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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC on this day after Mother's Day. Now that the chocolates and flowers and platitudes have all been delivered, and after a light-hearted call-in on Friday with your mom's favorite jokes, and stories of you becoming your mom, we want to pay tribute today to groundbreaking and wildly popular writer about being a mother as well as other subjects who died last week, Heather Armstrong. Her website was dooce.com as many of you know.

She was a wildly popular blogger and had best-selling books too. She was 47. The writer, Jo Piazza, will be our guest in just a minute, but we'll open up the phones from the start here. Listeners we know we must have Dooce readers, Heather Armstong readers who are sad about her passing and grateful for how she helped you through some of the challenges for you of being a mother, or maybe a father, or just being a human on Earth from some of her other themes. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Tell us one way that Heather Armstrong helped or influenced you, or anything else you want to say, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

With me now is Jo Piazza, best-selling author or co-author of books, including We Are Not Like Them, Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win, The Knock Off, and How To Be Married. Her new one, You Are Always Mine, written with co-author Christine Pride comes out next month. Maybe you know Joe Piazza's podcast Under The Influence, which discusses the mom internet, and she had a post on her substack newsletter the other day about the coverage of Heather Armstrong's death called How Will Your Obituary Define You, among other things.

She didn't like the term mommy blogger in all the headlines about Heather Armstrong. Jo, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Jo Piazza: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: For the uninitiated, could you start with the premise of your article that Heather was not just a good writer about parenting or a "mommy blogger" but a pioneering writer?

Jo Piazza: Yes, absolutely. I really appreciate in your earlier description of Heather that you didn't use the word mommy blogger. You said that she was a writer. I think that's how she should have been referred to in the many, many obituaries of her that came out last week. The words "mommy blogger" were in almost every single obituary. I think that really it's condescending to say that because she was so much more than that.

Heather pioneered a whole new genre of writing, writing about parenthood, writing about mental health. She was a pioneer that really inspired a whole generation of both men and women, but really mostly women, to write about the things that mattered to us. To elevate writing about motherhood, and parenting to a level that I don't think had been appreciated before.

If you just think about it as if aliens were looking down on the planet, writing about parenting, writing about raising human beings should be something that is appreciated, should be something that is lauded. It's one of the more important things that we do as people on this planet, and yet for so long, and even now, it's talked about in a very condescending manner, or it's marginalized.

Brian Lehrer: There have been plenty of parenting books for generations. I'll ask you in a minute how you think Heather Armstrong was new or different from them from the parent reader's point of view, but the comparisons you make regarding her as a writer and a groundbreaking writer to a certain generation of male journalists considered groundbreaking at the time, Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, largely 1960s and '70s figures with what was called at the time the New Journalism, which was more first person and some other things. Why them in particular as a comparison?

Jo Piazza: Because they've been lauded as pioneers of a new kind of writing. The New Journalism, the really very first-person immersive journalism, and we look at them, we hold them up as literary icons. Actually, you know what? I should pull up some of their obituaries and just read the headlines, but they were called iconic writers. That's what we should have referred to Heather Armstrong as in her obituary because she took what they did to a whole other level.

Her writing was raw and vulnerable. It was the first time that I saw my experiences as a woman down on the page. She has also inspired countless other women writers, countless other female-centric brands and media entities that are still thriving today when so many other media entities are dying every single day.

Brian Lehrer: There have been many parenting advice books published previously from, I don't have to tell you, Dr. Spock, through What To Expect The First Year, to Dr. Becky Kennedy, and on and on. What made people turn to Heather Armstrong or dooce.com, her website in particular?

Jo Piazza: I think it's the fact that Heather didn't sugarcoat anything, and she was funny as hell. She was just really honest about how freaking hard it is to be a mother in this world. She didn't allow any of the things like brand sponsorships or anything to dictate how she talked about parenting. She just put it all out there, warts and all, in a way that so many parenting books don't do.

Many parenting books really do sugarcoat things. They make it seem a lot easier than it is. "If you just follow this one tip to sleep train your baby, it's going to be so much easier." Heather admitted just how hard all of it was in a world that usually doesn't care how hard motherhood is.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's Kathy in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Katy, I'm sorry. Kate in Brooklyn you're on WNYC. Hi, Kate.

Kate: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call, and a longtime listener and a big fan of your show. Thank you for all that you do.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Kate: I was a longtime reader of Heather Armstrong, really from when her daughter was first born. It was before I had my own children. It's very strange that I don't know her at all, but her words and phrases and stories that she told still live in my head. I really wanted to call and talk about how important what she shared with her readership about her struggles with postpartum mental health, how important that is to us now.

I feel like, as someone who has struggled myself with perinatal mood and anxiety disorder when I first had my children, I had more tools and knowledge available because of what I read through Heather's experience. I felt like that made it so I didn't have to suffer quite as much. Her openness and honesty about her experiences made me realize that, "Oh, I'm experiencing something similar."

