Ecstaticism: A Transmission from the Threshold

KAELAN STROUSE WAS BORN DROWNING. AND THEN ALL THE OTHER DEATHS CAME.

Ecstaticism is a genre-blurring work of memoir, myth, mysticism, and embodied philosophy about what happens when the identities and certainties we have built our lives around collapse.

Meandering through grief, queerness, sexuality, spiritual rupture, and the strange beauty of being alive, Kaelan Strouse explores the thresholds between who we have been and who we are becoming. Weaving intimate memoir with irreverent myth, animist wonder, and erotic devotion, he asks us to reconsider what makes a life sacred. What if the point was never to transcend our humanity, but to fall more deeply in love with it?

What remains is an unruly love letter to this fleeting, imperfect, sacred life-and to those with whom we share it.

"Kaelan Strouse teaches people to fuck shame and live authentically."

- Billy Porter, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award-winning actor, singer, and author

"As a queer person, I especially loved the idea that the things that make us different might actually be the most special parts of us. Its honest, weird, sexy, spiritual, and a little filthy. Spirituality with its clothes off-and I LIVE for that."

- Trinity the Tuck, drag artist, performer, and RuPauls Drag Race All Stars winner

"I cant help but wonder how different and easier my journey might have been had I read this when I was younger... I feel damn lucky to have read Kaes triumphant story about not just loving but forgiving and embracing our full selves."

- William Norwich, author of My Mrs. Brown and longtime Vogue writer and editor