K.J. Ramsey: The Place Between Our Pains — Joy After Chronic Illness
Colorado therapist and memoirist K.J. Ramsey reads from her account of navigating disability, faith, and unexpected joy — told with sharp wit and zero tolerance for easy answers.
Why we picked this
Ramsey is a trauma-trained therapist writing from inside her own diagnosis — the combination gives her memoir an authority and refusal of false comfort that's rare in the chronic illness genre.
K.J. Ramsey spent a decade managing chronic illness, then found a window of health and headed for the national parks — a road trip designed to find joy. Then a mysterious new illness hospitalized her mid-journey, stripping her mobility again and forcing a reckoning with everything she thought she’d resolved. The Place Between Our Pains is the book that came out of that experience: a memoir that is, by Ramsey’s own description, poetic, darkly funny, and impatient with the kind of forced optimism that often surrounds illness narratives.
What distinguishes Ramsey’s perspective is that she writes not just as a patient but as a practicing therapist specializing in trauma recovery. She understands how the mind processes loss, how faith communities sometimes compound suffering rather than ease it, and how the question of whether joy is possible in inescapable pain is not rhetorical — it’s clinical, theological, and deeply personal all at once. Her Substack publication Embodied, which explores the intersection of body, mind, and meaning, has built her a substantial readership before the book’s release.
Ramsey lives in Colorado with her husband, who works as a hospice chaplain — a detail that somehow says everything about the emotional register this household operates in. The Tattered Cover Colfax event includes the full author conversation, Q&A, personalized signing, and tickets that include a signed hardcover or a $5 store gift card.