The Place Between Our Pains: A Conversation with K.J. RamseyThe Place Between Our Pains: A Conversation with K.J. Ramsey
Flip Your Lid with Kim Honeycutt
Kim Honeycutt and K.J. Ramsey talk about chronic illness, neurodivergence, shame and faith, with stories of medical gaslighting and interdependence. The conversation reflects on how joy and love can persist alongside intense physical and emotional pain.
1:09:00•11 Aug 2026
Joy, Pain and Interdependence: K.J. Ramsey on Chronic Illness, Neurodivergence and Faith
Episode Overview
- Healing is rooted in interdependence, even when dependence feels risky and painful.
- Treat your body like a best friend rather than an enemy, rejecting objectifying narratives about productivity.
- Bring support to medical appointments, prepare questions and care for basic needs to reduce vulnerability to gaslighting.
- Lower expectations for journalling or reflection; a few honest sentences or small sensory moments can be enough.
- Joy does not require the absence of pain; it can act as a feral, sustaining presence alongside ongoing suffering.
“When I welcome the grief of my need for others, my relentless need for others, I am actually welcoming joy because love is the most beautiful thing in the whole damn world.”
How do people manage co-occurring mental and physical health issues while recovering? This live conversation between Kim Honeycutt and author K.J. Ramsey at Park Road Books in Charlotte leans straight into that question, with humour, honesty and a lot of raw truth. K.J. talks candidly about living with "eight diseases and counting", intensive IV treatments, a rare facial tumour and repeated trips to Mayo Clinic.
Yet the heart of the chat isn’t just medical drama; it’s what it means to depend on others when trauma has taught you that dependence hurts. As K.J. puts it, "healing requires dependence" and more specifically, interdependence, even though it carries "risk and pain".
You’ll hear her share the moment she realised she is autistic with ADHD, how rejection sensitive dysphoria and complex PTSD shape her inner world, and why internalised gaslighting and shame can feel more crippling than the original trauma. Her description of medical gaslighting – including a specialist doubting whether her worst crises even happened – will ring painfully familiar for many chronically ill and neurodivergent people.
There’s practical wisdom too: bring someone with you to appointments, prepare questions, respect your limited "spoons", lower the bar for journalling or reflection, and notice one small good thing – even if it’s just the light on the wall or a devoted dog pressed against your legs. K.J. invites the audience to treat their bodies like a best friend, not an enemy, and to question the story that says joy is only for the healthy and productive.
Threaded through it all is faith and theology under pressure: a God she "does not understand nor always like", a spirit coming back to life, and a fierce insistence that joy and pain can coexist. If you’re wrestling with chronic illness, neurodivergence, medical dismissal or spiritual hurt, this conversation might leave you asking: what would it look like to let others in, even when it feels risky?
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