Honoring Heather Armstrong’s Writing

The original influencer was so much more than an influencer.

It’s been almost two weeks since the news of Heather Armstrong’s death. Heather, for those of you who aren’t familiar, has been dubbed the original influencer and mommy blogger by many, her website Dooce.com a revelation for many moms like me who were raising a child in the late 2000s and feeling bewildered — and at times despondent — over the unanticipated pressures of modern-day parenthood. We found solace in these newfangled things called “blogs,” where a writer could publish their thoughts at will and readers could find and relate to their work simply by calling it up in a browser. 

Gladiola Sotomayor

I had an immediate and profound reaction to Heather’s death — she had committed suicide after a lifelong battle with severe depression — but there was so much to process that I couldn’t write about it right away. There was the fact that she was a writer, and a confessional writer at that. Is the nature of putting yourself out there, whether in a blog or a newsletter like this one, while certainly productive and uplifting in some respects, also ultimately destructive? The more vulnerable you are, the better your writing — but also the easier it is for people to react strongly to it, perhaps triggered by their own traumas, and respond with negativity. Is it ever truly worth it to put yourself out there so fully, exposing your wounds to a world that isn’t always going to treat them gently? 

There was also the parenting side of this equation — I had related to Heather first and foremost as a mom, not as a writer, and her final post was fittingly, mainly about her firstborn who is now on the verge of adulthood. How was I, as a parent, supposed to interpret this final outcome?

But it was an Instagram post that Brooke shared with me from the author Jennifer Weiner that brought my thoughts into focus today. Among other topics surrounding Heather’s death, Jennifer mentioned the way commercial women’s writing is treated and wondered, “Why was Heather Armstrong a ‘mommy blogger’? Why didn’t we just call her a writer? She changed the world.” And it’s true: Above all other labels, Heather Armstrong was a game-changing writer.

I had my first child when I was 30 years old — relatively young, in this day and age — and it was perhaps the loneliest time in my life. None of my friends were having children yet, I had abruptly decided to quit my job (effectively ending my career, I thought at the time) to be with my daughter, and despite all the support that my husband, mother, and mother-in-law offered me, I was feeling completely unmoored. It seemed like no one could truly understand what I was going through.

Heather’s blog, when I discovered it, was a lifeline. She was funny and entertaining, yes, but mostly she was also unapologetically real, and I felt like she got it — all of it. She laid it all out and never held back, and her writing was intimate, tender, and ferocious all at once, whether she was describing her intense feelings about being a mother or her troubles with an infuriating stroller that wouldn’t fold up properly. Her style and skill were unparalleled in those early days of blogging. I bought her book, It Sucked and Then I Cried, eager to absorb more. I couldn’t get enough of her writing, and in our shared darkness, I found light.

A Dear Fiction reader left an insightful comment a few weeks ago about how stories can be viewed as either windows or mirrors — sometimes they let you see into another person’s world so you can understand others better, and sometimes they reflect your own world back to you so you can understand yourself better. Both are meant to make you feel less alone. Heather’s writing was exactly the mirror I needed at that time in my life, her unflinching, poignant way of describing things resonating deeply. It certainly did make me feel less alone in a time when I really needed to feel seen and heard, and I will always be grateful for that.