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This Is the Door: Notes from a Body in Pain
In This Is the Door, acclaimed author Darcey Steinke explores the agony and ecstasy of pain in its many forms. She takes readers through the archives and across oceans; she walks the tightrope between suffering and rapture, explores her own pain and that of a multitude of creatives characters from Frida Kahlo to Kurt Cobain.
Her journey reveals a series of questions. Does pain educate? Is pain always a physical experience of negation? How does pain push us to another level of creativity? What can we learn from wounding, from winnowing, from the stillness, the de-creation that intense pain brings? Whether it is the physical pain of an injury or illness, or the mental pain of heartache or loneliness, pain is an experience shared by all of us.
This Is the Door is a celebration of what the body can endure, and what it can achieve.
Her journey reveals a series of questions. Does pain educate? Is pain always a physical experience of negation? How does pain push us to another level of creativity? What can we learn from wounding, from winnowing, from the stillness, the de-creation that intense pain brings? Whether it is the physical pain of an injury or illness, or the mental pain of heartache or loneliness, pain is an experience shared by all of us.
This Is the Door is a celebration of what the body can endure, and what it can achieve.
289 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 26, 2026
About the author
Darcey Steinke
26 books202 followersDarcey Steinke is an American author and educator known for her evocative novels and thoughtful nonfiction. She has written five novels, including Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, Jesus Saves, Milk, and Sister Golden Hair. She is also the author of the spiritual memoir Easter Everywhere and Flash Count Diary, a meditation on menopause and natural life. Her fiction often explores the intersection of the spiritual and the physical, with two of her novels, Up Through the Water and Jesus Saves, selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Steinke has contributed essays and articles to publications such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Vogue, and The Guardian, and co-edited the essay collection Joyful Noise with Rick Moody. In addition to her writing career, she has taught creative writing at institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, Barnard College, and the American University of Paris. Originally from Oneida, New York, and the daughter of a Lutheran minister, Steinke now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, journalist Michael Hudson, and their daughter. A former guitarist for the band Ruffian, she continues to explore the connections between art, spirit, and human experience through her work.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 8, 2025
I've not read any of Darcey's books before and so had no expectations coming into it.
As someone who has a chronic illness or two, and in turn, chronic pain, I find it so difficult to put into words what that pain is like, even to people experiencing the same thing but Darcey has managed it very well.
I thought it was going to be more about her health and her experiences with pain, and there is that - and there's more as it goes along - but it is predominantly about the history of pain, and what other people in history thought of pain. Which is fine, very interesting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'd have liked a bit more of that personal angle. Having said that, she has been very honest and open and shared some of her most difficult experiences with us.
What I did particularly enjoy was the positive spin she added. When you're in that much pain, it can be hard to see anything other than misery and negativity, and I have never thought of it in relation to positivity, yet Darcey has managed that which was a revelation.
I read it in a day - the first day of a five-day hospital inpatient stint as it happened. Nonfiction books can often be dry and difficult to get through, but I devoured this as if it was a novel.
What I liked was that she hasn't just focussed on physical pain, she has also talked about the pain of the soul or of heartache, which is obviously harder to prove medically. I have never had my heart broken romantically, but when my Dad died, the first thing I thought was how painful it was in my chest, like my heart really was breaking.
It isn't an easy book to read, and it obviously has a lot of difficult subjects. There are a few illustrations and I'd have preferred some more to really add depth to her words. But overall I'd say there is this undercurrent of hope running through.
As someone who has a chronic illness or two, and in turn, chronic pain, I find it so difficult to put into words what that pain is like, even to people experiencing the same thing but Darcey has managed it very well.
I thought it was going to be more about her health and her experiences with pain, and there is that - and there's more as it goes along - but it is predominantly about the history of pain, and what other people in history thought of pain. Which is fine, very interesting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'd have liked a bit more of that personal angle. Having said that, she has been very honest and open and shared some of her most difficult experiences with us.
What I did particularly enjoy was the positive spin she added. When you're in that much pain, it can be hard to see anything other than misery and negativity, and I have never thought of it in relation to positivity, yet Darcey has managed that which was a revelation.
I read it in a day - the first day of a five-day hospital inpatient stint as it happened. Nonfiction books can often be dry and difficult to get through, but I devoured this as if it was a novel.
