The pathbreaking ‘mommy blogger’ who couldn’t outrun her demons

Heather Armstrong, 1975-2023

Heather Armstrong, author and one of the pioneers of lifestyle blogging, and a woman who came to define the “mommy blogger” era of online content, died last week at the age of 47 after decades of laying bare her own experiences with parenting and mental illness, often in full view of millions of readers.

Armstrong, known to her internet community as “Dooce,” a nickname coined after she made a typing error trying to write “Dude” to coworkers, was one of the first — and for years, one of the most prolific, profane, and popular — “mommy bloggers,” who, despite the derisive moniker, set the stage for the popularity of blogging and, later, lifestyle content, Instagram influencers, and the modern era of “living online,” sharing all of life’s wonderful, and often terrible, moments.

She also struggled publicly with mental illness and substance abuse, returning to her blog in 2016 after a hiatus to document her often extreme treatment for what she called a “resistant” form of depression that took root after the birth of her first child and worsened, she said, because of the torrent of hate Armstrong received from online haters. Her third and most recent book, The Valedictorian of Being Dead, chronicled an experimental “brain death” clinical trial on depression at the University of Utah’s Neuropathic Institute, where she was put into a minuteslong coma three times a week in order to simulate brain death.

Armstrong was one of the early adopters of the blogging format, and her witty and often salty way of narrating events in her own life proved a successful model at attracting readership, particularly from women who, in the early 2000s, were starting to trickle away from women’s magazines and typical lifestyle content that seemed mired in a previous era.

When she started her blog in 2001, Armstrong wrote about her coworkers at a California tech company, and she was fired a year later when her boss discovered her posts. She and her new husband, who later became her business partner, Jon Armstrong, moved back to Salt Lake City, and in 2004, Heather shifted “Dooce’s” focus to her life navigating early motherhood.

“I looked at myself as someone who happened to be able to talk about parenthood in a way many women wanted to be able to but were afraid to,” Armstrong famously told Vox in an interview about her return to blogging in 2016.

Her timing was nearly perfect, catching an early blogging wave. Armstrong’s unfiltered narrative skyrocketed her to internet fame, attracting legions of fans who followed her day-to-day life raising her infant daughter. She also attracted legions of critics, who chronicled their disdain for Heather (and other mommy bloggers).

“Mommy blogging” became a phenomenon, drawing thousands of women to online diaries, and ultimately birthing a movement of first-person online narrative that only expanded with the advent of social media. Blogging became a lucrative profession for many mothers, who inked tens of thousands of dollars in advertising contracts and in-kind promotional deals, ostensibly making “mommy bloggers” the first wave of online influencers. While things such as divorce, child-rearing, work-life balance, and even depression can make life difficult for women, the same hardships made for both excellent content and an emotional bridge to other women in an era in which friendship was growing ever distant, experienced often through smartphone and computer screens.

Dooce was at the forefront of this new and refreshing online honesty, and Armstrong became the “queen of mommy blogging” almost overnight. At its peak, Dooce had 8 million readers per month, and Armstrong was making close to $40,000 each month from ad revenue. In 2009, Armstrong wrote a memoir, the first of three books, and made headlining appearances at women’s blogging conferences and on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

By the early 2010s, blogging had mostly faded as a medium, with more experienced writers moving on to mainstream outlets, which were finally catching up to the more realistic, personalized content women were consuming on their own. Social media was taking off, and parenting influencers and content creators were supplanting “mommy bloggers.”

Traffic waned for Armstrong, and after a backlash from her audience in response to her 2012 divorce, Armstrong quit her daily writing to focus on other pursuits, but after dealing with terrifying, treatment-resistant depression that began when her first daughter was just 6 months old, she returned to the internet, this time as an advocate for mental illness and for overcoming addiction.

Ultimately, Armstrong lost that battle. Her partner, Pete Ashdown, confirmed to the Associated Press that Armstrong had taken her own life. She leaves behind two daughters. ⋆

ACROSS

1 Columnist Bombeck 5 Spencer Cox’s state 9 Stinging remark 13 Boxer Ali who never lost a match

15 Ben & Jerry’s buy 16 Skunk’s defense 17 Offer a price for 18 Main character’s protection from being killed off, in slang 20 Los Angeles suburb 22 Mani-___ (nail job) 23 Pi follower 24 Archer’s missile

27 Back in style

30 Gang territory 32 Symbolic stories 34 Baseball pioneer Doubleday

36 Bums around 37 Super Bowl stats 38 With 40-Across, when one negative event triggers another, and a hint to the four silver squares in this puzzle 40 See 38-Across 42 Fleetwood ___ 45 Mystical board

47 Did a service-station job

DOWN

51 Preciseness 54 Richard of “American Gigolo” 55 Grinders 56 Headliners 58 Greetings 59 Settled up 61 Things nibbled in a maze by a titular video game character 63 Decoration 67 Luigi’s romance 68 Managed care gps. 69 Fencing weapon 70 Potomac ___ 71 Presque ___, Me. 72 Lost power

73 No ice, no mixer

1 Freestone peach 2 Grand Central, say 3 Forenoon period 4 Potatoes, on Indian menus 5 Maximum amounts 6 Up to, informally 7 “It’s __-win situation!” 8 URL initials

9 Place for a patrol 10 “Fess up!”

11 Pal of Piglet 12 Wintry remark 14 Actress Kendrick 19 Kind of bomb 21 La preceder 25 Moth-eaten 26 Nicely adjusted, as to a new situation 28 It’s seen in anger 29 Spy org. created by FDR 31 Sustained

33 Metric prefix? 35 Rummages through 39 Yes, in Paris 41 Wrinkly-faced dog 42 “Who cares” 43 Chopper 44 Gas-saving arrangement 46 Project

48 Serve well 49 Asmara is its capital 50 Dinner course

52 Like much locker room language 53 Historical period 57 Disfigurement 60 Contacted directly, through Twitter

62 Key of Beethoven’s Ninth: Abbr.

63 Sushi bar tuna 64 Dungeons & Dragons leaders, for short 65 Letters left of center? 66 Born: Fr.