I'm looking to switch over to move privacy focused setup, so far i have a VPN, and will be making other changes. Is there any email providers that you know respect privacy, or how one would do this?
Use a web hosting and domain provider (eg mythic beasts), and get a email@yourdomain.tld email address. Or self host the server, if you have the ability, then you just need to buy the domain.
If you own your own domain the you can use a paid tier of a service like Proton or Tuta where the emal is you@yourdomain.tld and the backend is actually them, so you don't need to selfhost.