June 4, 2023

One of Ours

Finding and losing; that is life

Editor's note: This won't make a whole lot of sense if you weren't reading and/or writing a blog in the early aughts. If you didn't read her or know her, here is Heather's wikipedia page for some background information.

The too-long title for this post is really a Willa Cather quote from One of Ours:

Ruin and new birth; the shudder of ugly things in the past, the trembling image of beautiful ones on the horizon; finding and losing; that was life, he saw.

My position or lack thereof in the Mommyblogging Hierarchy of Fame

In the wake of Heather B. Hamilton's death I have found myself in the strangest of places. Some people seemed to think I was more popular and better connected than I actually was; others were blinking in my direction wondering who I was and why I was involved in her memorial service.

The truth is, I don't really know where I fit. I didn't know then and I don't know now. I happened to know a lot of well-connected people and managed to stay connected even as I regularly set my blogs on fire and domain hopped.

I wasn't an A-lister, but I guess I knew(ish?) a lot of A-listers. Also, my definition of "A-lister" is a lot different than the definition of those who started blogging a few years after I did. My A-listers were Heather, Alice, Eden, Melissa (formerly of SuburbanBliss.net), Jen (formerly of Jen & Tonic), and Angela.

Here I am with bb Katie and everyone in my superstar list except Heather and Eden.

There were other movers and shakers, some I read, some I didn't.

My tenuous connection, if we can call it that, to the queen bee (spoiler, it was bonding over hate)

Heather pulled me aside during that BlogHer (I think we were somewhere in California) and said something along the lines of, "I've been watching your site grow and have been worried. How are you doing? How are you handling the influx of critical email?"

A lump formed in my throat as I shifted Katie to a different hip and found a place to perch next to Heather. I wasn't handling it well. Some of it was funny and some of it could ruin my week. Like the woman who wrote me a scathing email threatening to call CPS after I posted a picture of my boys floating a river in Idaho without helmets on. The river in question is so slow and lazy you can take pretty pictures of the trees reflecting in the glass-like water:

And the section we let them float (in the fattest, safest tube you ever did see) was so shallow our tube often got stuck or scraped the bottom. At our campsite, they could hold our hands and wade across the river to the other side.

Different river, but that's the tube (Hi, Eric 💔). One or both of us would sit on the side, one leg in the water, the kids safely tucked in its deep recess with life jackets safely fastened (ahem, I never would have posted this pic back then because Nate's buckle isn't done up yet).

The facts that they weren't ever alone, that they were in USCG-approved life jackets, that I was certified in CPR, that we weren't stuffing them in a barrel and sending them over Niagara Falls, didn't matter. In the sender's eyes, I was a terrible mother and she wasn't going to rest until she made sure I knew it.

I got emails and comments like that all.the.time. And at my blog's height, I only ever had a fraction of the traffic (and therefore hate) Heather did.

Anyway. She knew who I was and was a sweet and kind mentor to me. She helped me purchase my first Apple computer (the 13" iBook G3; I loved it so much!), even hopping on phone calls with me to talk me through the different options. She helped me buy my first DSLR (a Nikon, like hers, and later a Canon) and would send me comments on my posts via email as to not cause a stir. She asked me once if she could link to me after I suggested software to deliver rotating ads after she decided she needed to monetize her site and I told her no. I had already landed on Alice's (Finslippy) blogroll and was having the vapors over how much my traffic had spiked.

The drift

At some point, we stopped communicating. I'm not sure what happened or if it was just a normal online friend drift. I always wondered if it was because I'd told her I didn't know how she could continue to put up with the constant hate. I'd found myself featured on Trainwrecks.net (GOMI predecessor---if you are unfamiliar with both, congratulations. They were/are hate sites dedicated to decimating the choices, posts, photos, and lives of bloggers and influencers*) and I was ready to set everything on fire and move to the moon.

* I did come to understand the need readers had to question our choices and express concern, and at least they were doing it on their own forums instead of in our inboxes. But I think many underestimate (or perhaps revel in) the hurt they can cause.

