Jill Duggar is learning a lot from “black sheep” cousin Amy.
In her book, the Duggar cousin described how she found out that her grandfather was a predator like Josh.
Amy also described her “true monster” grandfather inflicting horrific violence — particularly upon her mother, Deanna.
As it turns out, much of this eye-opening family information is news to Jill.
Jill Duggar learned so much from cousin Amy’s book
Taking to Instagram Live, Jill Duggar Dillard and Amy Duggar King promoted the latter’s book, Holy Disruptor: Shattering the Shiny Facade by Getting Louder with the Truth.
Obviously, Amy’s reaction to Josh’s heinous crimes is a key point of the memoir.
But that is only one dark piece of the family history.
Unlike Josh’s true nature, which Jill learned as one of his victims, late grandfather Jimmy Lee Duggar’s dark side was unknown to her.
During the Live, Jill remarked on how shocked she felt as she learned about her own paternal grandfather.
“[The book is] definitely is deep,” Jill emphasized on the Live.
“Like, it goes into a lot of aspects [of the Duggar family],” she noted.
“It tells the whole truth and the reality of a lot of situations that our family lived, you know?” Jill added.
She affirmed: “Everyone is entitled to share their own story, whether we agree with them or not.”
That seems to be less a veiled hint at her own disagreements with Amy and perhaps more of a reminder that some of her siblings do not see eye to eye with Amy.
Some family secrets were kept in the dark for too long
“It’s definitely a journey that she’s been on,” Jill Duggar said of cousin Amy Duggar.
“And you can tell that through her book,” she expressed.
Jill noted that reading the memoir “was very insightful.”
She added: “We learned more about our family history than we knew.”
Husband Derick Dillard chimed in to reveal: “Some things about her grandfather she didn’t know.”
“He’s like, ‘Did you know this and that and the other about Grandpa Duggar?’” Jill recalled of chatting with Derick after he read Amy’s memoir.
“And I’m like, ‘No! Tell me more!’” she described. “And he’s like, ‘I’m literally telling you more about your grandfather than you knew.’”
Jill reiterated: “We learned more about our family history than we knew.”
She did share that they had “inklings” of what sort of person Jimmy Lee Duggar really was.
But, clearly, Deanna shared more with Amy than Jim Bob shared with his own children. (Also, because she lived with her maternal grandparents for a time, perhaps Amy simply knew them better)
Burying painful truths because they’re inconvenient can make things worse
Jill Duggar spoke of how her late paternal grandmother could be judgmental, but was in many ways also very supportive.
“Obviously she kept a lot of things quiet for a very long time,” she acknowledged. “Because she didn’t want to deal with it.”
Jill speculated: “So I think [her reaction to our tell-all books] would have been very similar.”
She added: “She would have not have wanted everything to be talked about at that time.”
However, Jill and Amy have both chosen to speak about their family. Keeping silent can at times mean helping the worst people get away with their misdeeds.
Many of the Duggar girls learned that the hard way.