The revolutionary mommy blogger Heather Armstrong, who laid bare her struggles as a mom and her battles with depression and alcoholism on her website Dooce.com and on social media, has died at 47.
Armstrong died by suicide, her boyfriend Pete Ashdown told The Connected Push, expressing he observed her Tuesday night at their Salt Lake Town property.
Ashdown stated Armstrong had been sober for over 18 months but had lately experienced a relapse. He did not supply further more details.
Armstrong, who experienced two little ones with her former husband and business partner, Jon Armstrong, began Dooce in 2001 and built it into a lucrative job. She was a single of the to start with and most well known mommy bloggers, crafting frankly about her children, relationships and other problems.
She parlayed her successes with the web site, on Instagram and in other places into book deals, placing out a memoir in 2009, “It Sucked and then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown and a Substantially Necessary Margarita.”
Armstrong appeared on Oprah and was on the Forbes checklist of most influential girls in media.
In 2012, the Armstrongs declared they have been separating. They divorced afterwards that yr. She commenced courting Ashdown, a former U.S. senate applicant, just about 6 yrs ago. They lived with each other with Armstrong’s young children, 19-12 months-aged Leta and 13-year-previous Marlo. He has three children from a previous relationship who spent time in their house as very well.
Armstrong did not maintain again on Instagram and Dooce, the latter a title that arose from her incapability to rapidly spell “dude” during on the web chats. Her raw, unapologetic posts on anything from being pregnant and breastfeeding to research and carpooling were generally infused with curses. As her recognition grew, so way too did the barbs of critics, who accused her of poor parenting and worse.
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A single of her posts on Dooce spoke of a former victory over consuming.
“On Oct 8th, 2021 I celebrated six months of sobriety by myself on the floor subsequent to my bed sensation as if I were a wounded animal who wished to be left alone to die,” Armstrong wrote. “There was no a single in my everyday living who could possibly understand how symbolic a victory it was for me, albeit … a single fraught with tears and sobbing so violent that at one level I thought my human body would split in two. The grief submerged me in tidal waves of pain. For a couple of hours I uncovered it tricky to breathe.”
She went on: “Sobriety was not some secret I experienced to remedy. It was just on the lookout at all my wounds and learning how to dwell with them.”
In her memoir, she described how her web site started as a way to share her views on pop culture with faraway friends. Within a yr, her audience grew from a number of friends to countless numbers of strangers close to the environment, she wrote.
Additional and more, Armstrong stated, she observed herself composing about her personal life and, ultimately, an office position, and “how significantly I wished to strangle my boss, normally utilizing words and phrases and phrases that would embarrass a sailor.”
Her employer observed the web site and fired her, she wrote. She took it down but began back up yet again six months later, creating about her new spouse, Armstrong, and how unemployment had forced them to transfer from Los Angeles to her mother’s basement in Utah.
She was shortly pregnant. The being pregnant available “an infinite trove” of content, she wrote, “but I certainly considered that I would give it all up the moment I had the infant.”
She did not, but chronicled her highs and lows as a new mother.
“I do not think I would have survived it had I not provided up my story and attained out to bridge the loneliness,” she wrote.
Armstrong was lifted in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but remaining the faith years in the past. She experienced persistent despair for significantly of her everyday living, according to her ebook. In 2017, immediately after the unraveling of her relationship, the web star dubbed “the queen of the mommy bloggers” by The New York Periods Journal took a tumble in reputation.
Her melancholy grew even worse, leading her to enroll in a clinical demo at the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, according to an interview she gave Vox. She was place in a chemically induced coma for 15 minutes at a time for 10 sessions.
“I was sensation like existence was not meant to be lived,” Armstrong explained to Vox. “When you are that desperate, you will test something. I believed my children deserved to have a joyful, healthier mother, and I desired to know that I experienced tried out all selections to be that for them.”
If you or someone you know is in disaster, contact 988 to access the Suicide and Disaster Lifeline. You can also contact the network, formerly recognized as the Countrywide Suicide Avoidance Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text Residence to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/assets for more sources