What I liked was that she hasn't just focussed on physical pain, she has also talked about the pain of the soul or of heartache, which is obviously harder to prove medically. I have never had my heart broken romantically, but when my Dad died, the first thing I thought was how painful it was in my chest, like my heart really was breaking.
It isn't an easy book to read, and it obviously has a lot of difficult subjects. There are a few illustrations and I'd have preferred some more to really add depth to her words. But overall I'd say there is this undercurrent of hope running through.
January 11, 2026
This Is the Door by Darcey Steinke is a different type of topic than my usual read. It is about pain across different areas in our bodies by chapter, for example, our spines, hearts, knees, etc. Steinke discusses how pain and really our thoughts about pain intersect. She does not minimize anyone's pain, but shares experiences that she herself, as well as others, have had with medical professionals. She relates how religion and spirituality can affect our perception of pain.
None of us can truly understand another person's pain, but this book gives us reasons to be generous with our empathy. I know someone who described her mother as a "hypochondriac". When I asked how she was doing, apparently she was dead. Must have been a pretty bad case of hypochondria.
We all need to be more understanding of others' suffering, and we should give ourselves room to heal when we need to. This Is the Door reminds us to be empathetic.
Thank you, Netgalley, for the prepublication copy to read and review.
None of us can truly understand another person's pain, but this book gives us reasons to be generous with our empathy. I know someone who described her mother as a "hypochondriac". When I asked how she was doing, apparently she was dead. Must have been a pretty bad case of hypochondria.
We all need to be more understanding of others' suffering, and we should give ourselves room to heal when we need to. This Is the Door reminds us to be empathetic.
Thank you, Netgalley, for the prepublication copy to read and review.
September 4, 2026
A really fascinating read. I picked it up out of the library, and it's not what I thought it was going to be - but I found it absolutely fascinating, some really interesting facts and thoughtful pieces
September 8, 2026
This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith by Darcey Steinke is an excellent and necessary book in the canon of pain literature.
As someone who has struggled and become intimate with chronic pain over decades, I’ve read a few books about the subject. This Is the Door has become a favourite. Drawing from a wide array of fascinating sources and with the liberal use of many references and quotations, (which I adored), Steinke moves fluidly through essays on various body parts as well as Heartache, Suffering, Soul and Healing.
I appreciate how Steinke poses the necessary questions to dive deeper into the connection between pain and faith. Steinke’s background is Lutheran and the focus throughout is on Christian faith, I was nonetheless pleased to see some paragraphs about Buddhism.
Steinke explores the pain of many people, from those in life to those throughout history. Famous figures include Frida Kahlo, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Simone Weil, Kurt Cobain and Bernadette of Lourdes.
Classified as Literary Criticism, This Is the Door is a fascinating and thoughtful discourse for anyone interested in understanding more about the complex interactions between pain and faith.
Favourite Quotes
“I walk a tightrope between raging against my pain and trying to search for any scraps of meaning that might be left in its wreckage, and this is what a whole earth of sufferers is experiencing. Pain, like an extreme version of modern secular life, forces me to exist without foundation or certainty. Does pain educate? Is pain always a physical experience of negation? What can we learn from wounding, from winnowing, from the stillness, the de-creation that intense pain brings? Does pain obliterate me but also somehow re-create me? Is it possible to be created a second time? The pain of my birth brought me into life. Now pain transforms me again, changing my values, my empathy, my idea of the world around me, even the depth and intensity of my ability to love.”
“Pain made me realize I was less a creature with a reliable inner identity than a penetrable ecosystem.”
“Pain is a kind of failure. The queer philosopher Jack Halberstam has written that failure is a "hidden history of permission in a culture of optimism." Failure allows the truth to come out, and pain, like failure, lets us be honest about our vulnerable bodies, our fears, our struggles, and our grief. Pain, like failure, breaks into our everyday lives and upsets who we thought we were and what we thought we could do. Failure is an unraveling process that can offer a different relationship to knowledge. Both pain and failure begin with a moment of rupture, a rupture that begins the story, a narrative that is often told orally in the same way stories of birth, surgery, illness, and addiction are repeated again and again.”
“Pain is claustrophobic, not only because we are trapped in our damaged bodies, but also because our spiritual ideas are shaken, possibly even obliterated.”
