Heather B. Armstrong, Known As Dooce, Has Died at 47

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | May 10, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | May 10, 2023 |

Back in 2004, when Pajiba launched, there weren’t a lot of sites like ours around. There was Ain’t It Cool News, C.H.U.D., and there was FilmFreakCentral. But there were also blogs, which were the podcasts of their day, only less produced, and more raw and honest before people started so easily sharing their lives online. Pajiba merged the two — movie site and blog, with a big dash of Cintra Wilson. We got a lot of early inspiration on the blogging side from Heather B. Armstrong, best known to followers as Dooce.

Armstrong, according to a post on her Instagram and her boyfriend, Pete Ashdown, has died by suicide. She was 47. Armstrong had struggled with both addiction and depression all of her life, and it was a frequent topic of posts on her blog, particularly after she and her husband split (the earlier days of Dooce more often involved hilarious and sometimes unhinged tales about parenting and her marriage).

I stopped regularly reading in the 2010s — as did much of her audience — but she continued to write books about parenting and her struggles with depression, including a 2019 book, The Valedictorian of Being Dead, which recounted a treatment for depression she experienced designed to induce a coma and simulate brain death for 15 minutes.

More recently, Armstrong had been sober for 18 months, but according to her boyfriend — a former Mormon, like Armstrong — she recently had a relapse.

Armstrong is survived by two children, as well as Ashdown, who had been living with her for the last six years. May her memory be a blessing.