I'm also a lactation consultant now. I really try to highlight with my own clients that I see at a very vulnerable period how important their mental health status is, and how that is our main focus in addition to feeding their baby. I really feel like there wasn't a lot of talk about this before Heather and other writers like her brought this forward and said that this is what moms can experience, and how dangerous it can be, and how important it is to seek help.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, great perspective, I think, on the big picture of her influence. Kate, thank you very much.

Listeners how about anybody else who was influenced by Heather Armstrong or appreciated her work 212-433-WNYC. Can we go there on this day after Mother's Day? 212-433-9692 as we continue with the writer, Jo Piazza, who wrote on her substack about Heather in the coverage of Heather's death. Jo, I wanted to get this far into the conversation talking about Heather's work before we talked about her death. but Kate, our caller there touched on it and gave us an opening.

She did write candidly about her struggles with depression and alcoholism and the AP, "her boyfriend", which I guess is being taken as definitive saying she died by suicide last week. I wanted to focus on her life before talking about her death apparently by suicide at age 47. Suicide for her on the week leading up to Mother's Day, it's either a really sad coincidence or it's extremely poignant, or both. Does it matter?

Jo Piazza: Well, I want to echo what Kate said about how the things that Heather wrote about, depression and anxiety and all of her mental health struggles, they helped me as a new mother too, because I started reading her before I had my kids. Because I read her stories, I also knew what to expect. I also have struggled with both depression and anxiety, postpartum, and just regular run-of-the-mill depression and anxiety for most of my life. Seeing someone write about that, I can't say enough how much that means to someone who struggles with it.

I don't know if it's a coincidence. I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened right before Mother's Day. I think when you're a person struggling as much as Heather did, you're not thinking about anything like that. What I'm hoping is that other people who are in a dark and difficult place will read her story, will read about her cause of death, and it may help some people to find the help that they need, in the ways that she did with everything else, in the ways that she did with parenting, with writing about her anxiety and depression.

If there is any good to come out of a terrible terrible thing, it's that by reading about her story and what happened last week, maybe someone out there will reach out to the people who can help them.

Brian Lehrer: I want to take a call from Amara in Ridgewood in a second but anticipating what we think she's going to say, I want to play a clip of Heather Armstrong and let people hear her voice. This is from the XOXO Festival in 2015 discussing her decision at that time to walk away from full-time blogging.

Heather Armstrong: I didn't want to decorate the every day and the ugliness of it. I wanted to celebrate it. I wanted to write it and move you and make you laugh. I always did it as irreverently as I possibly could.

Brian Lehrer: Amara in Ridgewood, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in. We appreciate it. Hi.

Amara: Hi, Brian. I'm a longtime listener, and this is my first time calling. I'm actually really surprised that this is the thing that got me to call in. I'm just so shocked by this hagiography that I just really needed to put in my two cents.

This is the woman who monetized her children. These are children who had no say in the fact that their lives were completely broadcast, every single thing. Not only that, she had a really groomed image. She never put up an ugly photo of herself. I just don't understand this idea that she was speaking some truth. Everything about it was manufactured. I'm just disappointed that she's getting lauded in this way because I think she's really a toxic.

Brian Lehrer: Jo, talk to Amara.

Jo Piazza: [chuckles] Amara, I do have a lot to say on the idea of sharing children's lives. I reported a whole podcast called Under the Influence on what it means for children to be used in this content. I think that could be an entirely other episode of the show. We are starting to learn that it can be toxic for children whose lives are shared on the internet without their consent, that there can be absolutely privacy and data implications farther down the line. Not to mention what is it like when your whole life is available on the internet.

I do have to say I think that that is a different conversation that we should be having. I've seen photos that Heather posted where she didn't look picture-perfect. She was an early blogger before the age of influencing turned motherhood into something that had to look picture-perfect. I would argue that she did post the messy parts of her life. Yes, she was a very pretty woman, objectively. There's a lot of really nice pictures of her out there. A lot of really nice pictures of her house, but I do think that she showed the mess. I don't think that everything that she wrote was manufactured in the way that a lot of influencers do today.

Brian Lehrer: This is your area of interest on your podcast, right? The Apple podcast page says, "Under the Influence is a deep dive into the mom internet, a place haunted by aspirational marketing where it feels like every other mom is a social media influencer trying to sell you something." It says, {Journalist and mom, Jo Piazza, looks at how we got here, what it all means, and how the commodification of motherhood is driving mothers a little insane." Is that about how you would describe what you're covering there?

Jo Piazza: Yes, absolutely. That is a perfect description. I should thank my producer, Emily, for writing that. After I had my second baby, she wouldn't sleep at night. I would just rock her and rock her. Sometimes I'd have my phone out, and the only appendage free would be my thumb so I'd be scrolling Instagram. I kept being served these picture-perfect images of motherhood, and discovered they were mom influencers. They were women who were creating content about motherhood, usually to sell things, sometimes to sell classes for sleep training, or lactation consulting, but usually just stuff, lots and lots of stuff. They made money by pushing this stuff on other mothers.