"Suppose for a moment," writes Anne Boyer in her book The Undying, "the claims about pain's ineffability are historically specific and ideological, that pain is widely declared inarticulate for the reasons that we are not supposed to share a language for how we really feel."
“I have thought about this: Suffering, no matter its cause, separates you from the world you knew and pushes you into a limbo between what was and what might be. Prayer and meditation are attempts to make a hole inside that abyss, to make a space inside the claustrophobia of suffering, to cut the cut.”
“Philosopher Elaine Scarry has famously claimed that pain destroys language; in our worst moments, we are speechless animals. Of all human experiences, physical pain is the most slippery, the hardest to articulate.”
“His body's vulnerability widens his empathy.”
“Suffering is complex: Wider than pain and sickness, it's a premonition of the ultimate disorder of one's person; it's the frustration of the fulfllment of one's being, an experience of alienation, helplessness, hopelessness; it's a threat to one's social position; it's a loss of a former self and a former way of life; it's the uncertainty of the focus and hope in one's life; it's the nexus where finitude and infinity meet.”
“Weil describes suffering as a kind of currency "passed from hand to hand until it reaches someone who receives it but does not pass it on." Our suffering is not outside the natural order but a part of it. Weil believed that in the deepest part of our subjectivity, suffering has to be acknowledged. We need to see ourselves clearly and be honest about our pain; otherwise, we will project our suffering out onto the world. "We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact," she writes. "It is better to say "I am suffering' than to say 'this landscape is ugly?"”
“What do we expect when we are in despair?" wrote Jewish theologian Martin Buber. "Surely a presence by means of which we are told that nevertheless there is meaning."”
“One way to understand life is to accept duality. Sickness and health, suffering and the release from suffering, pain and pleasure, life and death. People are destroyed not by suffering but by suffering that is devoid of meaning. Meaning is bigger than a diagnosis or a cure. "Illness could be a major subject," writes disability activist Johanna Hedva. "It could be like love, war, coming ot age, identity, family. It could be this thing that we understand ourselves going through as a crucible that forms us." It's hard not to think ot Franz Kafka, Simone Weil, and Kurt Cobain, who rejected faux positivity and instead centered their work in their vul-nerability, their body's impossible fragility, its susceptibility to metaphysical woes.”
“"The more people anticipate the elimination of suffering, wrote German theologian Dorothee Sölle, "the less strength they have to oppose it. Whoever deals with his personal suffering only in the way our society has taught him —through illusion, minimization, suppression, apathy — will deal with societal suffering in the same way." Sölle argues that we must let go of our "narcissistic hope" of being free of sickness, deformity, and death, if we can; then the energy that was wasted on these hopes can be focused out onto the world's struggle. "Our own pain, which we have accepted, will then be related to the pains of the people among whom we live" God, for Sölle, is not an alien superpower but that which occurs between people.”
“What can be learned from bearing witness to such anguish? We have to arrive at that difficult point," writes the fifteenth-century German thinker Nicholas of Cusa, "where we don't know what is going on or what we can do. That precise point is an opening to true faith."”
“Pain, while terrible, connects us to others both known and unknown. It can also be projected out and held in art, poetry, music, and religion. Creativity itself is nurtured by suffering. For me, writing — working on sentences for rhythm and clarity, detailing fictional characters whose pain can mediate my own — is an effective painkiller.”
“The link between pain and art is generative, but the link between religion and pain is more complicated. The best theologies acknowledge pain as a reality not to be masochistically worshiped, but to connect with other people as well as the divine. Pain always has meaning, not because it is good but because bodies always have meaning.”
As someone who has struggled and become intimate with chronic pain over decades, I’ve read a few books about the subject. This Is the Door has become a favourite. Drawing from a wide array of fascinating sources and with the liberal use of many references and quotations, (which I adored), Steinke moves fluidly through essays on various body parts as well as Heartache, Suffering, Soul and Healing.
I appreciate how Steinke poses the necessary questions to dive deeper into the connection between pain and faith. Steinke’s background is Lutheran and the focus throughout is on Christian faith, I was nonetheless pleased to see some paragraphs about Buddhism.
Steinke explores the pain of many people, from those in life to those throughout history. Famous figures include Frida Kahlo, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Simone Weil, Kurt Cobain and Bernadette of Lourdes.
Classified as Literary Criticism, This Is the Door is a fascinating and thoughtful discourse for anyone interested in understanding more about the complex interactions between pain and faith.
