Few of us will ever understand what it’s actually like to grow up in a home with 18 siblings, but former Counting On star Jinger Duggar has been sharing more and more about her unusual childhood now that she and husband Jeremy Vuolo are recording their podcast again. On this week’s episode of The Jinger & Jeremy Podcast, Jinger opened up about her first year of marriage to Jeremy, and the major “identity crisis” that came with it as she lived away from home and her family for the first time in her life.
More from CafeMom: Video of Jennifer Lopez’s Mom Reacting to Idea of her Getting Back With Diddy Resurfaces
Jinger and Jeremy were looking back on the early days of their marriage.
The couple was looking back on what their first year of marriage was like, and Jinger admitted that she believed that year was the “hardest” they’ve had so far because of the huge change she made in her life. After living in a house with all of her siblings and parents and never going anywhere alone, leaving Arkansas for Texas and living with just her husband came as a bit of a shock to her.
New fears popped up in Jinger's life without her 'comfort zone.'
“I realized in that time [that] I was afraid to go to coffee with a friend,” she said. “I was petrified in fear of having to do things by myself because I had a security blanket of having people around me all the time, whether that was siblings or even a close friend.”
More from CafeMom: Tallulah Willis Says She ‘Hated’ Herself Before She Was Diagnosed With Autism at 29
This is what led to what Jinger calls an 'identity crisis.'
She explained that without being known for her place in the Duggar family puzzle, she was faced with the task of figuring out “who I was as a person.”
“I had the identity crisis of, ‘OK. I know who I was in my family, but who am I as an individual now?’” she said.
She added that this time was also when she began to question her religious beliefs after growing up in the Institute in Basic Life Principles, the fundamentalist Christian sect that the Duggar family is part of.
“I was realizing that some of these things that I thought I really held dear, like the teachings of Bill Gothard, I’m realizing I’m not believing that anymore. And that was a huge shift,” she said.
Everything else in their marriage was smooth sailing that year.
Jeremy said that at first, he saw that year as a “breeze,” but after seeing it from Jinger’s perspective, he realized that she did go through a lot of tough changes during that year.
“We got along super well. I would say there were challenges just from me adjusting. It was more, like, adjustment challenges,” Jinger agreed.
Jinger has really seemed to come into her own these days.
Eight years (and two kids) later, she and Jeremy seem to be as happy together as they’ve ever been — and Jinger really seems to have figured out who she is, even if it’s different from who she might have imagined she’d be as an adult.
Good for her for being brave enough to find out!
