Heather B. Armstrong, a popular mom blogger who called herself “Dooce” online, died yesterday at the age of 47, her social media accounts confirmed.
News of his death was announced Wednesday via his Instagram page.
“Heather Brooke Hamilton aka Heather B. Armstrong aka Dooce aka the love of my life,” the caption read. “July 19, 1975 – May 9, 2023. ‘It takes an ocean not to break.’ Keep your loved ones close and love everyone else.”
The Post contacted the family for further comment.
His cause of death has not yet been revealed.
Armstrong, who was a writer based in Salt Lake City, Utah, first rose to fame in 2001 after launching her blog, Dooce.com.
The pen name he wrote under, “Dooce,” originated from AOL Instant Messenger, where one of his friends developed the word as slang for “friend,” according to Atlantic.
Her blog and writing quickly gained a large cult following as she was open about the ins and outs of motherhood and her personal life, including why she left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to Vox.
Armstrong was fired from her job in 2002 after she wrote about her coworkers on her blog, according to Vox.
He attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
She married a man named Jon Armstrong in 2002, a web developer who had also left the Mormon Church.
The blogger appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2009, and that same year, she was also named to Forbes’ list of the 30 Most Influential Women in Media, along with Kelly Ripa and Nancy Grace.
In 2011, her blog was receiving more than 100,000 daily visitors and The New York Times wrote an article about her that crowned her “Queen of Blogger Moms”.
Armstrong has also spoken openly about her struggles with mental health, including her divorce from her husband, Jon, in 2012 and hospitalization for postpartum depression, according to The Atlantic.
He had struggled with depression from a very young age, according to Vox, documenting it over the years in his writing.
In 2017, the blogger decided to join a clinical trial at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute to help treat her depression after suffering a particularly severe episode in 2016.
The trial detailed that she was put into a chemically induced coma that would render her temporarily brain dead for 10 sessions.
The experience was the subject of his 2019 book, titled “The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live.”
After treatment, she decided to relaunch her blog, Dooce.com, which she had only posted sporadically on since 2015.
“I know [blogging] it has contributed to bouts of sadness over the years,” he told The Post at the time.
“But the rush of people saying ‘thank you so much for bringing this up’ far outweighs the criticism.”
The most recent blog post on her website was on April 6 and details more about her path to sobriety and her eldest daughter Leta, 19.
“I now understand that ‘what was happening to me’ was a physical reconciliation with the pain,” Armstrong wrote in the blog post. “22 years of agony that he had numbed with alcohol had come to life and transformed into an almost alien life form. I often felt like I was being electrocuted for hours.”
“The center of my body absorbed the impact of it all, bringing me to my knees. I was forced to look this wild-eyed savage square in the face, and now I look around and think, “Oh, this. this is just life. This is all just a physical reaction to psychological pain.”
In 2009, she wrote a book called “I Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Meltdown, and a Much-Needed Margarita,” and another in 2012 titled “Dear Daughter.”
She is survived by her two children, Leta Elise Armstrong, 19, and Marlo Iris Armstrong, 14.