Jeremy Vuolo and Jinger Duggar keeps fans up to date on their lives, at least up to a point.
That of course means promoting their upcoming book.
With that in mind, Jinger is opening up to fans about one of her past struggles.
Jinger is speaking candidly to followers about her past struggles with her body and weight.
Jinger and Jeremy’s new book is The Hope We Hold.
Obviously, with the release just weeks away, they are promoting it.
They are also teasing fans with some of the book’s contents.
So, on Wednesday, Jinger used her Instagram platform to speak directly to her followers.
"I wanted to share a little but about what we wrote in the book," she expressed.
"I talk about- in Chapter Five," Jinger specified.
Jinger spoke about "just the wrestlings that I had as a young teen."
"And," she shared, "I really struggled with finding my identity in Christ."
Jinger continued: "and wrestled with weight loss."
Jinger said that she was "wanting to lose weight and trying to be skinny and all of that for myself."
She added: "For finding my identity in that."
We’ll talk about why that is not a surprising struggle in just a moment.
Jinger told fans that the book talks about "how the Lord helped me to know who I was in Christ."
"And," she continued, "to be grounded there."
Jinger said that she was grounded in faith "instead of in who I thought I should be and what I thought I should look like."
"Those are some things that I open up about in Chapter Five," Jinger reminded her fans.
"And so," she said, "I hope that the book is an encouragement."
Jinger added: "and that’s why we wrote it."
"We really want to just be raw, open," Jinger expressed.
She wanted to do that "and share a little bit about how the Lord has led us and helped us through things."
Jinger had more to say in the post’s caption.
"In our book, The Hope We Hold, I share some of my struggles as a teen," Jinger wrote.
She said that she struggled "with identity and trying to fit a certain image."
"Hopefully it will be an encouragement," Jinger concluded, "to any of you who may be fighting the same battle."
We mentioned that this is not a surprising revelation from Jinger.
First of all, our culture pressures women to have "perfect" bodies.
Society then bombards them with mixes messages about what "perfection" looks like.
Some might assume that fundamentalists cults would be excluded from this.
After all, the men aren’t even allowed to look at women who are dressed normally.
And the women, of course, are forced to dress in absurd, baggy, unflattering clothing.
However, these pressures can actually be much worse within a family like the Duggars.
In the rest of society, things are slowly changing, and little by little, women are seen as having value beyond their looks.
To the Duggars, a woman’s value is inherently tied to her husband — getting a husband and bearing his children.
It is also unsurprising because Jinger was long suspected as being one of Josh Duggar’s molestation victims.
She and three of her sisters joined in a lawsuit in 2017 that effectively confirmed this in the eyes of fans.
It is extremely common for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to develop eating disorders as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
Disordered eating is about control and, in a way, about self-medication.
So, grimly, Jinger’s odds of developing self esteem issues like those that she describes were alarmingly high.
We are glad that she found a way to move past those struggles.
While being religious does not magically cure disordered eating, some with self-destructive habits do find faith helpful in treating them.
The core of it is that their religious devotion gives them a new focus and drive that either replaces or overrides a previous bad habit.
This can apply, of course, to any faith, but it’s not a "magic bullet" to solve people’s problems.