A much-loved writer whose death by suicide was announced on Wednesday was tormented by ‘evil’ trolls, her friends have claimed.
Heather B. Armstrong, 47, pioneered the ‘mommy blog’ in the early 2000s, and went on to forge a successful career as an author, charting her own experiences as a mother of two girls and her battles with alcohol and depression.
Armstrong’s death was announced on Wednesday by her boyfriend Pete Ashdown, who told The Associated Press she died by suicide after recently relapsing following 18 months of sobriety.
The trolling was mostly on a website founded by the self-professed ‘most reviled woman on the web’, New Yorker Alice Wright.
Heather Armstrong was dubbed ‘Queen of the mommy bloggers’ by New York Times magazine
Alice Wright, seen in May 2022, founded the site GOMI – Get Off My Internets – in 2008 as a forum for commenting on well-known people
Wright founded the site GOMI – Get Off My Internets – in 2008 as a forum for commenting on well-known people.
Armstrong, who blogged under the name Dooce, featured frequently, in posts such as: ‘Dooce Will Bravely Post Soul Sucking Sponsored Content’.
Others included: ‘Dooce Wants You To Know Her Struggle’, and ‘Dooce’s Grief Sponsored By Headache Medicine’.
Armstrong’s friend Jill Smokler, creator of the Scary Mommy blog, told The New York Post: ‘I had some bad experiences with them but they were so evil with her.’
‘I got attacked for my parenting but they got really personal with Heather. It was complete bullying and so cruel.’
Smokler added: ‘They were relentless with her. They knew she was fragile and depressed.
‘It’s not easy to be bombarded with messages that you’re a terrible mother and shouldn’t be alive. It cuts to the core of who you are. I wonder how the people at GOMI feel now.’
Another friend, Deborah Cruz, who runs MotherhoodTheTruth.com, told the paper: ‘I’ve been told my children should die. But Heather got it really bad and she was more fragile than the rest of us.
‘But she was more successful too. People are jealous. She had an empire she built on living her truth and, as it grew, some people were like, ‘Why should she have that?”
Wright was brutal in her assessment of Armstrong when she heard the news of her death.
Wright is unrepentant about the content on her site, and was brutal in her comments after Armstrong died
‘[Armstrong] was a bigger bully than I am, was, or ever will be, and hasn’t been relevant since she refused to accept online monetizing and celebrity was changing like 10 years ago,’ she wrote.
‘But for some reason, people who hated her a month ago are acting like she’s some light-shining saint and was some major force in creator culture.
‘But she’s dead so hush hush! we can’t say anything other than good things. GMAFB.’
One of Wright’s followers, Pontica Tottos, responded: ‘Good riddance.
‘[Armstrong] wasn’t a nice person and the whole world finally saw that. She caused more harm than good to the people in her life and her suicide was just one more way of selfishly lashing out to those who loved her.
‘Her memory will never be a blessing.’
Wright in 2016 insisted her site was not about cruelty, despite the content she wrote and hosted.
‘I can’t speak for all the GOMI-ers and I realize there are some people who are a bit in that category of ‘let’s take this person down,’ and ‘let’s take them down a peg, and show them’ — that’s not where I’m coming from at all,’ she said.
‘I’m just very much ‘Oh my gosh, did you see what they posted? How crazy is that?’ and then talk about it.’
She added: ‘It’s not fair game to go and ruin someone’s life or anything, but what someone chooses to put out themselves publicly, that is fair game to discuss and speculate on.’
Armstrong leaves behind daughters Leta, 18, and Marlo, 14.
Her heartbreaking final blog post, published on April 6, discussed her sobriety battle and paid tribute to her firstborn daughter.
Armstrong’s mother (right) said her daughter (left) had a gift of intuition from a young age
Armstrong with her daughter Marlo, now 14, and her ex-husband Jon
‘Early sobriety resembles living life as a clam without its shell,’ she wrote.
She told how, in October 2021, she marked six months of sobriety ‘by myself on the floor next to my bed feeling as if I were a wounded animal who wanted to be left alone to die.’
She described the milestone as being ‘fraught with tears and sobbing so violent that at one point I thought my body would split in two.
‘The grief submerged me in tidal waves of pain. For a few hours I found it hard to breathe,’ she wrote.
‘I had isolated myself entirely from the outside world because I didn’t understand what was happening to me. And I was embarrassed.
‘Here, two years into this often frenzied and wandering dance with life, I understand that I couldn’t hold anyone’s gaze because everywhere I looked I saw nothing but my own worthlessness. And so I chose loneliness. I couldn’t handle the idea of anyone else knowing just how bad I felt about myself.’
She added: ‘Sobriety was not some mystery I had to solve. It was simply looking at all my wounds and learning how to live with them.’
Her death was announced on her Instagram page.
‘Heather Brooke Hamilton aka Heather B. Armstrong aka Dooce aka love of my life. July 19, 1975 – May 9, 2023,’ the post read.
”It takes an ocean not to break’.
‘Hold your loved ones close and love everyone else.’
Armstrong’s death was announced on her Instagram page on Wednesday
In 2016, Armstrong entered a clinical trial where she was made braindead three times a week for three weeks in an attempt to cure depression
Armstrong began her blog, Dooce, in 2001.
The name came from her mistyping the word ‘dude’ in a work email.
By 2009, she had a monthly readership of 8.4million and was making $40,000-a-month with banner ads, according to a 2019 Vox profile.
In 2016, after battling suicidal depression and sharing her struggles online, she took part in a clinical trial at the University of Utah.
The three-week trial involved her being induced into minutes-long comas three days a week.
The results were promising – six of the ten patients who took part in say their mental health improved, and continued to be better for three months afterwards.
It’s unclear if the treatment was ever advanced for approval.
She took part in drastic experiments to try to cure her depression, signing up to be made brain dead 10 times, then writing about it in the book: The Valedictorian of Death. Her previous books include Dear Daughter and It Sucked Then I Cried
Armstrong with her kids Leta (left) and Marlo (right)
After the trial, Armstrong wrote about it in her book: The Valedictorian of Death.
The experiment used propofol anesthesia to flatline her brain for 15 minutes. She was the third person to try it.
In an interview with The New York Post about the treatment, she said she was not at all fearful it might kill her.
She did it ten times, and noticed small changes in her behavior after initial bouts of nausea.
‘It was after the second treatment when I suddenly realized, ‘Oh, I showered without even thinking about it.
‘After the third treatment…I started doing my hair and wearing cleaner clothes,’ she said.
She wrote about the experience in her book The Valedictorian of Death.
Her previous books include Dear Daughter and It Sucked Then I Cried.