I knew the constant barrage of criticism hurt Heather. I knew for all her brashness and outward display of strength, she was someone very fragile, who honesty maybe never should have put her life on the internet to begin with (I'm glad she did, but I constantly worried about her mental health). But it wasn't like we hung out; it wasn't like we messaged on Yahoo Messenger. We talked once in a while, we hugged and said hello at conferences.

As I continued to grapple with my pressing need to talk about my life on the internet while simultaneously cringing away from anything that might resemble fame, I became more and more uncomfortable with what sometimes seemed like a ravenous, foaming-at-the-mouth fan base in Heather's comment section.

Even before the advent of Instagram, the blog world was changing and I wasn't sure I liked it. It was so much easier to get lost in the noise; I didn't want to be lumped in as another Dooce sycophant. I'd started blogging on my own, without knowing who Heather was. When I found her, she was still unmarried, living in LA. I remember when she married Jon on a mountain top. I remember when she was pregnant with Leta. I remember when she posted this hilariousness in response to criticism that she wasn't pre-parenting right:

This photo, among many, were on display at the memorial service. Photo of a photo cred goes to Ashley.

The struggle

As time wore on and our kids grew up and a lot of once-popular blogs shuttered, it became obvious to those of us still checking in on her that something was up with Heather. She'd long shared her struggles with depression---writing multiple books, sometimes proclaiming herself cured and no longer in need of therapy and/or medication---but there were other concerning issues becoming (more) obvious.

Friends who featured heavily on her blog would disappear without a trace. Friends she once took roadtrips with and posted photos of had vanished from her feed. Fellow bloggers who once all linked to one another and followed one another no longer did.

My weird situation as a fairly-connected nobody meant that I heard backstage rumblings and sometimes knew who wasn't speaking to whom or even who had slept with whom. But there often seemed to be a sort of strange, unspoken gag-order when it came to Heather.

If Heather was behaving in concerning ways, or if there had been a falling out, a misunderstanding, an all out fight, it was like we weren't allowed to talk about it. Not with her (though some tried, only to get shut out) and certainly not on our websites.

I think on one hand we didn't want to be lumped in with the haters. On the other hand, we were nice people; we didn't want to air anyone's dirty laundry or add to the gossip mill.

The last couple of years have been rough. I was no longer following Heather closely, but checked in on her Instagram hoping she might be doing better. When she disappeared for several months, I hoped she had gone to rehab. She had gotten skinnier and skinnier, her writing had become more and more erratic. She'd written a strange and hurtful treatise against trans kids and lashed out at anyone still close enough to her to call her out on it.

Completing suicide

Sadly, like so many others, I was not surprised when Pete posted the announcement of her death, nor the manner in which it occurred (I don't know any details, so please don't ask). In fact, I spent a whole heartbeat wondering if there was any way it could possibly be fake. It wasn't too long ago Heather had been rambling about having an inoperable, terminal brain tumor. That hadn't been true; maybe this wasn't either.

But it was. And I spent the next week involved in a flurry of texts and phone calls while long-time blog friends commiserated and tried to process.

Still, I was shocked when a mutual friend reached out and invited me to the private Slack group to help with Heather's memorial service. I felt like a fish out of water; or worse, a foreign salt water guppy unceremoniously dumped in with a bunch of beautiful freshwater bettas.

I wasn't the only one feeling strange, though. Heather's former blog friends all seemed to feel reluctant and even hypocritical. One wrote:

"This is an unusual situation many of us find ourselves in to feel hypocrisy around attending a funeral. Heather was once a dear friend, but all of us know she had an illness that affected her brain. She has not been herself for many years, and has borne a lot of pain. I'm grateful to Pete, and her mother, and her kids for everything they shouldered with her illness, especially after many of us couldn't any longer. I'm also grateful for the memories I made with her when she was healthier. If you're able to come, but hesitant for any reason, do come. I doubt there will be a person there who isn't in a similar place.

My Mormon upbringing means when there is a tragedy and a memorial to plan we show up with funeral potatoes and cleaning supplies, but that wasn't really feasible. So I offered a digital casserole instead. I said I could help with graphic design like programs or photo montages; I added that I could help with a video slideshow, too.

