Jill Duggar has no problem telling the truth about her relationship with her 19 Kids and Counting family. She recently released her first memoir, Counting the Cost, which details her life in one of reality TV’s most famous families. Over the last few years, Jill has been the most vocal about being estranged from her parents in the wake of her brother Josh’s imprisonment, especially when it comes to her father, Jim Bob Duggar. It’s an understatement to say that her relationship with her dad has suffered the most since she began speaking up about what really happened to her and why she chose to distance herself from her family.
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Jill revealed her dad's reaction to her book in a new interview.
According to Jill, Jim Bob was already against the book before he had a chance to read it and he put the family on alert as soon as it was announced.
"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 that they would be cut out of the inheritance," she told Today.
Jim Bob believes that his children 'owe' IBLP their lives.
As if that wasn’t enough, Jim Bob tried to insinuate to his children that they "owe" their lives to Bill Gothard, the disgraced founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, the extreme fundamentalist Christian organization Jim Bob and Michelle belong to, because he encouraged them to have so many children.
Jill and Derick set boundaries for their interactions with her family.
She describes her current relationship with her parents and other siblings as "complicated."
"We just had to draw some pretty strict boundaries and just put things in a healthier place," she explained. "So while I love my parents and I respect them and honor them, I just have to prioritize our family unit and do what’s best and healthy for Derick and I and our kids."
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They even had to resort to threatening Jim Bob with legal measures.
Jill revealed that she has a better relationship with her mother Michelle, and still sees her for occasions like birthdays and holidays. She also shared that Michelle was "super helpful" after Jill had her third child last year. Unfortunately, her relationship with Jim Bob is still harder to maintain.
"My relationship with my dad got pretty toxic to the point where we had to cut off individual contact with him … It got to the point where Derick was there to step in and kind of say, 'Hey, don’t reach out to my wife individually or else I’ll have to file a protective order,' just because it was so hard for me to handle," she said.
Jill and Derick were prepared to take extreme measures, if necessary.
Derick added that it wasn’t something the couple wanted to do, but that Jim Bob "knew that Jill was, not in a bad way, but very emotional, very tender hearted."
"So he would play to that. And I’d asked, 'Please don’t contact her on her own, one-on-one.' And then he had done that again. That’s when I basically said, 'Hey, if you can’t abide by this boundary, because we’re trying to do better setting boundaries, then I’ll have to file a protective order," Derick said.
As for the future of their family relationships, anything's possible.
Jill isn’t opposed to a reconciliation with her parents, but she says "real change" would need to happen before they could get to that point.
"We do love our family ultimately, and I would love for my kids to have their grandparents involved more in their lives, but we also want to make sure that it’s a healthy relationship," she said.
