Heather Armstrong was an American blogger, author, consultant, and columnist from Salt Lake City, Utah. He wrote under the pen name Dooce, a result of his inability to quickly enter the word ” dude ” in online chats with former co-workers. Armstrong was sober for 18 months but had recently relapsed. Due to her battles with alcohol and depression, she did suicide in May 2023.
Heather Armstrong Personal Life
Heather Armstrong was born on 19 July 1975 in the United States to Linda Hamilton-Oar and Mike. When Armstrong was very young, her parents got divorced and later her mother got remarried to Rob Oar.
Armstrong was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Memphis, Tennessee. She became suspicious of the church and experienced bouts of depression while studying in predominantly Mormon Utah. After graduating in 1997, she left the church and moved to Los Angeles, where she found work as a web developer for startups during the dot-com boom.
On May 9, 2023, Armstrong was found dead by her boyfriend, Pete Ashdown, in their Salt Lake City home as a result of suicide.
Heather Armstrong Career
In 2002, Armstrong sparked a heated debate over privacy concerns when she was allegedly fired from her job as a web designer and graphic
designer for writing satirical accounts of her experiences at a dot-com startup on her personal blog, dooce.com. “Dooced” can mean “being fired for something you wrote on your website”, which Armstrong humorously disputed in the FAQ section of his blog. This definition was used by the television game show Jeopardy! On December 10, 2009, as evidenced by a screenshot on her blog the following day.
Armstrong continued blogging after being fired and met Jon Armstrong, another ex-Mormon web developer from Utah, through a mutual friend. They got married and returned to their homeland to start a family. In 2004, after the couple’s first child was born, Armstrong began dedicating a large portion of her blog to parenting, becoming one of the first mom bloggers. Armstrong wrote extensively and humorously about her struggles with depression, hospitalization, pregnancy, parenting, and experiences with the LDS church. She called BYU one of the worst places and said she left the church the day after graduation because her degree was suspended because of a $20 unpaid parking ticket she received after she couldn’t find a legal place to park in a mandatory parking lot worship.
Armstrong said of her website, dooce.com, which began in February 2001 with Carnation Milk: “Since then, I’ve published more than 5,300 articles on topics such as breast pumps, golf carts with Norah Jones, and the guy I dated, talked about sex at the time like Elmo.” In 2004, Armstrong first accepted text ads on her website, a decision that was controversial among her readers. The following year, Armstrong adopted graphic ads and wrote that advertising revenue was her family’s main source of income when her husband took over her advertising and business. Since then, she has appeared in Suave commercials reflecting her image and branding. In 2009, Armstrong again gained media attention for using Twitter to fix her washing machine. Before that year, Dooce’s ads to 8.5 million monthly readers earned Armstrong $40,000 per month, making it her main source of income; she also started offering sponsored content.
She has appeared on Oprah and was listed with Oprah on Forbes’ list of the 30 Most Powerful Women in Media. In November of that year, Armstrong launched a new interactive section on his website that allows registered users to post questions and answers. Dooce.com has received several nominations and awards from The Weblog Awards, including the Armstrong Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. Dooce has also attracted attention from websites dedicated to sarcastic and critical observations about lifestyle bloggers, such as Get Off My Internets and the blogsnark subreddit. The mostly female readers of these forums second-guessed Armstrong’s parenting decisions and suggested that she doesn’t understand how privileged she is. Heather responded by posting the hate mail she received from readers of these sites on a separate page she later deleted called “Monetizing Hate”; Jon joked in 2011 that hate site traffic was better for the family business than the birth of their second child two years earlier. By then, Dooce’s income paid the salaries of Armstrong and one assistant, and two full-time nannies.
By the time of her divorce in the 2000s, such a large blog audience had begun to evaporate; many readers have gone to social media and other once-popular blogs have shut down. In 2015, Armstrong announced that she was taking a step back from blogging to focus on speaking and consulting work. Although she was able to travel and speak and do freelance marketing work at first, she soon found the pressures of being a single parent too much for her. Depression returned and by 2017, Armstrong said he felt “in a heap of emptiness” and couldn’t move on with his life. This year, she participated in a clinical trial at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute. Over 10 sessions, she was put into an induced coma for 15 minutes, designed to simulate brain death. After treatment, she felt well enough to continue blogging as a regular in 2015 and also published a book about her experience, The Valedictorian of Being Dead. Armstrong returned to another Internet. Most lifestyle bloggers like her have been replaced or evolved from influencers. “Mom blogging is dead, and I think most of my colleagues would agree,” she told Vox in 2019.
