The Place Between Our Pains: A Memoir of What Joy Can Survive

A poetic, darkly funny memoir of one woman’s trip across the national parks straight into life-threatening illness and the joy that still holds us, no matter how much life hurts.

“Unapologetically raw, defiantly humorous, this book is the bravest of journeys. . . . A memoir that makes no promises except to tell the truth about joy in the dark. We’ve needed this.”—Cole Arthur Riley, New York Times bestselling author of This Here Flesh

After over a decade of fighting chronic illness, trauma therapist and beloved author K.J. Ramsey was the healthiest she’d been in her life. She packed up her Jeep and set out on a summer of road trips, returning to the places where she first glimpsed joy as a kid. More than adventure, her aim was a personal dare to discover that joy is more trustworthy than trauma.

The plan was simple but bold: Drive. Write. Heal. What could go wrong?

It turns out, everything.

The woman who just wandered through Redwood forests and ran naked into the Pacific suddenly found herself in the hospital fighting to stay alive. A mysterious illness struck like lightning, splintering the best days of her life into the absolute scariest. Ramsey went from being afraid of dying to afraid of living the life she was left with—losing both her mobility and the language of her faith, medically gaslit, with no map out of her misery. Was joy actually a trick? Or was joy still possible—even in inescapable pain?

Told with unhinged humor, lyrical honesty, and zero patience for toxic positivity, The Place Between Our Pains is a true story that reaches past our expectations of what joy can survive. From banana slugs to bedpans, mushrooms to the Mayo Clinic, hospitals to holy rage, Ramsey invites us into the unlikely places where joy lives. Through a full year of recovery, she encounters love that doesn’t leave—even when life doesn’t get easier. This is a love letter to every life seared by pain or autoimmune disease and a fierce permission slip to show up in the stories we never would have written for ourselves.