Generational Abuse in the Duggar Family (Pt. 5)

[00:00:00]This felt like her deliberate way to try to shield me from an abuser. She prioritized my protection above all else. Am I just unreasonable to say like that's just not true? Hello y'all, we are reading a few excerpts from Holy Disruptor, Amy Duggar's book. We're reading several excerpts specifically about Grandpa and Grandma Duggar. That is Jim Bob Duggar's mother and father.

[00:00:24]And we're really looking into the generational trauma that Amy describes in this book and how Mary and JL likely shaped Jim Bob into the man he is today.

[00:00:36]Let's jump right into it. So, at this point in the book and our coverage, we're at chapter five and we're going to be covering a three chapters today because she gets more into talking about her mom and her dad. And really, I want to focus reading excerpts that are about the Duggar family in general, either Grandpa and Grandma, uncles, cousins, what have you, and really focus and commentate on those.

[00:01:06]So, chapter five, Silent Shields. She starts off when her grandparents passed away. Her mom and her sat down and they had a talk. Deanna told her she was allowed to tell these stories, which I'm glad she clarified that cuz I'd be like, "Girl, did your mama tell you could say that?" She then says at a certain point in the conversation, she remembers the moment it all clicked for her. The reason I was not allowed with my grandpa was because he was a predator. So, at this point, I guess she's saying after her grandparents passed, so I guess not until Mary passed away did she realize that some shady stuff was going on with Grandpa Duggar. And I suppose she did not know about physical assault against her mother from Grandpa Duggar. She didn't know about that at that point, I suppose. She then writes a little bit about how she's very confused about her grandpa and grandma's relationship. She said, "Underneath JL's charming and funny personality was a true monster. He wanted to hurt me and he wanted to hurt anyone when given the chance. Grandma, bless her soul, felt like my silent guardian angel quietly watching over me.

[00:02:16]Despite her best efforts to shield me from harm, I still endured a lot of pain because of him. I'm glad that Mary did not continue that same issue. As you know, if you watched the last few videos, that Grandpa Duggar actually beat Deanna and Mary allegedly was in the house for it and just let it happen.

[00:02:36]So, I'm glad that she didn't continue that into her older age and really stepped up and didn't let that kind of stuff happen with her granddaughter. I mean, least she can do. She also says, "My grandma never spoke a word to me about what she endured at the hands of my grandfather or if she had a sense of remorse for the moments when she could have safeguarded my mother from severe abuse. However, I believe she was determined to break the cycle when I was born. I believe she was striving to provide the nurturing and protective environment she wish she had created for her own daughter. Ultimately, she failed at protecting my mom, so grandma did everything in her power to protect me in the ways she could." I really think Amy is very close with her grandma and had a lot of good experiences with her, but I think she is, and you know, rightfully so, is protective of her.

[00:03:26]But, I mean, if she lived in the house with Amy, with Grandpa Duggar, with Deanna, if she really wanted Amy to be completely safe, she would have left Grandpa Duggar knowing that he's an unsafe person and not allowed him to live in the house with Amy.

[00:03:43]Unfortunately, that is kind of how I see it. I understand how Amy sees it differently. At the end of each night, she said in other chapters that Mary, Grandma Duggar, would always make sure that Amy's door was locked from the inside, of course, and so that Grandpa Duggar could not come into her room. So, she says, "Imagine if I had left the door unlocked one night. She knew my grandpa and what he was capable of. Every night, without fail, she would diligently check the lock on my door and a small, yet meaningful, gesture that demonstrated her commitment to my safety. Similarly, her unwavering presence in my daily life was evident as she faithfully picked me up from school each day, providing not only practical support, but a comforting sense of stability. Perhaps most telling was her decision to include me in her real estate showings, a measure taken to ensure I was never alone in the company of my grandpa. This felt like her deliberate way to try to shield me from an abuser. She prioritized my protection above all else." Am I just unreasonable to say, like, that's just not true?

[00:04:48]I mean, if she prioritized your protection above all else, she, knowing that she can't even trust him to sleep in the same house as you without the doors locked, let him let him live there, still stayed with him. I don't think she prioritized your protection above all else. But, you know, then again, it's like she really does see her grandma as this certain person and it is hard to actually reckon with that. She continues, "Grandma was someone I could rely on and despite her faults, she was my best friend. I think because my grandma helped raise me, her heart soften or maybe her mind changed or her perspective shifted to see me more like a second daughter than a granddaughter.