Armstrong continued to write sponsored content, receiving affiliate marketing income from Stitch Fix and Amazon, and maintains an Instagram feed in addition to her blog. Dooce still has half a million monthly readers, most of them from her a decade ago. She did not post pictures or anecdotes about her children without their permission. In addition to her usual material on parenting and family issues, Armstrong also posted about the mental health issues she faced. “I want people with depression to feel seen,” she said, “especially here in Utah, where teen suicide is an epidemic.” Ultimately, she told Vox, she wants to start a nonprofit dedicated to the cause.
She wrote her final blog on 6th April 2023, “On October 8th, 2021 I celebrated 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.”
Book
In late 2005, Armstrong entered into negotiations with Kensington Books to produce two books, one of which was to be a memoir of early parenthood. Negotiations broke down in May 2006, and Kensington sued to force Armstrong to honor the terms of the unsigned contract. In October 2006, both sides agreed to a settlement that allowed Armstrong to seek another publisher.
On April 29, 2008, Kensington Books published a book of essays, Things I Learned About My Dad: In Therapy, edited by Heather B. Armstrong. Her second book, It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown and a Much-Needed Margarita, was published on March 24, 2009, by Simon Spotlight Entertainment. It reached number 16 on The New York Times bestseller list on April 12, 2009. The Valedictorian of Being Dead was released in 2019.
Other Work
Armstrong was a music columnist and consultant for the Alpha Mother Media Network. She and her ex-husband ran Armstrong Media, LLC, a web design, advertising, and content production company. As of 2015, it is run by Jon Armstrong without her. She also appeared in the web video series Momversation. In late 2009, Armstrong announced a partnership with television network HGTV in which she would “work with HGTV’s network and on-air production teams to create innovative accessible programming for the network.” Although most of her partnership activity began in the spring of 2010, Armstrong began contributing weekly content to the network’s Design Happens blog in February 2010. Her last post on Design Happens was in September 2010.
Heather Armstrong Relationship
While working at a startup, she met web designer Jon Armstrong and the pair fell in love. Later they married and had two daughters: Leta Elise (b. 2004) and Marlo Iris (b. 2009). In 2012, the Armstrongs announced their separation; they divorced later that year. Heather wrote to Dooce explaining why, while Jon posted a Blurb on his blog. The announcement came as a surprise at the time, as Heather had never written about any marital problems and often wrote positively about her husband’s support for her during her struggles with the children and her depression. She later said the couple had been in counseling for years at the time; Jon “checked and punished” and assumed she would cross the negative comments on her site. The divorce was finalized the following year.
Jon moved to New York with his new girlfriend. After the divorce, she and Pete Ashdown, a technology entrepreneur and two-time Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Utah, became romantically involved. He lived with her and her children. He is also a former Mormon.
Heather Armstrong Net Worth
Armstrong had a net worth of $3 million. She had worked as a Blogger, Author, Consultant, and Columnist.
Heather Armstrong Education
Armstrong completed her schooling at a local school. In 1997, she graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English.
Heather Armstrong Twitter Account
Bonjour. pic.twitter.com/hFy4RkOlbk
— Heather B. Hamilton (@dooce) December 28, 2022
Heather Armstrong Instagram Account
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Heather Armstrong Physical Stats
| Height | 172 cm or 1.72 m or 5 feet 6 inches |
| Weight | 60 kg |
| Hair Color | Blonde |
| Eye Color | Blue |
| Body Measurement | – |
| Bra Size | 32 B |
| Dress Size | – |
Heather Armstrong Wiki/Bio
| Name | Heather Armstrong |
| Full Name | Heather Brooke Hamilton |
| Other Name | Dooce |
| Date Of Birth | 19 July 1975 |
| Age | 47 (as of 2023) |
| Birthplace | United States |
| Death | 9 May 2023 |
| Death place | Salt Lake City, Utah, United States |
| Profession | Blogger, Author, Consultant, Columnist |
| Nationality | American |
| Religion | Previously Christian butt later left the religion |
| Zodiac Sign | Cancer |
| Gender | Female |
| Parents | Mother- Linda Hamilton-Oar
Father- Mike Stepfather- Rob Oar |
| Siblings | Unknown |
| Partner | Pete Ashdow |
| Spouse | Jon (divorced) |
| Children | Leta and Marlo |
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