Kasia has the kind of warmth that makes you feel she’d smile at you on the street and strike up an easy and genuine conversation. Outgoing, warm and open, she’s originally from Poland and now lives in East Sussex.

She describes herself as a creative practitioner. It’s a fitting title that captures the many ways Kasia expresses her artistry and curiosity. For over 13 years, her professional roots were in design, creating interactive, narrative-driven spaces before moving into teaching at the University of the Arts London. Today, that same spirit of creative experimentation runs through her work as a retreat chef, yoga teacher, and textile artist — each one a different medium for exploring creativity, connection, and wellbeing.

The call to adventure came in 2020, when Kasia accepted a role to teach design in Vietnam. After more than a decade in the design industry, she had begun to feel its constraints. “People romanticise the idea of design,” she told me. “It’s an amazing industry, but after a while the work becomes repetitive…I wasn’t able to be as creative as I wanted to be and it wasn’t providing creative satisfaction anymore.”

Teaching had always been the most energising part of her work, and the opportunity to do it in a new country felt like a fresh start and a way to trade the hustle of five different freelance jobs for one meaningful adventure.

Vietnam opened doors she hadn’t expected. Immersed in a new culture and slower rhythm of life, she began experimenting with textiles and exploring this new form of creativity. She describes that period as being “gifted a lot” — a time rich with discovery and connection.

But it was also the beginning of a more difficult chapter.

During those same years, her husband was diagnosed with advanced cancer. What began as an adventure soon became a profound initiation into loss, resilience, and the reweaving her life.

Losing someone you love doesn’t just leave a gap where they once were. It rearranges everything — the way you see yourself, the way you move through the world, even the rhythms of daily life. Grief has a way of gripping us so tightly that it turns everything upside down. Suddenly, you’re not only mourning the person, but also the version of yourself that only existed in relation to them.

It wasn’t just the loss of the person she loved. It was the loss of a shared identity as a couple, a creative collaborator, and the life they had been building together. “You’re not just dealing with loss of someone you love,” she told me. “Your whole identity shifts. You’re no longer meeting people as a couple. Even your professional life changes. I was his primary caretaker while he was ill.”

Grief invited Kasia to explore the role of creativity in healing. Yoga, which had once been a quiet part of her life, became an anchor that helped her reconnect with herself when everything around her was changing. When life feels uncertain, the practice has a way of gathering the scattered pieces of you. It offers moments of stillness when everything else is shifting, and quiet strength when words and logic can’t reach the places that ache.

Her commitment to yoga opened a new door into Ayurveda, holistic living, and the connection between nourishment and wellbeing. Cooking plant-based food became both an act of care and creative expression, a way to nurture herself and others. What began as personal rituals of healing, slowly evolved into a new chapter of her creative practice, one rooted in embodiment, community, and the art of living well.

Today, Kasia is discovering how to weave together these different parts of herself into her own unique professional tapestry. She describes this time as “seeding”: planting ideas in different places and seeing which ones take root. Sometimes it’s a workshop that draws a handful of people. Sometimes it’s a casual conversation at yoga, offering sweet treats and “feeding random people,” that blossoms into something new. Some seeds grow quickly, others take time.

For her, teaching is the common thread that runs through it all. “At the core of my being, I am a teacher, an educator that uses different tools to provide different experiences.”

She resists the pressure to define herself as one thing or to subscribe to narrow definitions of success.“I find measuring success tricky sometimes. Monetising a new career is one way, I guess, but I feel it’s not really always the best measure of success. Taking a first step to make a change, embracing the unknown and reframing challenges as opportunities for growth is already a success. Allowing my intuition to guide me and taking mindful actions is my personal success.”

What I admire most about Kasia is the way she is allowing her process to unfold. She has opened herself to up to new people and conversations, guided by curiosity rather than certainty. She is experimenting with what feels alive, saying yes to new opportunities, and, most importantly, learning to trust herself.

Kasia’s story reminds me that reinvention doesn’t always begin with a vision. Sometimes it begins with loss, with grief, with a life that has been rearranged without your consent. The work, then, isn’t to narrow yourself into a single new identity. It’s to learn how to hold the different parts of yourself, the ones that were there before and the ones grief has revealed, and let them become a life that feels whole.

I think this is what’s hardest to communicate about transitions like hers. There is no neat after. There is only the slow, patient practice of seeding, and the willingness to keep going when you can’t yet see what will grow.

If Kasia's story resonated, you can find her work at kasiahamilton.com. She's an interior designer, lecturer, retreat chef, textile maker and yoga teacher, weaving together food, design and community through workshops, retreats and seasonal events.

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About Work Worth Doing

Work Worth Doing is a space for people who’ve outgrown a professional career they’ve spent years building, and aren’t sure about what comes next. You’ll find essays on identity, purpose and finding fulfilment outside of work too.

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