TLC; Courtesy of Duggar Family/Instagram
‘Welcome to Plathville’ Star Olivia Plath Speaks Out Amid New Duggar Documentary: ‘Triggering to Watch’
Relatable. Welcome to Plathville star Olivia Plath is speaking out following Amazon Prime’s Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets documentary which focused on the former reality TV family, the Duggars.
“Good afternoon to everyone except for Bill Gothard [and] Michael Pearl,” Olivia, 25, said via her Instagram Story on Saturday, June 3. “If you know, you know that’s a rabbit hole. But I bring it up to say a few days ago, a docuseries dropped on Amazon Prime called Shiny Happy People. That was my life up until a few years ago and oh, [it was] a little triggering to watch.”
She went on to say that it was nice to hear others voice her same feelings after growing up in similar upbringings.
“That is healing in a way,” she continued, adding, “The realm in which my public life exists, there’s a lot of things I can’t say, there’s a lot of things I want to say about religion, about my past, about the world that I went right back into”
Olivia – who tied the knot with husband Ethan Plath in October 2018 – has previously opened up about her strained relationship with her faith.
“Growing up in a conservative, legalistic church left a bad taste of Christianity in my mouth,” she shared via Instagram in January 2020. “As an adult, I’ve wrestled hard with what I believe and what religion I want in my life. And here’s what I decided … I don’t want religion. I want nothing to do with religion. I want a relationship. I identify as a Christian, and I love Jesus. Jesus without all the crap and rules and hate and judgment.”
She continued, “I have friends from all walks of life, and I love people from all walks of life. They challenge my thinking, they introduce me to new concepts and they keep me from boxing myself in. I never want to be around or tolerate people who only think like me, because that’s the greatest self-harm one can do.”
On Thursday, June 1, Amazon Prime dropped a four-part docuseries centered around the 19 Kids & Counting family and their religious affiliation. The expository series featured interviews with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s daughter Jill Dillard (née Duggar), her husband, Derick Dillard, and their niece Amy King (née Duggar).
A number of bombshell revelations were exposed including Jim Bob, 57, failing to pay his children for their work on the series, Jill, 32, feeling “obligated” to defend brother Josh Duggar amid his 2015 molestation scandal and former friends of the couple claiming Jim Bob and Michelle, 56, have replaced Gothard as the head of IBLP.
Moments after the episodes were released, the Arkansas-based couple released a statement via their family blog, claiming, “We love every member of our family and will continue to do all we can to have a good relationship with each one.”
“The recent ‘documentary’ that talks about our family is sad because in it we see the media and those with ill intentions hurting people we love. Like other families, ours too has experienced the joys and heartbreaks of life, just in a very public format,” the couple continued. “This ‘documentary’ paints so much and so many in a derogatory and sensationalized way because sadly that’s the direction of entertainment these days.”
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