost of losing everything in a moment, the uncertainty of language and speaking out loud.
So many of my frustrations in life were about wanting to swim differently than the way I was expected to or told to. But the need for belonging made me quieter, and I became distracted by other people’s versions of me.
I created a sort of hybrid life – both buckling down and raising a ruckus.
After a 30-year design career, I found my way to coaching.
I had the privilege and permission to live creatively and yet strongly resisted the idea that there could only be a handful of people allowed to experience what seemed natural to me.
Looking back, my success had nothing to do with my eye for color or trend, or composition or layout, and had everything to do with how creatively I was able to navigate systems and relationships, technical challenges and lots and lots of rules.
It was the 4 year-old inside me, certain she did not need permission to be a creative being.
Finding my way back to her has been a lifelong process, but I have come to love both the child that held the promise and the one that lost it. There is power and healing in befriending both the light and shadow - I hope to help you do the same.
you may be thinking…
Why, at this time in your life, would you ever decide to shake things up? Why now? Why ever?
Because there was a photograph of you taken a long time ago where promise and courage and bundles of curiosity were shining through and then, three or four years later, you can no longer see any spark of it left in that small face.
Because when you were a child, there was hardly anybody who looked like you, acted like you, or felt things as intensely as you did. And yet you refused to give up on finding the place where you truly belonged.
Because next to the sadness and the loneliness there was yearning and beauty and love.
Because you’ve always loved a good treasure hunt.
And, because you’re still that little person full of courage and curiosity – she never went away.
I love…
I love accidental beauty.
I love the feel of my hands in the dirt, and in dough, and in clay.
I love objects with missing parts, and old tools and rusty metal.
I love feeling a small quiet bubble of joy right between my ribs.
I love all the messy parts of me that are doing their best and making mistakes.
I love the questions and how long it really takes to answer them.
I love my mind when it moves at a snail’s pace one minute and like a bullet train the next.
I love patterns – all kinds of patterns – the ones I see, the ones I make and the ones that show up.
I love how citrus brightens anything.
I love the riot of nature in the yard – the climbing rose spilling over the straight still beauty of a Japanese iris, the birds showering in the sprinkler and the chaos of a thousand bees in the viburnum.
I love that life is cyclical and we come back to the same place with new eyes over and over again.