Vuolo no longer speaks to her brother and hasn’t, she said, for more than two years, calling his actions one of the “hardest realities” of her life. (About her other siblings, she’s tight-lipped on whether they still follow IBLP theology. “I have to let them speak for themselves,” she said.)
“He was living a lie,” she writes in the memoir. “Watching all the pain Josh’s sin has caused not only shows me the danger of hypocrisy but also reveals that external religion, a life of performance, has nothing to do with following Jesus.”
Josh’s crimes also meant that for the first time since childhood, Vuolo’s life is no longer on camera. She reflected on her long tenure on reality television to me, saying there were times that were sweet and fun. But it was also hard, and she couldn’t say for sure if she would have chosen to grow up that way. It was all she knew.
“I think walking through the most difficult season of your life, and that happening a couple different times, that’s where you stop and look at it as an adult, and say, ‘Oh, wow, this is really hard,’” she told me. “I really wish, maybe, in this moment, people didn’t know who I was. And I could just live a normal life.”
It is in the aftermath of this implosion that Vuolo has chosen to be the first Duggar child to disavow the theology she and her parents and siblings sold to viewers for so many years. She says it’s not a responsibility that she wants.
“I would not say I’m the best person to do this,” she told me. “I hate conflict. I think it’s very difficult. But at the same time, I wrote a book with my sisters in 2012 [Growing Up Duggar] that promoted some of these teachings — it’s so damaging.
“If it helps one person to come out of this, it’s worth it,” she said.
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