[00:05:28]Maybe she was taking hold of a second chance. This time she could do the right thing. She would try to instill the values she held so dear and protect the one she loved." Amy goes on the rest of the page to praise her mom. She says that her mom is her fiercest advocate and she calls her, as the book title, "Truly a holy disruptor, a true warrior in every sense of the word. And she praises her for giving her everything that she needed. And then she goes back to talking about Grandma Duggar. And I think that this really gets at why she was so close with Grandma Duggar, what she's about to say here. Apparently, there was a lot of chaos in her home between her mother, father, Grandpa Duggar, whatever. And apparently, according to Amy, every day after school, she says, "Grandma would pick me up and take me to McDonald's for my usual. Then we'd head to thrift stores, never in a rush to get home. I think she knew I needed that time, just the two of us. She's made the smallest things feel important, asking about my day like it truly mattered, listening to every detail, even the petty stuff. She never brushed me off, never made me feel silly for what I cared about. And when it came to homework, she was right there beside me, patient, encouraging."

[00:06:39]And that is super sweet, and I do love that, and I'm so glad she does have those memories. But I think that's why, you know, those afternoons that were just a respite from chaos are the reason why she does defend Mary, even though she let a predator, in Amy's own words, into the home. She then continues down on this page, "Grandma and Mom were silent protectors, yes, but their actions spoke louder than any words ever could. Because of them, I'm here today protecting my son and setting boundaries in my own life because of what these two women did for me. They were holy disrupters for me, passing their strength onto me." Again, I'm not going to restate everything I just said, but I just don't feel like letting him stay there makes them protectors. I just really don't. And I get it's easier said than done to leave that kind of man, but still. So, in this chapter, um Amy talks a lot about inherited trauma and cycles of abuse, and I think that that's one of the big things that we're seeing with this book and what is what it's informing us on. You kind of what she's telling us about Mary, about Grandpa Duggar really is filling in the gaps "Hey, this is kind of where this stuff in the Duggar family comes from.

[00:08:00]Generational trauma is very real." She also talks about how there's two sides of Grandpa Duggar and it's very hard to think about. He was She says he's very lovable. We had so many inside jokes. I last laughed every time he grabbed a ketchup bottle to put it on every food item he had. I liked how playful he was, always joking around. But I still wonder what caused this person I knew so well to be so evil. Who might have abused Jimmy Lee? How many others did Jimmy Lee abuse? I'm not sure I'll ever know the full answer. Then she says that these cycles continue until someone dares to disrupt it, which is totally true.

[00:08:39]And then she goes into talking about the Duggar family and secrecy, which I think we saw a lot of that in Jill's book as well when we went and did a read-through of that. She says my family's culture of secrecy fostered an environment of denial and suppression where hard truths were never spoken of in favor of maintaining a facade of normalcy. Deanna and her brother Jim Bob learned at a very young age how to hide their pain and shame behind closed doors and how to shield outsiders from knowing the truth.

[00:09:09]I mean, how to shield outsiders from knowing the truth? I mean, that's pretty much Jill's whole book. Jill even said Jim Bob would specifically say like there's certain things you can't tell people outside the family, whether that came to the show or other topics. She continues telling the truth in the face of bad news was frowned upon because the situation did not align with what what was deemed acceptable in the outside world. The expectation was that we would always keep private matters private. It didn't matter what the truth was, our appearance, our standing in the community mattered most. I know my grandma knew about my grandma's many infidelities. I think she simply decided to ignore it and stuff it down as far as she could. So, I think especially standing in the community mattered most really stands out to me and how that was important for Grandma Duggar. Because also in the IBLP, that is a huge thing.

[00:10:00]Your family name and what that means to people is a huge thing that they talk about in the IBLP. Now, of course, I've said this in other videos that there is some speculation considering Jim Bob got into the his first IBLP seminar at about age 12 or 13, I believe with Jim Holt, that Mary Duggar might have gotten Jim Bob into this. So, she might have herself been into those teachings. I don't know if that came from just her upbringing or a little bit mixed in with the IBLP, but that standing in the community, that PR response if you're Jim Bob, means a lot to this family and it has been going on for a super long time. Amy then says that what we saw from the television was a far cry from the truth and that her grandparents paraded their love in public like it was something to be envied and celebrated behind behind closed doors there was no love lost. So, for the first couple of seasons, I think JL was on the show.

[00:11:03]Mary and JL had moved into Jim Bob Duggar's house. And they did parade them around like, "Oh, what a great love story. She's taking care of her husband as he has brain cancer. She's truly caring for him, truly living out her marriage vows."

[00:11:19]But Amy's saying here they didn't really truly love or respect each other. She thinks that they honestly hated each other deep down. And then that public show, of course, was just for the public, of course. It was just for their own standing in their own community and for the viewers of the TV show.

[00:11:39]Honestly, I don't know if you guys get the same feeling, but the Mary and JL story kind of reminds me of the Phil and Mama Cae story, Phil Robertson and Cae Robertson story, except for if Phil just never came back and stopped abusing alcohol and cheating. You know what I mean? So, that was pretty much all that I found super interesting in chapter five. Chapter six is a super short chapter. She describes how her dad met her mom and how he was verbally abusive, and she describes how her mom became a mother at the age of 22. Apparently, uh her dad came into the hospital room and he walked over to Deanna and said, "Quote, I should have killed you and the baby while I had the chance."

