You don’t really know yourself until you’re put up against some edges.
- katzdan3
- Nov 17
- 17 min read
Kassia Meador
Professional surfer | Owner, KASSIA+SURF
I was at a transitional point in my life between my professional surf time and when I was starting my company. I had some reservations; I mean, I chose to jump off into that venture quite quickly. I didn’t put a lot of forethought into it. But I was asking a friend who’s a Lakota Sundance chief who stayed with me when I lived up in Topanga, “How do you know where you’re going and if you’re going in the right direction?” And he told me, “You never really know where you’re going. You can only look back and see where you’ve been.”
I’m 43 years old and I started surfing when I was 14 years old during the same summer that my parents enrolled me in junior lifeguards up at north beach, Leo Carrillo, which is right before the Ventura County line. I grew up in the Valley, so surfing was something that was always a romantic fantasy to me. I grew up skateboarding and snowboarding and all these things but in the summertime, we’d go to the beach. My parents were very big on learning to swim super well and navigating the ocean. During that summer when I was in the junior lifeguard program — which, I can’t suggest it to enough people, I think it should be a prerequisite for all kids but definitely for coastal communities because it’s so empowering. But that’s when I really started learning how to surf, during that summer. It was just the best time ever. I was running, I was swimming, I was learning the ocean currents, I was navigating the ocean I was feeling empowered by my navigation of the ocean, and then at the end of junior guards every day, we had a couple surfboards and it was like King or Queen of the Surfboards, where people would fall off and then it would be your turn so you just wanted to surf the best you could so you didn’t fall and lose your turn. That was the first summer, and I won the surf contest at the end of junior lifeguards and it was just so fun. I was hooked and that was it. I started going on the weekends with my dad and sometimes after school, going surfing.
By that next summer when I was 15, I was doing summer school up at Calabasas and I would get dropped off at Malibu First Point after summer school, so mid-day, and I would surf until dark and one of my parents would pick me up on their way home. One would drop me off on the lunch break and the other would pick me up on the way home from work. My parents both worked full-time jobs, so they were like, “Well, you’re at the beach, you can’t get in trouble. Just go surfing and here’s $5.” I really just immersed myself in it. Joined the Malibu Surfing Association, started competing, started learning about other contests, started saving up my money to go travel to these international destinations.
My first international trip was when I was 15 to Costa Rica. I’ve always been a hard worker since I was a little kid. My parents told me, “If you want something, you can do it, but work for it and don’t ask us for anything.” So they taught me the value of the dollar and what it was like to work for it. I really just appreciated every moment, and surfing gave me purpose. It gave me something to focus my energy towards and it also gave me a connection with the ocean and being outdoors, which I think is invaluable for kids, especially these days with nature deficiency disorder and things like that. We are nature, so if we are embracing nature, we’re getting to know ourselves more.
I started surfing contests and quite quickly I got sponsored by Roxy when I was 17 and Donald Takayama started making my surfboards. I felt very grateful to be at this resurgence of longboarding. Joel Tudor — who was one of my mentors, and I think he was for anybody within the surf world, especially the longboard world — he was the one who really brought classic logging back online in collaboration with Thomas Campbell, who just released a new film called “Yi-Wo.” I was fortunate enough to be featured in his films from a young age; I was in three of his films and he just released his fourth.
But it was just a really interesting time. I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t even think I could be a professional surfer. But then all of a sudden I’m 18 years old and I graduated high school and my parents were like, “Are you going to go to college?” and I was like, “You know what, I’m going to go buy a car in Australia and cruise around and live in it and do the contest circuit this year and just see what’s up.” Contests at the time, you get maybe like a coffee mug and $500. It wasn’t a big thing like it is now, especially in the longboard world. They were like, “College will be there for you if you want to go, but go explore this,” and I’m so glad I did. I also think that for kids, I think it’s really hard to get out of high school and go straight to college. A lot of people just end up fully disassociating or feeling overwhelmed; it’s a lot of pressure. I feel like it’s invaluable to learn from the world and I’m grateful that I gave myself that opportunity to go travel, and that I was working hard and making money and that I had the support of some sponsors to help me out. I got to experience the world, travel a lot, learn different cultures.
A couple years later, I look back and I didn’t go to college, I was making more money as a professional surfer, getting to travel… and I was like, “Oh, I guess I’m pro now.” I continued to travel and do things and then in my 30s, so 13 or 15 years later, the surf industry was changing a lot and I was a 30-something year old woman and I wasn’t a 17-year-old kid anymore. I started designing wet suits for Roxy and working with their marketing team on ad campaigns, I was helping to produce some shoots and produce things. I felt like only surfing, that mono-focus, was limiting to a degree. I really wanted to expand my horizons and test my creativity and work with it more.
