Courtesy of Jill Duggar/Instagram; Getty
Jill Duggar Reveals if Parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar Read ‘Counting the Cost’
Jill Dillard (née Duggar) revealed she “heard” her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, listened to her September 2023 memoir, Counting the Cost, amid their estranged relationship.
“I didn’t like sit down and have a conversation and say, ‘What do you think of the book?’” Jill, 32, joked alongside her husband, Derick Dillard, during the Wednesday, January 10 episode of “The Unplanned Podcast.” “Not that kind of thing.”
The mom of three explained that she heard it through the “grapevine” that both of her parents listened to her memoir through audiobook, but opted to “tread lightly” when discussing them.
“I also don’t want to just like create more controversy,” Jill told hosts Matt Howard and Abby Howard, calling her book a “sore subject” with her parents. “I know that they would probably want to sit down with a therapist or something and just hash it out, but we’ve tried that before and it just is not the healthiest way to go about it.”
Jill and Derick, 34, admitted they were “still on the road to figuring things out” regarding the tense dynamic with Jim Bob, 58, and Michelle, 57.
The Counting On alum has been vocal about her strained relationship with her parents, sparking after she began speaking out against the large family in the years following their time on the TLC shows 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On, as well as in their September 2023 memoir, Counting the Cost.
In the tell-all book, the couple — who wed in 2014 — made numerous allegations about Jim Bob and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, including claims the patriarch stole money from them and banned them from the Duggar family home.
While promoting her tell-all book, the Counting the Cost author alleged her father’s initial reaction was sending a seemingly threatening text message to the large family.
“My dad texted the entire family group text (since we’re still in the group thread) and he was just saying, ‘This is so sad’ and basically threatening that if anybody speaks out against him or my mom [Michelle Duggar] that they would be cut out of the inheritance,” Jill told Today.com the same month her book released.
Jill and Derick hinted their book could be valuable in the future to Jill’s younger siblings still living in the Duggar family home who have “one voice” they are hearing.
“Everyone’s on their own journey and they’re at a different place in their journey and this book is for them, just as much as it is for other people,” Derick recalled in the interview. “Even doing podcasts like this, sometimes we’re trying to communicate to siblings and say like we’re trying to everything to live at peace and we realize certain siblings have one voice that they’re hearing from, and they don’t hear our voice.”
Jill is seemingly on amicable terms with her family as she reunited with them for the 2023 Christmas celebrations at the brood’s Arkansas compound.
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