In her bombshell memoir, Counting the Cost, Jill Duggar opened up about the response (or lack thereof) she received from drinking a pina colada on a date night with her husband, Derick Dillard. Jill admitted that she fully expected her father, Jim Bob Duggar, to reach out to her about it, but she never heard from him about having an alcoholic beverage.
“I guess he had gotten the hint a few months earlier when he read online that Derick had been seen drinking a beer. Pops had made contact soon after and offered to send Derick to the same rehab facility Josh [Duggar] had been to, in the hope of curing Derick’s clearly raging alcoholism. Since he’d never been drunk or ever had more than two beers in one sitting, Derick declined,” Jill wrote.
Josh, the eldest Duggar child, entered a faith-based rehab in 2014 after admitting to cheating on his wife, Anna Duggar, and being addicted to pornography. He had been previously sent away by the family several times for his inappropriate behavior, which included molesting some of his sisters. He is now in prison for after being found guilty of receiving and possessing child pornography.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have always been open about how they are against drinking alcohol. Jill’s pina colada wasn’t her first act of defiance, though.
Earlier in her memoir, Jill brought up wearing a pair of leggings to a theme park. Growing up, Jill and her sisters always wore long dresses and skirts — never pants.
“I’d decided that this was the day that I would first wear pants, but now that I had them on, I just felt wrong,” Jill said. She went ahead and wore the pants anyway. Days later, she went to her parents’ house, and Jim Bob asked to talk to her. He asked her about wearing pants. She was 26 at the time.
Jim Bob brought up that her sister Jinger Duggar called and discussed her “decision” to start wearing pants with them. Jill described how her father made her feel guilty for wearing pants and not running her decision by him first. “I cried when I got home. I felt embarrassed, humiliated, even though nobody else had been in the room with us,” Jill said about her conversation with her father.
When Jill decided to get a nose ring, she called her parents. She got their voicemail and left a message. Michelle picked up eventually but “didn’t have much to say” about the nose ring.
Jill had a voicemail waiting for her from Jim Bob when she got back from getting her nose pierced. “He pleaded with me not to do it. He told me I was making a huge mistake. He begged me to think about how it was going to affect my little sisters. He said I was ruining my life,” Jill said.
Later, Michelle and Jill talked about Jim Bob’s nose ring response. Michelle claimed that Jim Bob “wasn’t in a good state of mind” when he left the message. Days later, Jim Bob wanted to have a call with Jill and Michelle. Jill refused and sent him a text instead. “Honestly, I don’t really feel like talking when I feel like there might be a chance I’m just going to be verbally abused, manipulated, and emotionally hurt,” Jill began. Following Jill’s text, Jim Bob told his daughter that her words were the most “disrespectful” thing he had ever read. Counting The Cost: A Memoir, written by Jill, Derick, and Craig Brolase, is available now.