I didn't think anyone would take me up on it, but I was prepared to help if someone did. A couple days later I found myself on the phone with Pete, Heather's partner. He sounded shattered and still reeling from shock. I said the things only another widow can say, and he sent me an enormous file of photos and video clips, along with two music pieces he wanted to use in a slideshow he'd use during his closing remarks.

Guys. I do not know what I expected, but I was not prepared.

It was heavy, sacred work, but still so incredibly strange. I don't know if I can explain it, exactly.

I won't describe or share the photos; some were hard to see, but there were lots of beautiful, sweet moments of Heather and her kids, of Heather and Pete together, and photos and clips of Heather living her life. And those hit hard. It was clear she wasn't well, but she was out there, you know? She was trying so hard to stay; she was doing her best to just... live.

It's not the same, but that effort resonated with me. Widow-life often means putting one foot in front of the other even when the whole world has imploded. She was not well, but she did a lot of putting one foot in front of the other.

It took me three straight days to sync the pictures and clips to the music; to make sure everything flowed, to do a little bit of kind photoshopping, and to carefully choose (and gently explain) which photos ought to be left out.

The funeral

I still felt funny about attending the memorial, but Pete loved the video and sent me a link to the private RSVP page. I had to lie on the floor of my office and cry for a while. It was almost like I'd been thrust back into 2006---an era when I was so torn between a desire to connect with more amazing people and a crippling fear that all those people would hate or reject me.

I liked what my friend had written about Heather's passing---that if there was a yearbook of mommyblogging, she'd be included. I thought, well, I'm definitely not the centerfold*, but I'm in there. I'm in a blurry photo on the back row of the FBLA club, but I'm there.

* Listen, I know 'centerfold' is a weird choice of word, but in my high school yearbooks, we did have kind of a centerfold. The most popular girl (Amy, blonde, dancer) had full page, full color spreads. I'm not even kidding. Like, multiple ones. And the rest of us peons were just like, oh yeah, this is normal.

Anyway, I thought a lot about how people showed up for us when Eric died. His funeral was weird and stupid because of the pandemic, but also because of familial pressures. It wasn't what he wanted and it was traumatic for the kids. But I remember who showed up. I remember who dropped off boxes of food from Costco, who had a crate of Kleenex (with lotion!) delivered to our door, and who mailed us gift cards. ❤️‍🩹 When my friend Kat's dad died, I remember how much it mattered when people showed up at the viewing and got in line. And even if people said dumb stuff or DM'd triggering things, we still noticed and appreciated that they tried.

I was going to be in Utah anyway, so I packed what I hoped was appropriate funeral attire and planned to go, but also gave myself an out. I told myself if I woke up the morning of feeling full of dread and sick, I would stay back.

Pete asked the Slack group friends to prepare a quote from Heather's writing and something to say. I thought surely we would just be dropping notes in a box, but my friend Leoh said absolutely not, we were going to be asked to speak. I had a(nother) melt down and told my friends, "It kind of feels like I was in an elevator with Oprah once, and now they want me to speak at her funeral."

Spoiler: The officiator friend announced the friend portion like it was more of an open mic, and none of us had to get up; the time was quickly filled with others. Huzzah. After listening to her entire family, there was not a single cell in my body that wanted to stand up and say, "Hi, I'm nobody. Seriously."

Here's what I was going to read if forced at gunpoint:

On August 28, 2004, Jon posted an entry for Heather she had handwritten during her stay at a mental hospital for severe postpartum depression.

At the end, she writes, “When people say that they can’t believe I’m being so open about this I want to ask them WHY NOT? Why should there be any shame in getting help for a disease? If there is a stigma to this, let there be one. At least I am alive. At least my baby still has her mother. At least I have a chance at a better life.”

I know we’re all familiar with Heather’s story; she refused to be silenced and wrote about her struggles with depression and suicidality. We also know how many people she touched and how many lives she saved.

My story is just one of many.