So after doing that for Roxy — and I found it very valuable and I had a lot of growth and joy and fulfillment on many levels from that as well as from surfing — I was kind of getting disenchanted and the surf industry was changing, the company dynamics were changing. What felt like a family was not feeling so much like a family anymore. To the better judgement of my agent at the time and probably everybody else in my life, I was like, “You know what, I’m not going to re-sign my contract when it comes up.” I was going to, but then it just felt weird. I needed a new experience. And that led me to leaving my sponsors, starting my own company, creating something by women for women… I had grown up. I wanted to make something better all-around for women. A different taste level, a different demographic.
I had been making wet suits for Roxy for probably three to five years maybe, so it was something that I really loved. But then I was constantly hitting roadblocks. Like, “I want to do this,” and they’re like, “Oh, no, because of price point.” “What about this?” “No, because of price point.” So there were always these glass ceilings working with a big corporation, because that’s how they function. And then if I had ideas of innovation, it was, “Well, that’s not safe, we haven’t done that before. Let’s stay in our lane and do what we’ve done before.” And it’s like, we’re surfers, we’re all about doing what hasn’t been done before! As much as it was an amazing opportunity and learning experience for me to work with a brand of that size… at the time, it was a $4 billion company. Huge. Giant corporate company, and it’s now changed a lot since then but that was at the height of their time. To work with a company on that scale that’s global — it was wild. But it also gave me the tools to learn about production, learn about sourcing, learn about all these things that I would have never learned about. Every rose has a thorn, right? So there was also that.
I was kind of getting frustrated after a couple years and I wanted to say things and do things in a different way. I think that was the seed of my company — seeing what I could do and getting frustrated by what I couldn’t do, and then wanting to go that step further. I think I could have been a little smarter and more strategic with my timing of leaving, had I known I was going to fund my company totally on my own. I didn’t really know it at the time and I made a game-time decision. But whatever, that was how I needed to learn because that was how I moved, so it’s all kind of perfect, the way it works and unfolds. You don’t really know yourself until you’re put up against some edges. Those edges gave me an opportunity to see how I could move in a different way.
That’s when I started my own company, KASSIA+SURF. I wanted to call it something fancy and funky but I just ended up calling it my name because people in the surf world knew me. I had no idea what I was doing and learned so many invaluable lessons that I continue to learn from. It kind of got a little lonely because I was doing my company on my own. When I first had chosen to do it, I was going to start it with a couple people and it just didn’t end up working out that way in the end. So I kept it going on my own and it got a little lonely; I wasn’t surfing as much, I never really ran a company — I love creating and connecting with people but chasing bills when shops aren’t paying me isn’t cool, dealing with freight forwarders and all this stuff. Again, invaluable lessons, but it took me away from the water.
During that time, I also had a lot of injuries. I had multiple severe concussions, dislocated my shoulders multiple times, and had other injuries. Through that, too, I wasn’t surfing very much because I technically couldn’t. I started studying craniosacral polarity therapy, energy medicine, because it really helped me with my concussions. And just working in a more wholistic way with my body and taking care of myself in a different way, focusing on wellness.
Then I did a learn-to-surf guide with my friends at The Inertia, and during that time I started hosting little retreats here and there. At first it started that I would bring my sound work — I worked with sound and vibrational therapy — to my friend’s yoga retreat and then there’d be a couple people there wanting to surf with me, so I’d surf with them on the side and then I was like, “Oh, wait a minute. This could be a thing, and oh wait, what if we did a surf retreat with yoga on the side, with some sound healing that I facilitate.” All of a sudden it started shifting that way and then I started doing my own retreats. My first solo retreat was I think back in 2017. That was a lot of fun, and I found a lot of joy in that. Simultaneously, I was working on the learn-to-surf guide with my friend at The Inertia; it’s called Inspire Courses, which came out, funnily enough, right at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020. So perfect timing with the pandemic, because it was a tool. I really learned through that, that it was so fun for me to reconnect with people. It was also so fun for me to get into the water again and start to feel healthy, working with my body in healthy ways, my shoulder injuries were chilling out, I was getting some support around my concussions. I also realized a lot of people were coming back into surfing at a later time in their life. Maybe they surfed as a kid and they were reconnecting with it. Or, adult learners that were looking for support and often not getting the support they needed. So my focus was around safety and empowering people through information and knowledge. I love teaching. And as they say, as you start to teach, you really grok things in a different way.
