The Place Between Our Pains with K.J. Ramsey and Jeff Chu

Name: The Place Between Our Pains with K.J. Ramsey and Jeff Chu
Start: 2026-07-09T18:30:00-04:00
Location: Schuler Books (Grand Rapids)

Schedule

Thu, 09 Jul, 2026 at 06:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Schuler Books (Grand Rapids) | Grand Rapids, MI

Join us for a conversation about chronic illness, road trips, and humor in the face of adversity. We are thrilled to host author K. J. Ramsey in-store to share her story and have what is sure to be a beautiful conversation with fellow author Jeff Chu.
We love seeing who is planning to join us! Your RSVP helps us prepare to host you. You can RSVP here: https://events.humanitix.com/k-j-ramsey-and-jeff-chu-sbgr
About the Book:
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.
About the Author:
K.J. Ramsey is an increasingly feral mystic who is utterly devoted to the joy of being alive. She is a body-centered licensed professional counselor specialized in trauma recovery and an acclaimed author of prose and poetry, including The Book of Common Courage, The Lord Is My Courage, and This Too Shall Last, as well as the bestselling essay Substack Embodied. KJ advocates for fellow autoimmune patients and lives in Colorado with her husband Ryan, a hospice chaplain, and their two velcro dogs.
About the Conversation Partner:
Jeff Chu is an award-winning journalist and editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure. He is the author of Good Soil, Does Jesus Really Love Me? and the co-author, with the late Rachel Held Evans, of the New York Times bestseller Wholehearted Faith. Chu is a former Time staff writer and Fast Company editor whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Modern Farmer. In his weekly newsletter, “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer,” Chu writes about spirituality, gardening, food, travel, and culture. He lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.