Note: This article discusses suicide, child sexual abuse and domestic violence. It may be distressing for some readers.
On June 30, child liberation theologian and abuse survivor advocate Ryan Stollar died by suicide, following a lengthy struggle with his mental health. Stollar’s final message, a blog post titled “The End,” revealed his struggles with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, PTSD and suicidal ideation.
He wrote: “I have fought my whole life and I am too tired to keep fighting. Sometimes, when you’re in an ocean swimming against a riptide, you just run out of energy. You want to keep going with all your heart and soul but your body cannot. This is that moment for me.”
Stollar’s note is not easy to read. BNG contributor Mara Richard Bim called it a “final, calculated act by a wounded narcissist” that was “intended to destroy those whom he blames for wronging him.” She raises an important point. Stollar spent his adult life advocating against abuse, but his final words were unequivocally abusive and antithetical to everything he had spent his life fighting against. It is a combative and conflicting final message that was intended to justify his decision and offer a final blow to those whom he felt had wronged him.
Specifically, Stollar blames his ex-wife for his decision. The cover image he created for his post is a black-and-white image of the two of them in their younger years, chillingly edited so that his wife’s image appears marred or partially scrubbed out. He begins his note with the sentence, “My spouse is divorcing me” then continues saying that she has “been more patient and supportive than anyone else … but even she found my struggles to be too much.”
“Placing responsibility for one’s suicide on another person is abusive. It is coercive. It is, I believe, sinful.”
Placing responsibility for one’s suicide on another person is abusive. It is coercive. It is, I believe, sinful. Therapist and child advocate Krispin Mayfield writes that “placing this responsibility on someone else is an act of coercive control. And when suicidality hampers someone else’s autonomy to leave a relationship, it creates a dynamic of abuse and domestic violence.”
He also takes jabs at his family — his parents and his brother — for ways in which he felt they had failed him. This, too, is abusive. While these jabs are sandwiched between affirmations of love and declarations of sorrow, they are still there and they are deeply hurtful.
This vindictiveness appears to have been something Stollar struggled with. Nicholas Ducote, who co-founded Homeschoolers Anonymous with Stollar more than a decade ago, wrote that Stollar’s suicide note “shows a lot of what I saw when you got on his bad side.” Ducote had gotten on that bad side in 2018 when it was discovered Stollar had embezzled from the organization. Stollar repaid the money and resigned his position but later attempted to sue Ducote and Homeschoolers Anonymous for defamation.
Stollar also appears to repudiate his faith: “I have read the Bible backwards and forwards, I have created theology and imagined liberation amongst the ruins of my childhood faith, I have said what Jesus never did. And to what end? To whitewash tombs full of the bones of the dead. Meaningless, meaningless.”
He wonders about the existence of God: “If there is a god, I will go to my eternal destination and slap him in the face.”
He goes as far as to curse God, whom he says “never raised a finger to spare me from being molested as a child or the lifelong consequences of that abuse.”
Hurt people hurt people
Stollar’s harsh words and definitive actions led to a flurry of responses. The initial tributes I saw — including one I wrote — stayed away from the harshness and instead focused on the good Ryan had accomplished. But the harshness had to be addressed.
Bim gently yet firmly addresses the violence Ryan directed against his wife in her analysis of Stollar’s note, perhaps being able to speak more objectively and without a sense of loss as she had not previously been aware of Ryan or his work. Yet even that has drawn harsh responses to BNG opposing her analysis and calling it cruel.
Church Leaders chose a more incendiary headline focusing on Stollar’s cursing God, but did little to address it with any substance.
The truth is that Ryan Stollar was a complex and conflicted individual. His fiery words and fierce advocacy that could protect also could harm. His lived experience of abuse and trauma allowed him a survivor’s perspective but also shaped some of the unhealthy patterns through which he related to others. His advocacy work with abuse survivors helped others heal but also kept him close to his own trauma.
In the words of Kieryn Darkwater, who worked with Ryan at Coalition for Responsible Home Education, “One of his biggest flaws and also sources of power was that he was the type to set himself on fire to keep homeschool alumni and children warm.”