Favourite Quotes
“I walk a tightrope between raging against my pain and trying to search for any scraps of meaning that might be left in its wreckage, and this is what a whole earth of sufferers is experiencing. Pain, like an extreme version of modern secular life, forces me to exist without foundation or certainty. Does pain educate? Is pain always a physical experience of negation? What can we learn from wounding, from winnowing, from the stillness, the de-creation that intense pain brings? Does pain obliterate me but also somehow re-create me? Is it possible to be created a second time? The pain of my birth brought me into life. Now pain transforms me again, changing my values, my empathy, my idea of the world around me, even the depth and intensity of my ability to love.”
“Pain made me realize I was less a creature with a reliable inner identity than a penetrable ecosystem.”
“Pain is a kind of failure. The queer philosopher Jack Halberstam has written that failure is a "hidden history of permission in a culture of optimism." Failure allows the truth to come out, and pain, like failure, lets us be honest about our vulnerable bodies, our fears, our struggles, and our grief. Pain, like failure, breaks into our everyday lives and upsets who we thought we were and what we thought we could do. Failure is an unraveling process that can offer a different relationship to knowledge. Both pain and failure begin with a moment of rupture, a rupture that begins the story, a narrative that is often told orally in the same way stories of birth, surgery, illness, and addiction are repeated again and again.”
“Pain is claustrophobic, not only because we are trapped in our damaged bodies, but also because our spiritual ideas are shaken, possibly even obliterated.”
"Suppose for a moment," writes Anne Boyer in her book The Undying, "the claims about pain's ineffability are historically specific and ideological, that pain is widely declared inarticulate for the reasons that we are not supposed to share a language for how we really feel."
“I have thought about this: Suffering, no matter its cause, separates you from the world you knew and pushes you into a limbo between what was and what might be. Prayer and meditation are attempts to make a hole inside that abyss, to make a space inside the claustrophobia of suffering, to cut the cut.”
“Philosopher Elaine Scarry has famously claimed that pain destroys language; in our worst moments, we are speechless animals. Of all human experiences, physical pain is the most slippery, the hardest to articulate.”
“His body's vulnerability widens his empathy.”
“Suffering is complex: Wider than pain and sickness, it's a premonition of the ultimate disorder of one's person; it's the frustration of the fulfllment of one's being, an experience of alienation, helplessness, hopelessness; it's a threat to one's social position; it's a loss of a former self and a former way of life; it's the uncertainty of the focus and hope in one's life; it's the nexus where finitude and infinity meet.”
“Weil describes suffering as a kind of currency "passed from hand to hand until it reaches someone who receives it but does not pass it on." Our suffering is not outside the natural order but a part of it. Weil believed that in the deepest part of our subjectivity, suffering has to be acknowledged. We need to see ourselves clearly and be honest about our pain; otherwise, we will project our suffering out onto the world. "We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact," she writes. "It is better to say "I am suffering' than to say 'this landscape is ugly?"”
“What do we expect when we are in despair?" wrote Jewish theologian Martin Buber. "Surely a presence by means of which we are told that nevertheless there is meaning."”
“One way to understand life is to accept duality. Sickness and health, suffering and the release from suffering, pain and pleasure, life and death. People are destroyed not by suffering but by suffering that is devoid of meaning. Meaning is bigger than a diagnosis or a cure. "Illness could be a major subject," writes disability activist Johanna Hedva. "It could be like love, war, coming ot age, identity, family. It could be this thing that we understand ourselves going through as a crucible that forms us." It's hard not to think ot Franz Kafka, Simone Weil, and Kurt Cobain, who rejected faux positivity and instead centered their work in their vul-nerability, their body's impossible fragility, its susceptibility to metaphysical woes.”
“"The more people anticipate the elimination of suffering, wrote German theologian Dorothee Sölle, "the less strength they have to oppose it. Whoever deals with his personal suffering only in the way our society has taught him —through illusion, minimization, suppression, apathy — will deal with societal suffering in the same way." Sölle argues that we must let go of our "narcissistic hope" of being free of sickness, deformity, and death, if we can; then the energy that was wasted on these hopes can be focused out onto the world's struggle. "Our own pain, which we have accepted, will then be related to the pains of the people among whom we live" God, for Sölle, is not an alien superpower but that which occurs between people.”
