Rory Feek’s Daughter Hopie Says She Feels Singer ‘Used’ Her Coming Out Story to ‘Sell His Books’: ‘I Regret That’

Rory Feek’s daughter Hopie Feek is speaking out on her decision to allow the country singer to write about her sexuality in his 2018 memoir — something she now says she regrets.

Hopie, 36, shared rare insight into her personal life on Feb. 8, when she revealed that Rory, 59, is not her biological father, something she discovered recently after taking a 23andMe test.

Rory — who raised Hopie and her sister Heidi, 38 — then shared a blog post of his own discussing his conversation with Hopie about the matter, including that he told her he would “always” love her as his own daughter.

In response, Hopie expressed disappointment with the singer for sharing private details about her mother. In that same post, she expressed regret for coming out to Rory as bisexual nearly 10 years ago, as she now feels he used her in order to sell copies of his book.

Hopie wrote that while she is not a public person, her “private life becomes content” for Rory’s fans because he is in the spotlight. She alleged that he was “hateful and judgmental” when she first came out to him, but that he later “convinced” her to let him write about that conversation in his 2018 book Once Upon a Farm.

“I regret that. When his book came out, he had massive support and I had the opposite,” she wrote. “More hate from his fans. The things he wrote in that chapter still hurt.”

Alongside the statement, Hopie shared a clip from Rory’s audiobook, in which he reads from said chapter. In the clip, Rory talks about wanting to “protect” his then-2-year-old daughter Indiana “from sin,” and says he initially judged Hopie because of his “conservative Christian faith.”

“In that moment, we had a conversation without any words. ‘Am I still gonna get to be around my baby sister?’ It’s the question she was probably the most worried about,” he says. “That, and ‘Will you still love me?’ My eyes were hardening around the edges, just like my heart. ‘Probably not,’ they said as I looked away.”

Elsewhere in the book, Rory says the conversation happened when Hopie was 27, and that she came to him days after he buried his late wife Joey to tell him that she’d been dating a woman named Wendy for almost a year (Hopie went on to marry Wendy in 2018, though the two are no longer together). Rory writes in his book that in response, he “said some things I shouldn’t have said,” but eventually grew to accept the relationship, writing, “I choose to love her. To love them. Period. End of story.”

“With everything going on right now, this clip made a lot of sense,” Hopie wrote in her statement. “He was already trying to keep me from Indy. It’s like he was already trying to push me out of his life. Now, looking back on it, I feel like he just used my story to sell his books. From now on, I just wish my stories could be my own to tell and share. I want to move forward and find happiness with the people who love me, far away from this online hate.”

Hopie and Heidi are in the midst of an ongoing dispute with Rory over the care of 10-year-old Indiana, whom the sisters have not seen since June. The family has been at odds over the child in recent months, as Rory has not let Indiana visit her older sisters due, he says, to their differing worldviews. Heidi and Hopie took legal action against their father in the fight for time with Indiana in early September, though details of the filing remain confidential, as Indiana is a minor. Legal proceedings remain ongoing.

In a blog post in August, Rory wrote that Indiana “absolutely” misses her sisters, and asks about them “all the time and would love to see them.” Heidi, meanwhile, told PEOPLE that she “really just want[s] to be able to be in my little sister’s life and I can’t.”