Teaching really got me reinspired in surfing and now I’m really focused on hosting and facilitating retreats all over the world and supporting women. I do a lot of women-only retreats but then I also have a lot of co-ed and all boards/all bodies retreats to support people from all walks of life that want to just come surf, and connecting global community through connecting with the water and connecting with each other. That’s what I’m kind of focused on now.
At the beginning of this year, I felt a little overwhelmed with my company; I felt like it was taking me away from the water. Also, I was working extra hard to pay for wetsuits for other people… production was costing a lot and I’m not a big company, I never took investment money because I just didn’t want to answer to someone else. It was never a bottom-line decision for me. In surfing, wherever we’re looking, we’re going, so if I’m looking at the bottom line, that’s where I’m going to go. That’s just never what I wanted to do. I wanted to create things from a passionate place and create from the heart and make things that I felt were valuable in the world. Everything I do is from that place. I was like, “I’m going to sell out everything I have, I’m going to keep making my surf wax, and keep doing collaborations with other brands.” I do custom wetsuits with an amazing facilitator in Japan and I get to go take measurements, so again connecting with people. And I’m really focused on the retreats.
I’m just about to launch a surf journal. It’s called Aquatic Reflections: A Surf Journal. It’s really neat. We’re going to launch it in the next week or so. It’s another tool for people to track their progress both in the water as well as their emotional landscape, because I really feel like the ocean is a mirror. Whatever’s coming up for you in life is coming up in the water and vice versa. They talk about yoga — that’s your practice, yoga is how you flow through life. So is surfing, and if that’s your practice, how can you work with it in more intentional ways? That really is what our surf journal is about, empowering people through an opportunity to reflect more.
We talk about the seasons, we talk about the moons, there’s a lot of space for reflection. There’s one page specifically that we talked about different prompts for daily check-ins, if people need prompts. Different spots for seasonal check-ins because as the seasons change, we talk about the moons and the tides. As surfers and people — I’m always thinking about this — we spend so much time outside so I think a lot about the seasons. We broke it up seasonally with the equinoxes and solstices. It’s fun because it also gives people an opportunity to honor not the calendar that we go off of but honor the seasonal calendar that the rest of nature is working with.
I didn’t keep a surf journal when I was learning, but it was something that I would talk about with people. But the more that I’ve been surfing and the more that I’ve been tracking a lot of my clients and students and the more that I track myself through journaling and my day to day life, I realize “Oh my gosh, this is something that would be so important and invaluable for surfing.” As a younger person, I couldn’t find something like this that existed, and now it exists but I’m going to do it my own way. I was doing a lot with astrology calendars and very interested in the moon and the cycles of time and journaling on my own and journaling about surf sessions and life sessions. Working with people, you see how much stuff in life comes up in the water. I see that in myself but sometimes you need to see it in somebody else for it to actually be reflected. And then you’re like, “Ok, wait a minute, if I had a tool like this, I would have the opportunity to witness those things a lot sooner.” So that’s why I created this tool, because I felt like it was something that I’ve wanted. This is the first one, we literally got this sample two days ago, so I’m just really excited to get it up and online and into people’s hands.
With mass producing, we have general sizes, like a general small. Some wet suit companies that are bigger wet suit companies would do a six short or a six tall. But then some folks are like, “Hey, I’m a lot different size than those people.” I’m a pretty average size. And then I have a friend who’s maybe my same height but a little fuller figured than I am. Or more bottom heavy. Or more top heavy and has bigger shoulders. You want it to feel right, because it’s a real technical piece. When I do a custom suit like the gentleman I just did a custom suit for, I went and I met him, I measured him. I take 30 measurements and I send those measurements over to my factory and they create a perfectly bespoke wetsuit. It’s just like buying a suit off the rack. It might fit pretty good but you probably need to alter it a little bit. Same deal. You can buy a wetsuit off the rack; cool, you can get them for a little bit cheaper, they’re mass produced. But if you’re between sizes, which some people are, get something custom that’s going to fit you 100%. You’re paying a little bit more, but it’s a way better experience. Also it’s much higher quality. And then I’m not sitting on inventory, I’m just making things for people as they need them.
And the wax is something that I love to make. I make a palo santo scented surf wax. I created a really ergonomic triangular design so it works the best. At first, it kind of came as my calling card, like, “I’m going to make this and it’s going to be like a marketing tool. People will see my wax and then they can get in touch with me…” But I just love it so much, it’s so fun. And then we have little small break-off pieces so you can snap a piece off and give it to a friend, so I wanted to make it collaborative. There’s a lot of intention in everything I make. I created the design and created the scent and then I work with a really cool family owned business that’s here in California and they make the wax private label for me.
