Kareem Rosser and Lee Lee Jones. Photo courtesy of Kareem Rosser.
Cracking open a new book is always something of a religious experience for me as a lifelong bookworm. While I generally gravitate toward fiction reads, there is something special about getting inside someone’s brain in memoir format.
Having read Kareem Rosser’s first book, Crossing the Line, back in 2021, I knew I was in for a treat when his second memoir, When You’re Ready: A Love Story, was published this past February. For those unfamiliar with Kareem, he’s an exceptional human whose connection to horses came through the sport of polo and the Work To Ride program founded in his home city of Philadelphia by Lezlie Hiner. Kareem has worked hard throughout his life to not only find a path that led him away from the drugs and violence he bore witness to as a young man, but also to facilitate opportunities for others from similar backgrounds. Today, he serves as the Executive Vice President and is a board member for Work To Ride, which is undergoing some exciting transformations with new infrastructure being built and more to come.
While When You’re Ready brings readers up to speed on Kareem’s background, I recommend reading Crossing the Line to learn more about his upbringing and the experiences that shaped him into the person he is today. In this second book, Kareem focuses on the concept of love and his relationship with Lee Lee Jones. Lee Lee is a former eventer (the step-daughter of Phillip Dutton and daughter of Evie Dutton) who experienced a freak accident in 2016 that left her with a traumatic brain injury. The aftermath of the accident has been a journey in healing, acceptance, and above all, the power of love.
This love comes through in Kareem’s writing — from the way he describes Lee Lee and her magnetic energy, her dazzling smile, her tenacious athleticism — to how he describes the moment he knew he was “unbreakably in love” with her. He writes of his experience bringing Lee Lee home to meet his family in the Bottom — the neighborhood in which he had grown up — and how naturally she fit in with his family. He writes of how out of place he felt — a kid from the inner city, experiencing life through the eyes of a well-to-do white family that had things such as debutante balls on their social calendar — but how welcomed, included, and safe he was made to feel not only by Lee Lee herself but also by her family.
Kareem competes in the Philadelphia Polo Classic. Photo courtesy of Kareem Rosser.
As Kareem sat down to put pen to paper to tell the story of Lee Lee and the love between them, Kareem knew that vulnerability would be the key to telling the story authentically. ““I realized that if I was going to write any sort of memoir, I had to be vulnerable, or I don’t think it was worth writing,” he told me. “The important piece here is showing that side of me that most people tend to never really expose.”
Kareem expressed gratitude to spending time in therapy to help him navigate not only Lee Lee’s accident, but the deep depression he felt after as he navigated this new life with her. “Love isn’t static. It evolves,” he said. “When Lee Lee’s accident happened, it wasn’t like we were married, but I had envisioned a future together. And then I had to figure out — how do I continue loving her while also moving forward? That was the hardest thing to accept. One of the biggest things for me was actually finding the vocabulary to understand what I was going through. When you’re in a deep depression, you don’t always have the words for what’s wrong, and that can be the hardest part. Therapy helped me make sense of it all.”
Photo courtesy of Kareem Rosser.
Above all, Kareem insists that not allowing one’s trauma to define you — but also being vulnerable enough to express difficulty or when you’re struggling — is a key to navigating difficult and traumatic situations. “Rather than letting trauma divide you, use it as an opportunity to come together,” he elaborated. “My family, despite all our struggles, has always stayed together, and that’s what has gotten me through the darkest times.”
And that love amongst family rings true in both of Kareem’s books. His writing paints a picture of love in many shapes and forms, of the strength of family bonds, and how collectively we can all help each other heal. Throughout his journey with Lee Lee, Kareem struck up a deep friendship with her mother, Evie Dutton, that remains strong to this day. He writes often in When You’re Ready about the long conversations on the hood of his car after a visit with Lee Lee, and it was Evie who eventually encouraged Kareem to begin dating, assuring him that his love for Lee Lee would never diminish, even if he chose to move on in some ways. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read it yet, but this part of the book made me cry the hardest.
It is the sense of acceptance that, I believe, gives love its power. We accept those who we love where they are. This goes for our horses, our loved ones, our family members. This sense of love and acceptance permeates When You’re Ready, and I truly hope you’ll pick up a copy (and a box of tissues) and carry some pieces of it with you as you go.
To learn more about Kareem and to order a copy of his books, click here. You can also listen to a special interview with Kareem in a Mini episode of The Go Eventing Podcast here, above, or on your favorite podcast platform.
