Bourke's Bookshelf: ‘It’s like roses and thorns’

BRAINERD — Like so many other viewers, I was glued to my TV in the latter part of the 2000s when the Duggar family hit TLC and started captivating audiences everywhere.

I watched as Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar continued to grow their family, and “17 Kids and Counting” grew first to 18 and then “19 Kids and Counting,” where it stayed steady until 2015. By the time “Jill & Jessa: Counting On” came along later that year, my viewership had dwindled, but the fascination with the family with 19 kids continued. I don’t know if it was the strict religious views that didn’t allow the girls to wear pants, the amazement that parents could come up with 19 different names starting with J or just sheer curiosity of how raising that many kids worked.

That fascination, however, eventually morphed into disgust as the oldest Duggar son, Josh, was first accused of molesting his younger sisters when they were kids and then later convicted of possessing child pornography after he had become a father himself. The scandals painted the family in a whole new light and left so many former fans, myself included, wondering what went on behind the scenes and where everything went so wrong.

Jill Duggar Dillard, fourth child and second-oldest daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle, answers those questions in her 2023 memoir “Counting the Cost.”

Growing up, she was “Sweet Jilly Muffin,” eager to please and therefore happy to obey her parents’ wishes without a second thought. She wrote about belonging to the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a nondenominational Christian fundamentalist group that taught families how to find success in life by following strict Biblical principles.

The way Jill told it, there was no dancing, no wearing anything but long skirts and dresses for girls and no music aside from hymns and classical tunes. Kids were obligated to respect their parents’ wishes even after marrying and having children of their own, and any deviation from the guidelines laid out were met with harsh accusations of sinning and threats of damnation.

The older she got, the more Jill started to question some of the lifestyle choices. She didn’t want to push back against her father, but the increasing demands of filming a TV show while she was an adult and trying to balance work schedules and a pregnancy, without seeing a dime of the money it brought in became a problem.

Listening to the audiobook and hearing the words from Jill’s own voice made the story all the more powerful, from her decisions to wear pants and get her nose pierced, to intensely emotional confrontations with her father. She tells of her courageous choice to speak out about her brother’s crimes and her realization that emotional abuse had become a regular part of her life.

After all she and her siblings had been through, it was so encouraging to learn that Jill has sought therapy to overcome her past struggles and become her own person, raising her own kids the way she and her husband want and not how her parents see fit.

She and husband Derick aren’t people I know a lot about beyond reading this book, and I’ve heard some unsavory things about both of them, as is bound to happen with people in the public eye. I can’t say if they’re people whose beliefs I’d agree with wholeheartedly, but knowing that Jill is on a healing journey, living her best life and trying to put her past behind her just makes me happy.

THERESA BOURKE may be reached at theresa.bourke@brainerddispatch.com or 218-855-5860. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DispatchTheresa .