Heather Armstrong, the writer who rose to fame with her influential blog, dooce.com, and wrote candidly about her struggles with depression and addiction, died at 47, the New York Times reports.
Her partner said that the cause of death was suicide.
Armstrong was raised in Tennessee and educated at Brigham Young University. She worked as a web developer before being fired from her job because she wrote about her work experiences on dooce.com, the blog she had founded the year before.
Her blog became a huge hit with readers who loved her irreverent takes on marriage, parenting, mental illness, and the Mormon faith that she had left behind. She also wrote candidly about her alcoholism. According to the Washington Post, her partner indicated that she had recently relapsed after 18 months of sobriety.
Armstrong wrote about her experiences with motherhood and depression in the 2009 book It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita; a decade later, she published The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live, which chronicled an experimental medical procedure she underwent to treat her depression.
Armstrong’s readers paid tribute to her on social media. On Twitter, author Roxane Gay wrote, “It’s shocking to hear Heather Armstrong died yesterday. It’s hard to put into words just how influential she was to the blogosphere. I hope she is at peace, and that her children and loved ones are finding solace where they can.”
It's shocking to hear Heather Armstrong died yesterday. It's hard to put into words just how influential she was to the blogosphere. I hope she is at peace, and that her children and loved ones are finding solace where they can.
— roxane gay (@rgay) May 10, 2023
And journalist Emily Ramshaw tweeted, “Dooce made me love the Internet. What an incredible voice to lose.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.