Profiting Off the Scars

Why Your Favorite Deconstruction Influencer is a Lie

There’s a suicide that has ripped through the Evangelical Deconstruction echo chamber, and it’s exposing a rotten core.

I didn’t know who this guy was until yesterday, but the dark truth behind his story is a pattern I’ve watched play out for years. I’ve wanted to blow the whistle on this hypocrisy for a long time, but I’ve been holding my tongue.

Ryan Stollar built his brand on being the saviour of abused kids in religious and homeschooling environments. He was a “Child Liberation Theologian.”

Then he killed himself, leaving behind a suicide note explicitly designed to punish his audience. I’m not linking to it; I refuse to give his final act of control any more traffic.

I read the letter, and we need to talk about what it actually is: a masterclass in weaponized guilt, blame-shifting, and pure malice.

The grim irony is that Ryan built a career fighting abuse and authored the first and only comprehensive curricula on child abuse awareness and suicide prevention specifically tailored to homeschooling families and communities, while actively practicing it. But let’s be honest - this isn’t an anomaly. It is an operating procedure for deconstruction influencers with massive followings. The ex-evangelical movement has just built its own version of the cults they claim to escape. These “gurus” preach liberation on their feeds while running psychological dictatorships behind closed doors, proving that the desire to control others doesn’t disappear when you leave the church - it just changes its branding.

In his note, he threw a parting tantrum at his wife for daring to divorce him, sneering, “I hope you find your athletic world traveler with no trauma.” It’s a line straight from the abuser’s playbook, and I know it by heart. My ex-husband used that exact brand of psychological terrorism on me for years. Rather than doing the actual, agonizing work of fixing his own brokenness, he used suicide threats and attempts as a leash to keep me trapped, drowning in guilt.

The reality of that “guilt” isn’t abstract for me. I literally had to cut my ex-husband down from the ceiling during his last attempt, hacking at the rope of neckties in my own bathroom while my children played downstairs, completely oblivious to the horror above them.

That wasn’t a cry for help; it was his fifth time using his own life as a weapon. I spent years walking on eggshells in my own home. We both survived the same religious trauma and abuse, but I didn’t use my wounds as an excuse to hold him hostage in a psychological prison. I vowed to heal and take control of my life; he chose to become the monster he claimed to hate.

The deconstruction industry is a parasitic joke. It’s crawling with influencers hawking high-priced courses, masterclasses, and digital snake oil, demanding you pay them top dollar just to tell you if you were in a cult. They are literally monetizing your trauma and selling your own freedom back to you. I’ve blocked a massive chunk of them from my feeds because I refuse to buy into the exact same financial exploitation we supposedly left behind.

Let’s be real: deconstructing is fucking brutal. Anyone selling a quick fix or a five-step program is lying to you. It is agonizing, hourly, unrelenting work. It drains you to the bone.

But it’s a gruelling choice I make every single day because I have to. Thriving demands it. I do the work because I refuse to live the rest of my life with the claws of religious abuse buried in my back, and I don’t need a self-appointed internet guru’s subscription plan to pry them out.

Ryan’s wife, Scarlettah, will probably never read this, but anyone else trapped in that same psychological chokehold needs to hear the unvarnished truth: It is not your fault. You are not responsible for their death. Choosing to protect and love yourself is never a crime, even if it means walking away from someone who is actively drinking their own poison.

I am not responsible for the systemic abuse my ex-husband dragged me through. I am not responsible for the ropes he tied around his own neck. I am not responsible for how pathetic his life has been since I walked out the door.

I chose myself. I chose peace, I chose safety, and I chose survival. And I damn sure don’t need a hypocritical deconstruction influencer to empty my bank account just to give me permission to breathe.

Is this a harsh, ugly truth instead of a watered-down session of shared grief? Yes. Absolutely. But I’m not here to coddle dead abusers or protect the living ones. I have zero desire to be another pristine, marketable influencer. I’m here to tell my story, and I’m going to tell it without the filter.