[00:12:25]Apparently, JL and her dad, uh Terry Jordan, got into a huge fight and punches were thrown. Hospital staff called the police, who came and escorted her dad out of the hospital. So, finally, JL doing something good. Come on now. I think he just wanted to start a physical fight, though, honestly.

[00:12:45]Chapter seven gets more into her mom and dad's tumultuous relationship. As I've said before, we're not going to cover that in depth just because I want to keep my excerpts and my commentary just to the Duggar family. Here in chapter seven, she did describe how her grandpa and grandma did start living in the house with her and Deanna, and she really paints a really unfortunate picture of life in that house with the four of them. She describes, "When things got unbearable, my dad's threats worsened, she asked my Duggar grandparents to move in with us.

[00:13:25]She wanted my grandpa there for protection, even though he had been awful to her. It was a desperate move asking the very people who were a part of the history of abusing my mother to protect her. That is terrible. My grandpa literally hated my dad and had never accepted him, so he was more than happy to move in. So, she describes um the house before her grandparents moved moved in as clean and welcoming. She then says, but when my grandparents moved in, our home quickly became a chaotic mess. Like something out of the show Hoarders. Grandma Duggar was unable to let anything go. Old magazines, chipped plates, broken appliances, nothing ever found its way to the trash.

[00:14:05]Every corner of the house was piled high with clutter. Teetering towers of forgotten items that served served no purpose but to take up space and collect dust. My grandpa never bothered to pick up after himself. He'd leave newspapers scattered across the living room, a trail marking every place he had been.

[00:14:22]So, that's super interesting. At first I was like I just don't see Mary Duggar as being a hoarder, but we do know that Jim Bob is quite a pack rat.

[00:14:31]He keeps his house fairly clean from what we can see. However, he does tend to almost hoard, they say, toys such as farm equipment, vehicles, that sort of thing. So, the more I thought about it, I was like, okay, that makes sense. Amy says that she was quite the neat freak. She said that it was a disgusting mess. Mice began to take up residence drawn by the food crumbs. I remember lying in terror listening to them scurry through the walls at night, the unwelcoming sounds echoing through the stillness. One morning before school, I saw a mouse in my room and watched as it ran across my feet. I've hated them ever since. I feel so bad for her, honestly, for this. I mean, that's that's something no kid should ever have to experience. She then describes the bathroom. She says black mold grew unchecked inside the bathroom cabinet, and we had to tape it shut because the sight was too unbearable. Mold spread like a dark cancer through the room, an ugly reminder of the neglect that permeated every part of our lives. The house was honestly unlivable, yet somehow we lived in it. I dreaded anyone coming to the door, fearful that someone might see inside and judge us, worse yet, pity us. I often heard my mom and my grandparents yelling at each other about my dad and what my mom, as a grown woman, was allowed to do. When my grandparents moved in, the house became a battleground where they fought with my mom over control of her life. She then describes that she worried that she would continue that cycle of abusive relationships as her parents did and she said that her boyfriend even cheated on her repeatedly and she gave him too many chances. And then at 19, her parents reconciled and got married, but honestly, I don't know how long they were married. She hasn't gotten into this yet. read ahead. Um, I can't imagine they were married more than a couple of years. And that's all the excerpts I'm going to read for today, but it definitely gives you an insight into the generational trauma and how it has, you know, gone from Mary and JL to then JL abusing Deanna and Mary doing nothing about it as we saw in the chapter before and who knows what happened to Jim Bob, Jim Bob having to, you know, pull JL off of Deanna.

[00:16:54]Then Jim kind of trying to go super Christian, but still having that crazy control over his children's lives. And then we see with Josh and Anna, Josh is having the same issues as JL did in jail, controlling Anna from behind bars.

[00:17:14]Now Joe's in jail, it's just all kind of the same thing. I hope a lot of the kids in the Duggar family are able to beat that kind of abusive relationship dynamic, unlike Josh and Anna. And I am glad for Amy that she doesn't have this sort of thing in her own home, and she can, you know, just be a normal person, and that her son doesn't have to see all that kind of stuff. It really is awful what Amy had to go through as a child.

[00:17:41]And even though she's not my favorite person in the world, you know, we can't give her any grief for that.

[00:17:46]That was my commentary on Holy Disruptor uh chapters 5 through 7. We'll pick back up here next week. See you guys later.

[00:17:56]Bye-bye.

[00:17:57]>> Just it's it's really fake and gay. And I I am actually an expert on all matters that are are fake and gay.