“What can be learned from bearing witness to such anguish? We have to arrive at that difficult point," writes the fifteenth-century German thinker Nicholas of Cusa, "where we don't know what is going on or what we can do. That precise point is an opening to true faith."”
“Pain, while terrible, connects us to others both known and unknown. It can also be projected out and held in art, poetry, music, and religion. Creativity itself is nurtured by suffering. For me, writing — working on sentences for rhythm and clarity, detailing fictional characters whose pain can mediate my own — is an effective painkiller.”
“The link between pain and art is generative, but the link between religion and pain is more complicated. The best theologies acknowledge pain as a reality not to be masochistically worshiped, but to connect with other people as well as the divine. Pain always has meaning, not because it is good but because bodies always have meaning.”
January 23, 2026
Thank you to the publishers for sending me a copy in exchange for a review.
This is a non fiction kind of memoir, but also a historical and scientific look at pain.
I really enjoyed learning with this book, it was written in a way that made the science easy to understand, and the inclusion of trans people as well as the nod to the inequality of medicine for Black people (many doctors still believe to this day that Black people feel less pain than white people which is a racist myth from the Slave Traders).
As someone who suffers with Fibromyalgia, I found it to be honest, interesting and in a way comforting.
This is a non fiction kind of memoir, but also a historical and scientific look at pain.
I really enjoyed learning with this book, it was written in a way that made the science easy to understand, and the inclusion of trans people as well as the nod to the inequality of medicine for Black people (many doctors still believe to this day that Black people feel less pain than white people which is a racist myth from the Slave Traders).
As someone who suffers with Fibromyalgia, I found it to be honest, interesting and in a way comforting.
March 30, 2026
I listened to this memoir -the abridged version on BBC Radio 4. I thought it was excellent. The author had done her research well and it was very informed about chronic pain. I thought she struck a good balance about what real physical pain is and how it makes you feel and also how it could ruin you if you let it.
July 26, 2026
Pain occurs in the bones, muscles, and tissue but also in the brain. It is a corporal experience but also a spiritual one that points to the body’s possible calamities, its mysteries, and most of all, its darkness. Pain receptors, or nociceptive neurons, are free nerve endings located all over the body. They fire individually but feel like a united force. “The figure or shape of the sensation,” writes theology professor Ariel Glucklich in his book Sacred Pain, “does not assemble itself out of separate nociceptive units, but feels whole, even when it is experienced as motion, in shooting pain or the spread of migraine aura.”
“I must let this pain flow through me and pass on,” writes Audre Lorde. “If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, shatter me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person I touch.”
As a person with chronic pain that seems to be worsening, I really appreciated the wide angle view the author used to illuminate the dark places. I wonder if anyone who hasn’t experienced pain will read this, and hope they do, it is a window into what it means to be human. Thich Nhat Hanh taught a long time ago, and I read it before my physical pain started, that the reality is that our bodies are prone to breakdown and death, and there is no way to escape that reality. Some people escape the excessive pain part of their life, but I wonder if anyone really escapes PAIN, the big canopy encompassing all the possible ways pains shows up. The book is a little disjointed, with too much time spent on the famous men in history that contributed to the death and pain defying culture, but worthwhile. I can’t say I would want any of my loved ones to read it, I don’t know if it explains my experience, but it expands the heart to include all of us, and knowing I am not alone is a type of medicine.
During menopause, the hot flashes, sleeplessness, and disorientation I felt made me want to find a philosophy that could hold my suffering. I came to realize that menopause was not a disease but a natural process, one that needed to be recontextualized rather than shut down. But I have not been able to accept my back pain as an organic part of my body. It feels like a separate force with an independent life. I am not able to normalize or even to understand it. But I want to try. What, if anything, does pain mean?
When I started this book, I wanted to try to understand how pain changed me for the better and for the worse. But pain’s legacy is hard to pin down. I worked with a therapist for a year before I finally got out from under the fear that the pain would come back. As that terror subsided, I found myself more permeable, more empathetic, closer to the reality of life’s fragility but also its wonder. When I see people on the street limping, using canes or walkers, I understand with a new connectivity that they don’t just have mobility issues; they are also in pain. “As our bodies break down,” my husband recently said to me, “I hope we can be gentle with one another.” The two of us are closer to oblivion now, which makes our incarnation all the more precious. Pain made a hole inside me, a space that remains open, tender, and mysterious. “I wish you to have in your heart that wound of divine love,” wrote Bernadette, “which will never heal here below.”