They felt like something very very different from what Heather did. Yes, Heather created a blog that did accept banner ads in the beginning, way back in the olden days of the internet. She did ultimately move into branded content. That is how almost every media site that exists these days that aren't beautifully publicly funded by listeners just like you guys, but that is how these sites make money. Her writing was completely, completely different than what I see from the influencers today.

The influencers today are creating, essentially, beautiful magazines of their lives. Heather didn't do that. She really really didn't make anything glossy or perfect the way that we're seeing these influencers do today. I would put her in a completely completely different class of [unintelligible 00:17:00].

Brian Lehrer: How bad was the hate that came down upon her, and where do you think it mostly came from, and how do you think it affected her?

Jo Piazza: Brian, it was so bad. It was absolutely disgusting. I've got to say it's not surprising, though, because any woman who puts herself out there on the internet is subjected to the terrible terrible things that the trolls say. Anytime I write anything, I get trolled, usually by men, but often also by women. There are some women who do enjoy attacking other women on the internet because it makes them feel better about themselves, or because it gives them a sense of shame and pride. "Well, my life isn't perfect, but I can say that this woman is ugly or fat, or that she's a terrible mother." Those are all things that people said about Heather Armstrong every single day.

I interviewed her about two years ago. It was a long interview. We talked a lot about just how many messages she got in a single day, telling her that she was the worst person on the planet. If you're a person who's already suffering from depression, can you imagine how much worse that makes it? No matter how thick your skin gets, you internalize those comments.

I internalize the terrible things that people write about me in comments on my podcast on Good Reads about my books. I can't help it. It just breaks my heart that at the end of the day, Heather did end her own life. No one should speculate about why, but you have to imagine that this hate that was constantly directed at her had something to do with it.

Brian Lehrer: Can one be critical of someone who takes their own life and leaves- I think she had a teenager still, right, her second child? I've heard it said, in other situations, I'm not endorsing it, that somebody who commits suicide with a minor child at home is, in a certain respect, committing a selfish act.

Jo Piazza: Oh, I've heard that said too many times. I think it's imperative that we reframe that. If someone were diagnosed with cancer, or another disease, and passed away leaving a child behind, we would never be critical of that person. I think that we have to view depression and mental health the same way. We really do. We can't judge that person for being in such a dark, dark place that this is what happened to them. I think that that is incredibly unfair not just to Heather's legacy, but it's unfair to heap that on her children and to say, "Your mother was selfish for leaving you here." That just makes it harder on her kids and that is completely unfair.

Brian Lehrer: It's too bad that we often have to remind people that mental health is about health. Even though it includes the word, people often need to be reminded that mental health, by explicit definition, is about a health concern. One more caller. Jessica in Union City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jessica.

Jessica: Hi, Brian. Actually, I was a reader of Heather Armstrong's blog. I bought both of her books. I had no idea that she had died until you said it this morning. I listen to you almost every day. I am just beyond sad. I agree with everything that Jo just said about mental health. My mom died by suicide when I was eight years old, and it's not her fault. It's an illness. My brother, sadly enough, also died by suicide on March 28th. To hear this is crushing.

She was hilarious. Her writing was standout. I'm a mother of three children. The fact that she was so brave to be so honest about motherhood and parenting in general, and about being an adult in a marriage and all those things.

I went to her book signing, downtown, probably five years ago maybe, before the pandemic and, she was lovely in person. I wrote to her through email over because I've been reading her for 20 years. She was a beautiful person in terms of her writing and in terms of just being there for the people that loved her writing. It's a phenomenal loss for anybody who's a parent or anybody who loves good writing.

Thanks, Brian. I'm happy that I heard it from you at the minimum because I haven't been listening to media. I've been trying to cut down, so it's better hearing it from you.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I appreciate that, Jessica. Thank you very much for your call. Beautiful words on which to pretty much end. Jo, if you want to give us a closing thought.

Jo Piazza: That was a gorgeous tribute. That's the kind of tribute that I think Heather Armstrong deserves. I really hope that we continue to celebrate her life and her writing and to honor her legacy by giving her due as the kind of writer who helped inspire countless writers to do what they do today.

Brian Lehrer: Jo Piazza, bestselling author or co-author of books, including We Are Not Like Them, Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win, The Knockoff, and How to Be Married, and her new one, You Were Always Mine, written with co-author Christine Pride comes out next month. I guess I should at least give you the opportunity after this long segment that you sat for, to do a little blurb for your brand-new book. You want to do a 15-second blurb?

Jo Piazza: I would love to, yes. You Were Always Mine, it's about motherhood. It's fitting for this topic. It is about a woman who finds an abandoned baby and the impact that has on her life and her community. It's also about the young woman who chose to abandon her child. We're trying to take an intense look at what motherhood means in the world today when everything feels so fraught. You Were Always Mine, it comes out on June 13th.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks a lot, Jo. Listeners, Jo Piazza's podcast, Under The Influence discusses the mom, internet, and the influencers, and her substack newsletter article on the Death of Heather Armstrong was called, How Will Your Obituary Define You? Jo, thanks so much.

Jo Piazza: Thanks, Brian.

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