Heather Armstrong, ‘Queen of mummy bloggers’, dead at 47

A popular mummy blogger, loved for being “raw” and “honest”, has tragically died after a lengthy mental health battle.

A well-known mummy blogger who shot to online fame documenting her battles with depression and alcoholism has tragically died at the age of 47.

Heather Armstrong, best known by her blogging moniker “Dooce”, died by suicide on May 9 in Salt Lake City, US.

Armstrong’s boyfriend Pete Ashdown paid tribute to the mother-of-two, dubbed “Queen of the mummy bloggers” by followers, in a post shared to her official Instagram page.

“Heather Brooke Hamilton aka Heather B. Armstrong aka Dooce aka love of my life,” he wrote.

“July 19, 1975 – May 9, 2023.

“It takes an ocean not to break. Hold your loved ones close and love everyone else.”

Heather Armstrong, best known by her blogging moniker ‘Dooce’, has died aged 47. Picture: Instagram/Dooce

Armstrong, who shared Marlo, 13, and Leta, 19, with her ex-husband Jon Armstrong, had reportedly been sober for over 18 months but had recently had a relapse, US ABC News reported.

She started her blog Dooce in 2001, before having children, and built it into a lucrative career, with it later becoming one of the first and most popular mummy blogs after the birth of her first child in 2004.

Armstrong was loved by fans for writing frankly about her children, relationships and other challenges – including life after leaving the Mormon church.

Dooce became the first personal website to start accepting a notable number of paid ads in 2004, according to a report by The New York Times, “paving the way” for other bloggers and influencers.

By 2009, Armstrong was seeing 8.5 million readers a month and even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

That same year, Armstrong was named one of Forbes’ Most Influential Women, and released her memoir, It Sucked And Then I Cried: How I Had A Baby, A Breakdown And A Much-Needed Margarita, People reported.

However she told Vox in 2019 the unravelling of her marriage in 2012 caused her life to “fall apart” and sparked a “deep, treatment-resistant depression”.

Armstrong said even her most loyal fans were “furious” about the split, causing her mental health to spiral.

After years of struggling, Armstrong enrolled herself in a clinical trial at the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute in 2017, where she was put in a chemically induced coma for 15 minutes at a time for 10 sessions.

The treatment, which approximated brain death, was being tested to see if it could cure depression.

“When you are that desperate, you will try anything,” she told the publication.

“I thought my kids deserved to have a happy, healthy mother, and I needed to know that I had tried all options to be that for them.”

Tributes have begun pouring for the mother-of-two. Picture: Instagram/Dooce

Around this time she returned to blogging, this time with a focus on mental health, and never shied away from sharing hard truths with her readers.

Tributes have begun flooding in for Armstrong, with many praising her “raw” and “real” nature.

“Calling Dooce a mummy blogger was always an inadequate description of her breadth, her style and her early influence on blogging,” one tweeted.

“I am heartbroken by this news. Heather was a gifted writer who changed the face of blogging and opened up many frank discussions about mental illness. I am thankful I got to know her. Sending love to her family,” another wrote on Instagram.

Another said: “This is shattering. Thank you for making me want to write, Heather.”

Originally published as Heather Armstrong, ‘Queen of mummy bloggers’, dead at 47