The successful blogger Heather Armstrong, who chronicled her motherhood problems on her website Dooce, has passed away. She was 47 years old. Her partner Pete Ashdown reportedly discovered her body in their Salt Lake City residence. The “queen of mommy blogging” was dubbed Ms. Armstrong for sharing peeks into her experiences as a mother, battles with depression, and marriage. Dooce attracted over eight million visitors each month at its height of popularity, the site added, citing a Vox story.
Armstrong also made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and published her debut book
Armstrong was among the 30 most powerful women in media according to Forbes in 2009. The same year, she also made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and published her debut book. ‘Dear Daughter’ is the title of her second book, which was published in 2012. According to an old article from The Wall Street Journal, Armstrong’s blog may have brought in $40,000 a month in revenue from paid advertising by 2009, at the height of the blogging boom.
After being let go from her work as a web designer in Los Angeles in 2002, she created the blog. The cause was the discovery of a caustic blog she had written, in which she had given her coworkers names like That One Coworker Who Manages to Say Something Stupid Every Time He Opens His Mouth. The New York Times (NYT) said that the phrase “Dooced,” which describes a person who has been dismissed because of anything they wrote on a website or blog, was the inspiration for the name of her website.
“I cried in my exit interview. My boss, who served as the subject of some of my more vicious posts, sat across the table from me unable to look me in the face, she was so hurt. I had never felt like such a horrible human being, even though in my mind I thought that I was just being creative and funny,” Armstrong said in an interview, as per NYT. Armstrong was born Heather Brooke Hamilton, was raised in the Memphis enclave of Bartlett, Tennessee, and eventually established herself in Salt Lake City.