Jill Duggar continues to surprise fans with her candid discussions about her relationship with her family. TLC audiences watched the reality star grow up in the “big house” which is what her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, and the rest of the Duggar clan refer to the Arkansas home as.
She now admits that she has not returned to the place she grew up in years. In a new Q&A video with her husband, Derick Dillard, the couple spills the beans on how their relationship with extended family has changed.
Jill Duggar Told Fans that She Had Not Returned to Her Parents’ Home for Years, Except to ‘Pick Up the Mail.’
As part of a Q&A session for a video uploaded to YouTube, Jill was asked about the last time she’d been to the “big house.” “We haven’t actually been over there in a while, probably like a couple years, other than once to check the mail,” Jill replied.
The Counting On alum elaborated placing partial blame on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced her family to keep their social circle small. However, she did admit that social distancing was not solely to blame. “In this season of life, we have to prioritize our mental and emotional health,” she shared.
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“Our threshold, we like to call it, is a little bit lower in this season of life for us,” she continued, saying that she and her husband have “a lot going on for us in our own lives.”
“There’s a lot of triggers there,” Derick revealed.
Jill and Derick married in June 2014, and in recent years, she has been open about going to therapy, drinking alcohol, using birth control, and having sex. The comments on “controversial” topics are quite the departure from her deeply religious, ultra-conservative childhood.
She was a star fixture on TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting from 2008 until its cancellation in 2015 and went on to star in its spinoff Counting On, but left the series in 2017.
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This is not the first time that Jill has discussed “distancing” herself from her parents following her departure from the Duggar reality TV world.
“There’s been some distancing there,” Jill first revealed last fall. “We’re not on the best terms with some of my family. We’ve had some disagreements, but we’re working towards healing definitely and restoration, but we’re having to kind of just take some time and heal.”
“We’re doing what’s best for our family right now and just working through it, I guess,” Jill said at the time. “We are praying and trusting God that like, the timeline is his and what that looks like and everything.”
In an emotional interview with People last year, Jill discussed her strained relationship with her family, saying at the time, “I never expected this to happen or for it to get to this point.”
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The recent admission that they had not returned to Jim Bob and Michelle’s home is proof that this couple is keeping their distance, years after bowing out of Counting On. As she said in October, “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.”
As Jill and Derick move further away from her parents’ ideologies, we expect they have not been as welcoming as they once were. At least Jill understands that there’s still love there, even though everyone does not see eye to eye.
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