“Stollar’s trauma and mental illness do not excuse his abusiveness but give context for it.”
Hurt people hurt people. That doesn’t condone or excuse abuse, but it does recognize that abuse can be cyclical. Children who have grown up powerless and subject to authoritarian figures learn through that experience a way to hold power that is abusive, coercive and controlling. As an adult, even if they repudiate that upbringing, their formative experience of power means they are more likely to want to exert their own power in that way.
Stollar’s trauma and mental illness do not excuse his abusiveness but give context for it.
That is the centerpiece I see in Stollar’s final words. The ultimate cause of his death was his choice of suicide, but its proximate cause was his sexual abuse as a child. The abuse he endured as a child echoed throughout every stage of his life, including its tragic end. In his invective against God, he speaks about being molested as a child and “the lifelong consequences of that abuse.” He says, “Those consequences have slowly but surely consumed everything in my life … and soon me here as well.”
It is from that wellspring of abuse that we see Ryan’s own abusive words.
What is true and what is True
There is a difference between what is true and what is True. It is true that Stollar’s final words were abusive and harmful. It is true that he blamed his wife; that is a fact. It is not True that his wife is to blame. It is true that he cursed God and said he would slap God in the face. But I don’t think that is True, either. That is, those words are not indicative of the reality of what Ryan believed. What I hear in his last words — the placing of blame on his wife and his God — is grief and trauma and pain speaking through him.
It could be I am simply coping, imputing into Ryan’s last words a sanitized interpretation of his meaning. Maybe Ryan really did follow the advice of Job’s wife to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Maybe he meant every word. Who am I to claim he didn’t mean what he said?
I didn’t know Ryan personally; I only knew him through his advocacy work and social media. But Ryan was not one to hold back his vulnerability. As far back as 2014, he had written about his suicidality. He shared so much of himself with everyone that, even though I didn’t know him personally, I have the context of his writing to guide me.
What Ryan wrote, he wrote out of a sense of overwhelming grief and trauma.
“I suspect something similar was true here. He would have acted differently if his brain was working properly.”
In 2018, when he stepped down from his position at Homeschoolers Anonymous after stealing several hundred dollars. Stollar said his actions were the result of bipolar disorder. He returned the money, saying “I would have acted differently if my brain was working properly.”
I suspect something similar was true here. He would have acted differently if his brain was working properly. That in no way excuses the harm it has done — that harm that, I believe, he really did mean to inflict in that moment. This is not an attempt to defend Ryan or his legacy. It’s an attempt at understanding a broken and hurting human being.
It is not a perfect example, but I think of the time my young son, who deals with his own embodied trauma in the form of adoption and the loss of his first family, had a particularly emotionally exhausting day. His social battery was depleted. He had navigated a bunch of demands and here I was giving one more: “It’s time for bed.” It was the proverbial straw on the camel’s back. The dam burst. The anger raged: “Don’t tell me what to do. I don’t even want to be in this family. I don’t want you to be my dad. I just want to be an alone kid.”
It’s true he said this. It’s not True that he wants this. It’s not True that he believes it. His pain, anger and trauma created words that felt empowering in the moment. They felt like taking back control. It took a few minutes to work through the anger. The physical and mental exhaustion collapsed into sadness. He sat in my lap, safe in my arms.
Again, this is not a perfect metaphor. It’s a different example of the same dynamic at exponentially lower stakes. Ryan said some truly vile words. He thought them, wrote them down and hit send — transmitting them to an audience he knew would be traumatized by them. That was unethical, sinful and wrong. It caused harm — to his family, his friends, his followers.
His anger has left us with a lot to work through. But I believe that, now, he has worked through that anger and is resting safe in his Father’s arms.
If you or someone you know is struggling, immediate help is available. You can call or text 988 or visit the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Josh Olds
Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the small-group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.
Related:
My first experience of Ryan Stollar was his cruel suicide note | Analysis by Mara Richards Bim