There is always more than what meets the eye.
Growing up, Jinger Vuolo (formerly Duggar) lived her life in front of cameras thanks to hit shows like 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On. While both TLC programs have since been cancelled, the 27-year-old mother of two still remembers adjusting to the reality that her private life was suddenly public.
"I think a lot of people do look into fame, and they think it's all beautiful, it's all wonderful, and yes, as I'm saying, there are tons of perks. But then, you also have to wrestle through a lot," Jinger explained on the Dinner Party podcast with Jeremy Fall. "They can think, 'Oh, you don't wrestle with anything, you don't struggle with being depressed one day…' I think it's been more challenging for me personally to figure out how to move past that, and how to truly open up to people."
She continued, "We do all feel these things, we have times where we're walking through very challenging deep, dark times and other people may not know about it or they may not understand that that's something that's common to all of us as humans."
If you ask Jinger, her faith has been a great resource to her when times get challenging on or off camera.
"We all walk through difficulties and challenges and that is definitely something I think about for us," she shared on the July 1 podcast episode. "We are people of faith and we have faith in God and so I think for me in those times when I wrestle the most, I just run to God."
When she was only 10 years old, Jinger got her first taste of reality TV when her family began filming a documentary for the Discovery Health Channel. It would later turn into 19 Kids and Counting, which aired from 2008 to 2015.
According to Jinger, nobody in her family expected their story to become such a hit on the small screen.
"I don't think any of us understood how long it would last," she explained. "We thought maybe a year, maybe one documentary and then it just kept going."
And very quickly, the family discovered that negative comments and false headlines would surface making it hard to trust people.
"I think that initially even my parents didn't understand," Jinger shared. "They didn't understand the level of what people could say. Some people may be out there not looking for your greater good and that was just hard to accept."