Jill Duggar Has Distanced Herself From Her Family

Okay but to be honest, wouldn’t we all do the same? Although our version of distance might be to move as far away from the sulfuric stench of Yellow Pocket Angels Eggs as possible. In Jill Duggar’s case, it just means not joining the rest of her 1.8 million brothers and sisters on television, in exchange for the freedom to just live her gosh-darn life how she wants to.

29-year-old Jill Duggar, the fourth-oldest of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 kids, first appeared on the Discover Health docu-special 14 Children and Pregnant Again in 2004, when she was 13. She became a big part of TLC’s 17 Kids and Counting (later updated to 19 Kids and Counting) when it premiered in 2008. She was 17, so she got storylines about potential courting and being a teenager and all that. Eventually, she started courting her now-husband Derrick Dillard, and she got her own spin-off with her sister Jessa Duggar, Jill & Jessa: Counting On. After Derrick revealed himself to be fully transphobic on Twitter in 2017, TLC let everyone know the Duggar-Dillards were done filming. But they didn’t really do anything else, until now, when Jill has decided to talk about why you don’t see her or her family on TV.

People magazine spoke to Jill about her departure from TLC and she says that when she was with TLC, she really didn’t have much choice in anything she did.

“Our control to choose what jobs we were allowed to accept and even where we were allowed to live was taken away from us,” Jill says, adding that goals they’d had as a couple were squashed if they conflicted with the network or family’s plans.

Jill and Derrick have two kids: Israel, 5, and Samuel, 3. In the Duggar world, Jill should have technically had many more kids by now, but Jill isn’t like the rest of her family. People notes that Jill wears jeans, cuts her hair shorter, she has been known to throw back a cocktail or a glass of wine, she’s got a nose ring, and she’s taken pics in swimwear before. Jill knows that those are no-nos in her family, and she doesn’t care.

“Sometimes it’s a good thing being okay with other people not being okay.”

One of the biggest no-nos that she’s broken is the recent admission that she and Derrick use birth control. Jill and Derrick got into it during a video Q&A posted to their YouTube channel last month. Jill explained that they use non-hormonal birth control (ie. condoms and stuff) because she doesn’t want to cause an “abortion.” You can take the Duggar out of the…well, you get it. Both Jill and Derrick also claim to have friends that aren’t Christian, and friends who are LGBTQ.

According to People, Jill has also talked about going to therapy, which might explain how she got the courage to not give a crap what her family thinks about her choices. As for being away from their family’s shows, Derrick says it’s given them freedom they didn’t really have.

I’m going to guess one of the topics Jill brought up in therapy was the lengths she and Derrick went to try to get paid back for their time on TV. People says that Jim Bob Duggar reportedly handled the reality TV money for the family. Jill and Derrick have revealed that they had to get an attorney involved to get the money they were owed.

Jim Bob, 55, was reportedly the primary payee for 19 Kids and then for Counting On, which came with an estimated $25,000 to $45,000 per episode paycheck, yet Jill tells People that she didn’t receive any compensation until she quit the show in 2017.

“That’s when we got an attorney involved and finally recovered some of the money,” she says, adding, “It was a process.” (TLC declined to comment.)

Derrick estimates that at the end of it all, they basically got paid a little more than minimum wage. Jill says she hopes to patch things up with her family eventually.

“I never expected this to happen or for it to get to this point. But I’m realizing I can’t put a timeline on healing. I love my family and they love me. I really just have to follow God’s lead and take it one day at a time.”

What I’m getting from all of this is, Jill – much to everyone’s surprise – saw the light at the end of the crunchy hairspray-covered bangs, and she decided to start living as a Duggar in name only. This kind of makes sense when you remember the awful shit that allegedly went on in their house with her older awful brother Josh Duggar (and how her parents allegedly swept it under the rug).

And the part about having to chase down their TLC money really makes sense, when you remember that last year, the Duggar compound was reportedly raided by Homeland Security over some possible criminal activity, which happened a few months after reports that the might have been conducting money schemes through their charity. Hmmm. All I know is that I would not be at all surprised if Jill called up the feds and told them to pop by with a bottle of wine, and she’d be happy to tell them everything she knows.

Pic: Instagram