Heather Armstrong, a pioneering American “mommy blogger”, has died at the age of 47.
Ms Armstrong gained widespread recognition for detailing the ups and downs of parenthood on her blogging site Dooce.
Her boyfriend Pete Ashdown told the Associated Press he had found Ms Armstrong on Tuesday night in their Utah home.
She had two children with her former husband and business partner, Jon Armstrong, began Dooce in 2001 and built it into a lucrative career.
She was one of the first and most popular “mommy bloggers”, writing frankly about her children, relationships and other challenges.
It led to a 2009 memoir, “It Sucked and then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown and a Much Needed Margarita”.
The same year, Ms Armstrong was named in Forbes’ annual list of the 30 most influential women in media.
At the height of its popularity, Dooce received more than eight million visitors a month, according to Vox.
Its name came from an inside joke that riffed on how she was unable to spell out the word “dude” quickly in online chats.
In her memoir, she described how her blog began as a way to share her thoughts on pop culture with faraway friends.
But eventually, she began writing about her personal life and, eventually, an office job for a tech start-up, and “how much I wanted to strangle my boss, often using words and phrases that would embarrass a sailor.”
Her employer found the site and fired her, she wrote.
She took it down but started back up again six months later, writing about her new husband and later pregnancy, gaining a substantial following in the process.
Mr Ashdown told the Associated Press Ms Armstrong died by suicide. He said that she had been sober for more than 18 months, and recently had a relapse.
A caption on a Dooce Instagram page on Wednesday announcing her death said: “Hold your loved ones close and love everyone else.”