My medicine:
“I must let this pain flow through me and pass on,” writes Audre Lorde. “If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, shatter me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person I touch.”
As a person with chronic pain that seems to be worsening, I really appreciated the wide angle view the author used to illuminate the dark places. I wonder if anyone who hasn’t experienced pain will read this, and hope they do, it is a window into what it means to be human. Thich Nhat Hanh taught a long time ago, and I read it before my physical pain started, that the reality is that our bodies are prone to breakdown and death, and there is no way to escape that reality. Some people escape the excessive pain part of their life, but I wonder if anyone really escapes PAIN, the big canopy encompassing all the possible ways pains shows up. The book is a little disjointed, with too much time spent on the famous men in history that contributed to the death and pain defying culture, but worthwhile. I can’t say I would want any of my loved ones to read it, I don’t know if it explains my experience, but it expands the heart to include all of us, and knowing I am not alone is a type of medicine.
During menopause, the hot flashes, sleeplessness, and disorientation I felt made me want to find a philosophy that could hold my suffering. I came to realize that menopause was not a disease but a natural process, one that needed to be recontextualized rather than shut down. But I have not been able to accept my back pain as an organic part of my body. It feels like a separate force with an independent life. I am not able to normalize or even to understand it. But I want to try. What, if anything, does pain mean?
When I started this book, I wanted to try to understand how pain changed me for the better and for the worse. But pain’s legacy is hard to pin down. I worked with a therapist for a year before I finally got out from under the fear that the pain would come back. As that terror subsided, I found myself more permeable, more empathetic, closer to the reality of life’s fragility but also its wonder. When I see people on the street limping, using canes or walkers, I understand with a new connectivity that they don’t just have mobility issues; they are also in pain. “As our bodies break down,” my husband recently said to me, “I hope we can be gentle with one another.” The two of us are closer to oblivion now, which makes our incarnation all the more precious. Pain made a hole inside me, a space that remains open, tender, and mysterious. “I wish you to have in your heart that wound of divine love,” wrote Bernadette, “which will never heal here below.”
My medicine:
March 31, 2026
The author frames the book as being about pain drawing from her own experiences with back pain. Almost half of the book is devoted to discussing pain as it relates to specific body parts and organs, ie, the spine, knees, heart, brain, skin, and breast. The conversations are often only marginally or tangentially related to the subject matter, and disorganized as they veer from a discussion of historical diagnosis and treatment, to the experiences of the author and her parents, which are mostly biographical in nature, and occasionally that of other individuals, to faith related experiences.
The book then goes totally off-track as it discusses heartache, suffering, soul and healing in chapters focused more on faith than on the pain people are suffering. Several of the chapters in this segment such as the one on healing would have been better-served as essays or magazine articles because they are poorly linked to the subject matter. To cite one example the author’s experiences at Lourdes add little to the subject of healing since they offer no solutions for the reader who may be perusing this book to find hope and means for possibly alleviating their own pain.
The book rates 2.5 stars.
The book then goes totally off-track as it discusses heartache, suffering, soul and healing in chapters focused more on faith than on the pain people are suffering. Several of the chapters in this segment such as the one on healing would have been better-served as essays or magazine articles because they are poorly linked to the subject matter. To cite one example the author’s experiences at Lourdes add little to the subject of healing since they offer no solutions for the reader who may be perusing this book to find hope and means for possibly alleviating their own pain.
The book rates 2.5 stars.
March 22, 2026
I'm really glad I picked this up on a whim.
Interestingly, in America, it's subtitle is "The Body, Pain & Faith", not "Notes from a Body in Pain". Had it been the latter, I might have hesitated to buy it, and at first I felt a little misled, but the more I read, the more I understood that faith is so intrinsically linked to the experience of pain. How had I not realised that before? Stienke does a great job of exploring this connection (from both ends of the spectrum) without the prose ever veering into preaching territory.
I do think that some inclusions were a little self-indulgent, chief amongst them, an almost entire page reserved for an "illustration of the author's heart tattoo" -- that added nothing to the chapter that couldn't have been briefly referenced via text, in my opinion.
Overall, the book allowed me to view pain from all sorts of perspectives, and for that I am thankful. I finished the final page feeling more attuned to my own struggles, and hopefully, to the struggles of those around me, too.