I was brought up in an extreme subculture where I was taught to be very fearful of pharmaceuticals and medical doctors. For years I tried to treat my own depression and anxiety with an ineffective combination of priesthood blessings and an increasingly restrictive diet that would eventually develop into a raging case of orthorexia.

I would read stories like Heather's, intrigued, but afraid, continuing to limp along, a death grip on expensive bottles of supplements; my fridge chock full of organic kale.

But then my husband died very suddenly in November of 2020 and our oldest son, drowning in grief, became actively suicidal.

Even though we hadn’t talked in years, I thought of Heather often during my son’s ten-day stay at the same mental hospital she’d written about 17 years earlier. I wrote her from the parking lot of the hospital, not expecting or needing a reply. The subject line was, “Hanging at 4th North.”

I told her briefly of my son’s struggles and closed with this:

“I don’t need to burden you with our sad stories. I just wanted to thank you for openly writing about your own battles with depression and specifically, your stay and your experiences here. I don’t know that I would have known this place was an option without your posts after having Leta. Thank you Heather.”

In my extended family, getting my son help that didn’t include a colonic cleanse and a glass of celery juice was an almost violent act of rebellion. I was not being hyperbolic when I told her I wasn’t sure I would have known the hospital was an option without her posts. Heather helped save my son’s life.

Blogging was so weird. It was also wonderful. It provided for me, then an extremely sheltered higher-law mormon mom, a window into normalcy. I learned that I was not the only one grappling with chronic constipation or dramatic poop labor after giving birth. I learned that I was not the only mother crying into a pile of towels in the laundry room while my child sobbed because I buttered his toast on the wrong side. And most importantly, I learned---in the words of another early mommy blogger, Melissa of Suburban Bliss, “Sometimes medication just feels better.”

I, like so many of you, hoped that Heather would get better. I knew if she did, she would write about everything we were witnessing, everything we were worried about with the same aching rawness and vulnerability she had when we all fell in love with her.

I don’t know anyone else who fought so long and so hard to stay.

Here's the photo I took in the 4th North parking lot the day I was checking my son out of the mental hospital; I think I attached it to my email to Heather:

The memorial was good, but also heavy and long and triggering and beautiful and awful and surreal and not-surreal. Heather's daughters Leta and Marlo both spoke, and I'd go all over again just to listen to them; they did so beautifully. Both Heather's mom and Pete addressed Heather's demons in real, honest ways, and I really appreciated that. We have a tendency to foist the dead onto uncomfortable pedestals they never would have wanted; I think it's important we don't ignore the hard.

The hard is part of life and it's why Heather set so many relationships on fire and burned so many bridges, and it's why she isn't with us any more. It would be a disservice to pretend the hard didn't exist.

I completely understand why they didn't stream the service, but when I woke up (incredibly depressed) the next day, my ultimate takeaway was that the entire thing was very humanizing. And part of me wished the world could have seen and experienced that. Heather was, in many ways, larger than life, but at the end of the day, she was a profoundly ill human being who was trying her absolute best to stay alive for her kids.

After listening to it all, it's a straight up miracle she made it to 47.

Afterward

Someone took a photo of the somewhat motley crew of old-time bloggers who were able to attend, and I'm so sorry because it's absolutely awful of Isabel and Maggie but there we are. Someone said, "Everyone point at Heather," so I did, but I'm the only one. If that isn't a pretty excellent diagram of my mere adjacency to the cool kids, I don't know what else is.

From L-R: Heather Champ Powazek, Isabel Kallman, Heather Barmore, Eden Kennedy, Kelly Hurst, Maggie Mason, Leoh Blooms, and me, the interloper.

Closing remarks

I think saying "in closing" out loud at the end of a speech is such a funny, pretentious, dumb thing to say. It's clearly someone reading off an outline because no one says it in real life. And yet I just typed it. I dunno why.

I still feel really drained when I try to process this whole thing, so we'll blame it on that.

If you got through it all, I am sending you a pie. xo

p.s. This happens to be my #69th newsletter issue; Heather would have appreciated that bit of middle-school tom-foolery.