Because Creativity - Resting inside woolly darkness, with Kimberly Warner

"I forgot to be lonely and heartbroken for the loss of my life"

Needle felted hairless cat sculpture - by Kimberly Warner

Dear Creatives,

Welcome to another Because Creativity guest letter, where we pause from life’s endless demands for a short interlude, to dwell on creativity, imagination, and beauty. For joy alone.

This is a truly incredible story from my friend

Kimberly Warner

. We’ve been reading each other’s letters for a while now, and every time I open one of hers, the world seems to quiet. I am drawn in by her way of noticing, the way she can hold both tenderness and truth in the same breath.

Kimberly has shared an adapted piece from her In Defense of… series, where she writes about things we’re often quick to dismiss or misunderstand. Here, Kimberly invites us into her world of needle felting — a craft she never sought out, but which somehow found her at a time when her world had been knocked completely off balance. It’s about cats made of wool, the quiet comfort of repetition, and how even monotony can become a kind of steady, generous companion when everything else is shifting.

I’m so glad to be able to share her words with you. I hope you feel, as I do, the quiet strength in them, and the way they make you look again at the small, steady strokes that carry us forward.

Kimberly Warner

A few weeks ago, while clearing closet clutter to make space for a new printer, I unearthed a half-finished project—a craft I had poured myself into for two years before abandoning it for other pursuits. Needle felting had never called to me, hadn’t even crossed my mind, until life stripped me bare. I didn’t search for it; it found me, in the aftermath of developing Mal de Débarquement Syndrome (MdDS)—a neurological disorder that manifests as a constant, dizzying perception of rocking, bobbing, or swaying. I was in the throes of chasing a cure, a fix, a way out, but when suffering’s source is within, where, truly, can one escape? Normal distractions failed me. Screens were nauseating, music too loud, books too bouncy. Even heading for the hills left me an anxious mess, my balance system a broken compass navigating a constant life at sea.

In a 6’ x 6’ kitchen-nook womb, I insulated myself against the life I’d known—and waited. First, swaddled in darkness, then eventually, wool. What emerged on the other end of thousands of hours of poking and prodding balls of fluff were thirteen hairless cat sculptures. Little did I know, they were sculpting me in return.

An unused Christmas gift—Beginner’s Guide to Needle Felting—invited me into a new, lasting distraction. Needle felting: an art as rudimentary as it is absorbing. Again and again, I’d pierce wool with sharp, barbed needles, matting formless fibers into shape. Perhaps it was the quiet rhythm of the work, or the muffled warmth of wool in hand, but I lost myself in it, each day blurring into weeks, then months, then years. To form a firm cat ear, life-sized and dense, might take four hours of mindless poking; an entire cat, four months. The cushion beneath me didn’t stop bobbing and swaying but that needle, that wool—they held steady, grounding me in each soft poke. I couldn’t stop.

Needle felting threw me a lifeline just as I was about to go under. Each felted shape breathed flesh into the thin-skinned vulnerability I couldn’t voice and no one could see. Each creature, a wordless chapter in my uncertain story, their naked curves mirroring my fragility. They spoke of hibernation, cocooning, and itches they couldn’t scratch. Grumpy, hopeful, then grumpy again, they spat up hairballs and yowled through the night but never doubted the balancing light.

Yet inseparable from the craft, it was really monotony that saved my life. A steady mother figure, monotony was patient and generous when I was nothing but toward my symptoms. Vanished inside thousands of hours of repetitive movement, I forgot to be lonely and heartbroken for the loss of my life. I forgot to think about the implications of my disappearance from the world. Did my mind wander? Sure. Did the dizziness leave? Not a chance. But like an inside-out tornado, monotony’s quiet eye surrounded my whirling brain with stillness. Resting inside wooly darkness, resistance faded; longing disappeared; past and future dissolved into the millisecond-motions of my hands. Monotony showed me how to hold my brokenness. And through the slow metabolism of uncertainty, her enduring embrace cradled me and the cats until, finally, my love for their vulnerability was no different than the love I would offer my own.

There were no epiphanies, not immediately. I wasn’t listening for meaning, only offering myself to the task at hand. Many extol boredom and monotony as pathways to self-discipline and mastery, that great breakthroughs are born from tedium. But I’m not here to champion monotony for success. There are countless self-help books for that. A simple google of the word and I’m overwhelmed with tips on “How to break free from monotony” or conversely, “Monotony as midwife to mastery.” I didn’t throw myself into needle felting to perform my “ten-thousand hours” and master the craft. I did it to save myself—not some future self, but my present self—moment by dizzy moment. The epiphanies were cellular and beyond cognition, the slow-moving hands of time massaging me toward deep, unbidden surrender.

To give ourselves to a repetitive task is to become animal, to move in rhythm with inner clocks that gently nudge us along cycles of becoming and undoing. Our ears evolved to catch rhythm; our eyes to seek pattern. My hands poke wool while the flickers peck while the cats lick while the water flows while the skies give while the ground receives while the seasons turn all inside infinity’s gaping mouth of indifference.

Needle felting helped me brave monotony’s mind-numbing depths so I could hear new notes—kinder, more curious, more compassionate notes—at the bottom of my measured abyss.

Stirred to listen again, I bring my abandoned sculpture from the closet, wipe years of dust and memory from a bin of wool, and spend a Sunday reclaiming the small ritual of repetitive, unhurried acceptance. My senses rise up to meet the familiar touch, the soft nibbling sound of needle against wool, the scent of warmth filling my nose. Each gentle movement gives form and softens my need for it. I poke and poke and poke until the afternoon collapses—a dying star in my hands; time, dizziness and self pull toward its quiet center. Surrendering to monotony’s rhythm once again, I know she is here, watching over both my labor of creation and my unraveling, reminding me how to live and love inside each enduring motion. She reminds: keep going, keep tending, hold life, and it let go.

Thank you, Kimberly, for letting us sit beside you in the rhythm of your making. Your story is a testament to the quiet transformations that happen when we give ourselves over to creativity, one small gesture at a time.

Creativity takes so many forms. For Kimberly, it was in the quiet repetition of needle felting. A rhythm that steadied her body, made space for listening, and became a way of living with her symptoms. From that stillness, her cats emerged: shaped not only by her hands, but by the patience and presence that carried them into being.

I love Kimberly’s writing for the way it honours what is often overlooked or misunderstood, uncovering beauty and meaning in places we might never think to look. Her Substack, Unfixed, is a space for living in the in-between — where uncertainty, illness, and change are met not with urgency to fix, but with openness, curiosity, and creativity.

Later this year, she will be releasing her memoir, Unfixed: A Memoir of Family, Mystery, and the Currents That Carry You Home (Empress Editions, October 2025) — a lyrical and deeply moving exploration of identity, loss, and the ways we find belonging when life doesn’t tie up neatly. I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I have, and that it leads you deeper into her world.

With wishes for endless inspiration,