Interestingly, in America, it's subtitle is "The Body, Pain & Faith", not "Notes from a Body in Pain". Had it been the latter, I might have hesitated to buy it, and at first I felt a little misled, but the more I read, the more I understood that faith is so intrinsically linked to the experience of pain. How had I not realised that before? Stienke does a great job of exploring this connection (from both ends of the spectrum) without the prose ever veering into preaching territory.
I do think that some inclusions were a little self-indulgent, chief amongst them, an almost entire page reserved for an "illustration of the author's heart tattoo" -- that added nothing to the chapter that couldn't have been briefly referenced via text, in my opinion.
Overall, the book allowed me to view pain from all sorts of perspectives, and for that I am thankful. I finished the final page feeling more attuned to my own struggles, and hopefully, to the struggles of those around me, too.
May 5, 2026
A must read. Darcey Steinke's This is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith. A sweeping account that is equal parts memoir, historical medical reportage, interview, and journalism.
An impressive breadth and depth of research and references across multi-disciplines including literature, music, science/medicine, historical lay persons as well as religious figures.
Deeply self-reflective and soulful. And at the same time, Steinke nurtures empathetic space for emotionally insightful stories of the mind-body connection of others who have journeyed through pain. Powerful and haunting; yet also surprisingly hopeful about what binds our shared humanity, and an exploration of ways in which healing finds its way into life’s process.
An impressive breadth and depth of research and references across multi-disciplines including literature, music, science/medicine, historical lay persons as well as religious figures.
Deeply self-reflective and soulful. And at the same time, Steinke nurtures empathetic space for emotionally insightful stories of the mind-body connection of others who have journeyed through pain. Powerful and haunting; yet also surprisingly hopeful about what binds our shared humanity, and an exploration of ways in which healing finds its way into life’s process.
July 4, 2026
Darcey Steinke is one of those semi-obscure authors that I like (though I've only read one other book) and don't talk about much. This book is essays rather than direct fiction. And, it's probably only going to touch people who know something, personally, about chronic pain. But if so, you will find it a very compelling read. It's personal, but dwells in other people's encounters with pain, and then a great deal of the book ends up being different accounts of historical events, dealing with loss, healing. Overall I really loved the book.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Of the three—body, pain, and faith—it’s pain, true pain, that is undoubtable. One can doubt, in a classroom-way, the existence of the body, etc. Faith involves doubt by definition. But true pain is of a different order. It’s beyond skepticism. No one is agnostic about it. Darcey captures this perfectly.
I’m excited to be speaking with her about this wonderful, instantly unforgettable book.
I’m excited to be speaking with her about this wonderful, instantly unforgettable book.
June 15, 2026
I love Darcey Steinke's writing. This deep dive into how the human body may experience pain and illness, alongside her and her family's stories, opens us all to curiosity and discovery about what it can be like to have a body. For some reason, I wasn't expecting the ventures into world religions, but it worked beautifully for me.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This makes you feel seen, not alone, and also well informed about chronic pain. A reasonable balanced book about what real physical pain is and how it makes you feel and how it can ruin you if you let it. Some very relatable information in this book. Worth the read.
May 4, 2026
The final chapter moved me to tears.
May 9, 2026
Loved it.
Pain, art, faith.
Pain, art, faith.
May 18, 2026
You don't have to suffer chronic physical pain to appreciate this book but it will help you to develop a nuanced understanding of the condition rooted in philosophy, spiritualism, artistry and love.
June 2, 2026
Some wonderful gems are littered throughout but a little too meandery for me.
June 28, 2026
Not bad. A bit boring, too religious and superficial.
July 5, 2026
This is one of the clearest examples of starting with a question (this time, of the body, pain, and faith), and digging into all its many answers.
Did Not Finish
August 17, 2026actually not helpful right now. and also not what i had expected
September 8, 2026
Interesting viewing of chronic illness at the intersection of religion
September 25, 2026
This is not a tight book. It meanders all over the place and none of the chapters ever really land. What was that about? Ok, so what are you saying?
November 16, 2025
I found this book so moving and beautiful. This Is the Door is a nuanced study of pain and spirituality, with the writer's perspective complemented by a chorus of literary, scholarly, and everyday voices. This book will stay with me forever. I cannot recommend it highly enough!!
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