The wax is what you put on the top of the surfboard so when water hits it, it keeps you from slipping off your board. It’s a different thing than wax on a set of skis or a snowboard where you wax the bottom of it to go faster, because you have binding so you’re strapped in. With a surfboard, you’re not strapped in so if you add water to that, you’re just going to slip off unless there’s something to put a grip on the surface for your feet to go into.
I came into [surfing] at a really interesting time, and a lot of the guys that I met on the beach were like my brothers, and they still are. People that I’ve known forever that watched out for me, that took care of me, that also helped me get better. And I was a kid, so I had a lot of support, and I know a lot of people didn’t. But at that time, there wasn’t a lot of women in general making much money in surfing, that wasn’t a thing. And definitely not longboarders.
Longboarding is a subculture-subculture. I was the first woman longboarding to really make a living surfing on a longboard. And then I helped to pave the way for younger generations make a living on a longboard as a woman. Shortboarding and longboarding are two different things, and when professional surfing and all of surfing shifted more toward shortboarding, longboarding fell to the wayside. Then there was this resurgence and Joel Tudor being first and foremost and paving the way for modern logging. Longboarding in a classic style on a classic board in a modern way — he kind of set the way for that. And he was the first person to make a career out of longboarding during that resurgence, and people followed suit. Now, there’s a whole professional longboard tour that didn’t exist when I was a kid. Joel Tudor created his Duct Tape Invitational, and I think what he did brought professional surfing’s eye back towards longboarding. And it’s a way different world than it was when I was doing it. It’s just really fun to see the progress and it’s really fun to see how many women have gotten involved and how any kids have gotten involved. It’s such a cool time for surfing in general: equal pay across the board as well as women’s resurgence into longboarding and surfing in general. It’s a really cool, supportive, and collaborative time.
When people first started surfing, they were surfing on longer boards. As innovation happens, boards got shorter and shorter and more performance-oriented. Now we live in a time where there’s a lot of different things — longboard, shortboard, mid-length — but the majority of professional surfing that people see out in the world is on high-performance shortboards. Then free surfing came in, and riding mid-lengths and fishes, that style of alternative trimcraft has become something. But longboarding is a way different type of board: you do different maneuvers on them entirely. It’s almost like equating slalom-style skis — big jumps, the giant jumps — to half-pipe skis. It’s different equipment, different people doing it, and different things you’re looking for. And then obviously big wave surfing is a different thing entirely. Not all surfers are big wave surfers because it’s totally different equipment, different things you’re looking for and doing. There’s a lot of different nuances, with longboarding being one of those.
I grew up in the Valley but I had close proximity to iconic surf breaks like Rincon up in Santa Barbara, Ventura, C Street which is up in Ventura, also a place called Leo Carrillo which is where I did junior lifeguards at, where they have a perfect point break, and Malibu. Malibu is iconic for longboarding — the Gidget movies, all that, which made surfing popular. That’s where I was going and it’s a perfect wave for a longboard. Yes, you can ride a high-performance board on it, but if you’re down in Huntington Beach, a lot of people are riding shortboards just because the waves lend to that more and you see that around more. At Malibu, it’s a perfect point break and you’re going to have a lot more fun on a longboard than anything else. I ride all boards, but really what I was doing professionally and what my expertise within the surfing world is longboarding and classic longboarding. And I wouldn’t say I’m an expert — I don’t think anybody can really master the ocean. But that’s more of what I’ve been known for within the surf world.
I think it’s important to have direction, but for me and my life, it’s like, “Ok, I want to do this.” I know that me not creating another wet suit collection is going to give me more space to be creative. This surf journal is something that had been on the back burner for a while but because there was something holding that space energetically, emotionally, and creatively, I wasn’t able to digest it and get it out into the world. So once I chose, “I’m not going to do more production stuff with wetsuits, I’m going to open up to custom suits and give myself more time and space,” that helped me move some energy which opened up the space for the journal to come through. That’s how I like to make decisions, so I don’t know where I’m going. And I don’t need to, because if I’m too focused on where I want to go, I might be missing A) the journey and where I’m at right now, or B) what could come, by being too focused. What is our focal lens going to show us and how are we going to move with it? Instead of being hyper-focused, I want to have a wide aperture. A very open aperture is a nice way to have a lot of space to kind of focus around.
I never would have known that life would take me in any of the directions I’ve been in. Everything has led to the next thing because I just continue to listen inward and follow my instincts and intuition, which is primarily what navigating the ocean and surfing has taught me, and continues to teach me as my life unfolds.
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