We Contain Multitudes
On Truth, Grief, Harm, Healing, and the Complexity of Being Human
Some deaths ask more of us than grief.
Some deaths ask us to wrestle with truth, with contradiction, and our own longing for certainty. Some deaths ask us to wrestle with the uncomfortable recognition that human beings rarely fit into the stories we’d prefer to tell about them.
I learned that lesson years ago, the first time someone died after I had left fundamentalism.
She was a supervisee of mine. It was the day before Halloween. A freak accident took her life quickly and without pain, leaving behind two young boys and countless people who loved her.
I came home that night in shock. I sat on my couch and cried, realizing I was grieving in an entirely new way. Spiritual bypassing was no longer available to me. I couldn’t reassure myself that “everything happens for a reason” or that she was “in a better place.” Those explanations no longer fit. What remained was grief—raw, disorienting, and without an instruction manual. As I sat there crying, I remember almost shaming myself. Why was I reacting so strongly to someone I had only known professionally?
And then it was as though I heard a quiet sentence rise up inside me:
“Your tears are an indication that she mattered. That her life mattered. Your tears honor the life she lived.”
I wish I could tell you that grief became easier after that. It didn’t. What changed wasn’t the grief itself. What changed was my willingness to let it be complicated. Religion had taught me to move quickly toward resolution. To explain death and to redeem it. I was taught to wrap it in certainty. But grief has never asked me for certainty. It has only ever asked me to tell the truth. Sometimes the truest thing we can say is simply: This mattered. This hurts. I wish it hadn’t happened.
Earlier this week, the exvangelical community was rocked by the news that Ryan (RL) Stollar had died by suicide. Most people learned about his death through a blog post he had scheduled before he died.
I received a text from a friend early that morning.
“Have you seen Ryan’s blog post?”
I hadn’t. So I found it and read it. In horror…
“Did he just say…?”
“Yeah.”
We spent the rest of the day texting about death, grief, abuse, truth, and complexity.
As the days unfolded, the conversation became much bigger than Ryan. In conversations with other friends and colleagues, we watched the waves of responses ebb and flow across social media. People expressed sadness, outrage, confusion, and feeling deeply triggered.
Others wrestled with trying to reconcile the Ryan they thought they knew with the Ryan they encountered in his final words. Still others found themselves recognizing—perhaps for the first time—that those old fundamentalist patterns of binary thinking and purity tests weren’t sufficient anymore. This situation was messy, tragic, and deeply unsettling.
I didn’t personally know Ryan Stollar. We were in some of the same post-religious spaces, and it’s possible we attended some of the same meetings or exchanged a few “likes” on social media over the years. I was familiar with his work and because of that remain grateful for his advocacy on behalf of children. And even though it seems clear that there were deeply complicated dynamics in many of his relationships, I am certain that the people who knew and loved him will miss him deeply and deserve love and support as they navigate an unimaginable loss.
It’s a strange thing to write about the complexity of life and death when someone you didn’t really know has died. So I want to be upfront that this essay is meant to focus on that complexity rather than the person of Ryan. That’s not to suggest that he isn’t important in this story. He is; he’s central. I just think it would be inauthentic to write as though I knew him personally when I didn’t. Instead, I want to write about the conversations his death has brought to the surface—because I think those conversations matter beyond this particular moment.
Since death, suicide, abuse, domestic violence, allegations of illegal activity, and fundamentalism are all deeply sensitive topics, I want to encourage you to consider your own capacity as you continue reading. It’s okay to leave this essay here and come back if and when you’re ready.
As I’ve observed on social media and in conversations with friends and colleagues this week, Ryan’s death has brought up a myriad of emotions. To be fair, death often does that. But not every death brings with it this particular kind of grief—a grief that has to grapple not only with the loss of a person, but also with the loss of an idea, an image, or a story we believed about them.
Perhaps that’s why so many of us have felt so unsettled this week. We aren’t just grieving a person. We’re grieving certainty.
