Jill Duggar Counting the Cost

[Annie G]

33 minutes ago, TechWife said:

I finished the book yesterday. Between watching the documentary and what I've heard over the years, none of it was surprising. Maybe it's because I was on the perimeter of some GKGW & Vision Forum circles when ds was a baby. It's all very familiar.

Same.  

[Carrie12345]

On 9/13/2023 at 11:24 AM, prairiewindmomma said:

Or does she consider Michelle more of a victim trapped in JB’s web?

While nothing like the details of the Duggars, Dh has always seen his father as the victim of his narcissist mother. I’d like to push him to work through that, but his dad died a few years ago, so it seems almost mean. Anyway, my point was supposed to simply be that, yeah, kids can overlook a lot when they’re busy processing a different aspect!

[Faith-manor]

I don't really know how Jill will process her mother's contribution to their abuse going forward. I know for me, I eventually had to acknowledge that while my mother was a victim of my father's misogyny and obsession with my brother, and then the cult of IBLP, getting out of it, and then his eventual pull back into some religious fundamentalism and ill treatment of my sister and I yet again, she also had choices she could have made. She really did. My mother was very capable of drawing lines in the sand, of taking care of herself - the local hospital wanted her in their billing and accounting department and she could have left him and had a job with good pay and full benefits - and standing up for us, she wasn't willing to do it. She preferred to maintain the status quo even when we were being so badly hurt by it. She waited until my sister was 13 years old before she gave him an ultimatum on the physical and emotional abuse of sis, and the emotional abuse of herself. And he backed down and kept to himself because he did not want to be divorced. So there is a point at which the victim is an accessory than the abuse or converts to being an abuser. Right at that line is where for me, I eventually realized that I had to process this, and as a result, my relationship with my mother forever changed. Once I crossed that Rubicon, there was no going back. She is a woman I view now with something akin to tolerance and a feeling of obligation to assist in her old age - dad is gone so that aspect of the whole thing no longer complicates matters - but not really with love. I don't love her. I am kind to her. I am probably kind more from the standpoint of filling my own emotional need to role model things for my kids, and to also not muddy the waters for them because they view her as a very loving grandma whom they are quite attached to, and I am not looking to cause them pain. I can honestly say though, I won't feel anything when she dies. I was relieved and happy when my dad passed sad to say. For her, I won't be happy she died, I simply won't have much of an emotion at all unless some sense of relief.

I could see Jill eventually processing her mother's "accessory to the crime" actions, and eventually landing in a similar place. She will have the added bonus that as the outcast kid of a huge family, she will not have any responsibility for them in old age, neither will Jinger. That is actually a really good thing for them. It is super hard to be one of three, and the other two put everything on you so you are expected to be your abuser's keeper.

Edited September 19, 2023 by Faith-manor

[Ginevra]

This book…it’s weirdly so familiar to me, yet my upbringing did not begin to be as extreme as Jill’s. 
 

I haven’t finished it yet but I’m about 85% done (just past the midnight document drop part). The letter they wrote…I did something exactly like that once. I had no ability to go against my parents in person, so that was the best idea I had in order to be heard. It landed just about exactly the way Jill’s had, and my dad reminded of all the scriptures that demonstrated why I was a terrible daughter. 
 

There’s a pretty big difference between Jinger’s book and Jill’s. For one thing, Jinger does not seem to mind the publicity part and does product promos and such even now. Jinger’s book heaped most of the blame on Gothard, but Jill’s indicts her father’s behavior directly. 
 

Anyway…not sure I have a point. Just that reading this book really reminds me of what I had to figure out and re-learn as an adult too. Even simple things, like the fact that I had a right to my own preferences, as much as anybody else. I swear I was almost 40 before I really understood that…even something like, say, wanting the bedroom door closed when I went to sleep. It’s like I had to learn that I was allowed to have something the way I wanted it just as much as my husband or my mother or my friend or whomever; I did not have to always do what other people wanted. Revolutionary. Jill is learning that much earlier than I did.