Jessa Seewald, Jill Dillard: Duggar Sisters Back on TLC in “Jill & Jessa: Counting On”

Jessa Seewald and Jill Dillard are just two members of the Duggar family from 19 Kids and Counting fame who appeared in the first of a three-part TLC special on Sunday evening. Jill & Jessa: Coun...
Jessa Seewald, Jill Dillard: Duggar Sisters Back on TLC in “Jill & Jessa: Counting On”
Written by Kimberly Ripley
  • Jessa Seewald and Jill Dillard are just two members of the Duggar family from 19 Kids and Counting fame who appeared in the first of a three-part TLC special on Sunday evening. Jill & Jessa: Counting On featured the Duggar sisters and various members of the devout Christian family in the aftermath of Josh Duggar’s sexual scandals.

    “You always think in the beginning of the year what the year will hold and it hasn’t been what we thought,” Jill Duggar Dillard, 24, said early on in the hour-and-a-half long show, which began with scenes of her and Jessa Duggar Seewald tending to their own families.

    The show then ran through Jill and husband Derick Dillard’s–along with baby Israel’s–move to South America, as well as Jessa and Ben Seewald’s preparation for the birth of their son (who was born in November).

    After that, the Josh Duggar scandals came into focus–to a degree, anyway.

    “We had moved on from there,” Jill said of Josh Duggar’s sexual molestation scandal. “To be thrown under the bus was really really hard.”

    “You don’t want that rubbed in your face all the time, for everyone else to see. That wasn’t right whoever released that. It shouldn’t have happened,” Jill, who was one of Josh’s victims, added.

    Jessa Seewald responded during her own segment on the show.

    “There’s an expectation that this family doesn’t have any problems,” she said. “People go digging up old bones. It was so frustrating.”

    “There was a period of time in our family where Josh was not to be trusted,” Jessa added of Josh Duggar’s first scandal. Once the family sought counseling, “That relationship was restored between all of us siblings and our parents.”

    “Knowing now what Joshua was hiding…it wasn’t right for him to let us speak our words without having the full knowledge of what he was hiding,” Jill Duggar Dillard, thinking back to when she and Jessa supported their brother after word of the first scandal hit the media.

    “We were devastated. Over the years Josh had worked really hard to repair our trust in him,” Jessa Seewald said.

    Later on in the show, additional 19 Kids and Counting siblings shared their thoughts on Josh Duggar and his scandals.

    “It’s probably the toughest time in our life by far,” Jinger Duggar said through tears.

    Second eldest brother John-David Duggard shared that “One of the toughest things I had to tell my older brother was, I don’t want to be like you anymore.”

    There were some happy moments in Jill & Jessa: Counting On, too. Some of the Duggar sisters went shopping for baby clothes for Jessa and Ben’s then-not-born yet baby. A producer asked Jessa Seewald if the year’s events (meaning, of course, the Josh Duggar scandals) had detracted from the joy of her pregnancy.

    “Of course not,” she said.

    “I think that there is hope for our family. There’s going to be a new normal,” Joy Duggar said.

    Did you catch Jill Duggar Dillard and Jessa Duggar Seewald–as well as some of their family members–on Jill & Jessa: Moving On Sunday night?

    Might the show become a spinoff of 19 Kids and Counting, or has the draw for the Duggar family shriveled up and died?

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