That’s her man. Jill Duggar gushed over husband Derick Dillard following the release of Prime Video’s docuseries, Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets.
“☀️I’m so incredibly grateful for my man @derickdillard ❤️,” Duggar, 32, captioned a photo of her and Dillard, 34, sharing a kiss via Instagram on Monday, June 5.
She added, “His support means the world to me. ☀️ Thanks babe! 😘💞.”
The sweet message comes after she and the lawyer — who married in 2014 — spoke out in Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, which debuted on Thursday, June 2. Jill is one of many former followers of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) that spoke out about the Duggar family’s rise to fame as a conservative family on TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting. The series also delved into the Duggars’ fall from grace amid Josh Duggar‘s child molestation accusations and his later child pornography conviction.
After 10 seasons, TLC canceled 19 Kids and Counting in 2015 after Josh was accused of molesting several girls when he was a teenager — some of whom were his sisters. Jill and her sister Jessa Duggar were later identified as victims, and they appeared on Megyn Kelly‘s show at the time to defend their family.
Jill confessed in Shiny Happy People that she felt forced to downplay her brother’s actions for the sake of her family. “It’s not something I’m proud of,” she said of her sit-down interview. “If I hadn’t felt obligated to like, one, do it for the sake of the show and two, do it for the sake of my parents, I wouldn’t have done it.”
The family continued to shoot a reality show, repackaged as Counting On with a bigger focus on Jessa and Jill. However, the midwife went on to claim that she “never received any payout” for her work on either one of the shows. “No check, no cash, no nothing. For seven and a half years of my adult life, I was never paid,” she alleged. “We were taken advantage of.”
Derick and Jill also recalled asking TLC for compensation after the birth of their first son, Israel, was filmed in 2015. According to Jill and Dillard (who later welcomed sons Samuel, 5, and Freddy, 11 months), the network said they paid the family — so the money allegedly went to her father, Jim Bob Duggar.
For his part, Jim Bob and wife Michelle Duggar released a statement slamming Shiny Happy People as “derogatory and sensationalized.”
The younger couple is expected to delve further into their reality TV past when their memoir, Counting the Cost, hits shelves later this year.
Jill explained via Instagram that the book will cover “the challenges we have faced, including lack of respect for boundaries, greed, manipulation, and betrayal, are not that much different than what many people in our audience have faced.
She added, “However, 15+ years of reality television, undergirded by secrecy and lies, is tantamount to pouring gasoline on the fire of our struggle. 📚 Thanks to time, tears, truth, and therapy, God has begun to heal our wounds into scars. Though we would have never chosen this path, and it has cost us dearly, we want to use our voice to show others that there is hope beyond the pain.”
Counting the Cost does not yet have a release date.
