Sisters Jill and Jinger Duggar lead very different lives these days.
Jill is married to an attorney and lives a quiet life in rural Arkansas with her three children.
Jinger is also a wife and mother, but she lives in Los Angeles, where her husband attends divinity school and seems intent on building a career for himself as the city’s next celebrity preacher.
But no matter how much their paths diverge, Jill and Jinger will always be united by a common act of courage:
In 2023, both Jill and Jinger published memoirs detailing the challenges they endured while growing up in an ultra-conservative evangelical family.
And unlike other children who chafed under the constraints of a fundamentalist upbringing, Jinger and Jill did it in front of an audience of millions.
So their experience is unique, and their courage in speaking the truth about their powerful, overbearing father deserves to be commended.
And now, despite the differences in their lifestyles and the very dissimilar tones of their books, it looks as though Jill and Jinger have been condemned to a similar punishment from their parents.
Earlier this week, Joy-Anna Duggar revealed that the entire family took a vacation to Florida, where they enjoyed one another’s company amid the sun and sand.
From the looks of the lengthy video that Joy posted on YouTube, the entire Duggar clan was on hand for reunion.
Well, almost the entire Duggar clan.
Predictably, Jill and Joy were nowhere to be seen.
On Reddit and elsewhere, commenters blasted the Duggars for planning a family vacation and not inviting the entire family.
“This is some toxic behavior. All the participants here are a–holes if Jinger and Jill were not invited,” one person wrote, according to UK tabloid The Sun.
“This is what cults do. Circle the wagons and reassure each other that they are right,” another added.
“I’ll bet this was a big F-U from Bob to his ‘Jezebel’ daughters,” a third chimed in.
Others suggested that Jill and Jinger might have been invited but declined to attend in order to protect their mental health.
“I could see Jill being at a point on her therapeutic journey where she would actively choose to turn down an invite to a family trip for the sake of her mental well-being and to maintain firm boundaries,” one person suggested.
“Maybe Jim Bob lied and said he invited them,” another commented.
But the most common theory was that Jim Bob simply didn’t want to risk the possibility of subversive rebels like Jill and Jinger corrupting his younger children.
After all, he’s already seen the effect that their defiance has had on his older kids.
“I think that as time goes on, more of them are rejecting Jim Bob and Michelle’s ridiculous dress codes. Jinger and Jill paved the way,” one commenter wrote.
And hopefully, by releasing their memoirs, Jill and Jinger have paved the way for thousands of others on their own paths to freedom.
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