Interview with bestselling author Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com, part two

April 8, 4:55 PMDenver Motherhood ExaminerSarah Porter

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Heather Armstrong talks about her book and blog at Tattered Cover.

Whether talking about Oprah, depression, or pregnancy, Heather Armstrong manages to keep it entertaining in person and in print.  Her personality is laidback and welcoming, which is very helpful to a fledgling interviewer.

This article continues the conversation posted in part one of the interview.  Included are comments from Jon Armstrong and my righthand man, Phil Porter.

So, Oprah, you did Oprah.

I did Oprah, yes!

Are you going to be one of Oprah’s favorite things? If I go to her show, will I find you under my seat?

I don’t think so. No, she’s very, very particular about what she promotes on her website, and on her show.

I noticed she didn’t promote your book, and barely talked about blogging.

Jon: Yeah.

H: Right, and the fact that she even showed the URL to my website was… I didn’t know she was going to do that. It was written into our contact, in all of our contracts…

Contract?

It was written into all of our contracts that we couldn’t bring up anything unless she did herself. So she’s very, very cautious about what she promotes, and probably duly so after what she’s been through, scandals with James Frey and all that kind of stuff.

You don’t want to be the next scandal.

No!

The pregnant scandal.

No, although we did have to fax her like the birth certificate of our daughter and our marriage certificate to prove we were who we were. Yeah, I mean, it’s serious research business there. They do their work.

So depression and pregnancy, kind of the perfect storm of hormones and mayhem?

Yes, I’ve used that word several times, perfect storm of circumstances to, yeah, go crazy.

And it’s different this time around?

It is. One, I’m still medicated. I’m still on Prozac.

Same levels that you were on?

I took it down a little bit just so that I could go back up to what I was in case I start to feel bad.

Because it was post pregnancy that you really had…

It was post pregnancy that I had a bad problem, and we now have sort of contingencies in place. We’ve got plans, and we know what to recognize, we know the signs, and we know how to help out this time in terms of, okay, here’s something we can do to help, and here’s something we can do to help, whereas beforehand, I was ignoring the problem for many months.

Well, it’s very brave of you, I think, to have written the book. You’ve blogged about it to your audience, but now you’ve exposed all kinds of people who aren’t in the blogging world.

I know, I know. That’s what I wanted to do was, many of my readers have said, you know, “I really appreciate you writing this on your website, but I can’t get my sister to log onto a computer. Could you please… Can I print this out for her to read and hand to her for her birthday?” And I was like, I should put this into a book so people can give this to their mothers or their sisters, you know, and I wrote this, and I put this together for the specific purpose to let people know they’re not alone, and this is what I went through, and if this is what you’re feeling, I had it, too. I’ll be the crazy one for all of us. I had it, too.

Well, you did a good job being crazy and spreading the word. [laughs]

[laughs]

So how different is the book writing process to putting out the blog?

It was awful. I don’t recommend anybody do it.

I’ve thought about it, so give me some tips.

It’s a lot of work. If I didn’t have to maintain my website at the same time, I think it would have been a completely different experience. I could have dedicated full days to it, but the website pays for everything, it’s our livelihood, so I had to keep that updated, so while one part of my brain was in 2007 and 2008, the other part of my brain was back in 2004 reliving the nightmare that was those first seven months. I had to take paragraphs and make them read like chapters and carry thoughts out.

Yeah, I remember reading things I’d read before but kind of in a different…

Yeah, it’s a different muscle. It’s a very different beast.

Have you thought about having Jon ghostwrite for you? [laughs]

[Laughs]

Handle the rest of it for you?

Jon: I’m not good enough.

No?

Jon: I’m no ghost writer. No way.

It would all be about Macs?

H: [laughs] All about Macs.

Jon: PHP.

H: [laughs]

Jon: Sorry, it’s your interview. (Locks lips.)

H: [laughs] Once Leta gets old enough, I can start putting her to work.

There you go. That’s why we had a kid, right?

Phil: To keep up with his chores.

Exactly! [Laughs]

Phil: The first two years they don’t help out that much.

Sarah: Well, today he learned hand puppets, like shadow puppets, so…

Oh, good.

Phil: It’s a breakthrough.

S: So I’m considering having another, but it’s really hard to decide that because I remember what it was like.

Well, how old is yours?

He’s 21 months.

Okay, Leta’s five, and so it took us this long to even think about it, and I mean, there were a couple of years there where we were like, “No, we’ll never do this again. No way. No, no, no, no, no.”

Because people lie when they say, “Oh, you’re going to forget the whole thing.”

Oh, no you don’t. Uh-uh. Oh, you don’t ever forget it. [Laughs]

I wish that lie would be stricken, and every woman who says that would be slapped. [laughs]

[Laughs] Exactly! Oh, no, it’s VERY fresh in my mind, like I remember very, very… I remember, you know, smells, and I remember sounds, and certain things will trigger, and I’ll have like a war flashback to like the nights spent pacing the floor. Yeah. Oh, no, I have not forgotten. But, you know, she has finally, and she’s been a difficult kid since we brought her home, and every milestone has been very difficult.

[Leta is] spirited.

Spirit, yeah. [Laughs] Every milestone with her has been really, really hard, and it hasn’t been until like the last year, especially the last few months, where she has just become, and she’s always been, you know, she’s my child I love her, but in the last year, she’s become the most delightful human being I’ve ever met in my life. I want to spend all of my time with her. I want to be with her all the time, and she’s telling jokes, and she’s reading books, and she is really sarcastic, and she’s rolling her eyes, and it’s just… Oh, my gosh, this is why I had kids.

So, maybe you picked a good time to have the second.

To ruin our lives again. [Laughs] We were home free!

So, going back to you don’t forget everything. Why don’t we talk about that? We go through these realities of motherhood, but other mothers don’t seem to talk about it or tell you about it. Why? Why is no one doing that?

Why is no one doing that? It’s a really good question. Like my mom had three kids, my sister’s got five kids, my brother’s wife has got five kids, and they never talked to me about it at all, ever. Even in a hospital room they wouldn’t talk to me about it. I think now our generation is a little more open with these things, and we’re like, “You know what? Guess what, I’m going to admit that I know that millions of women have done this before me, and I know that evolution has given us the body to do this, but I’m still not feeling it. I’m sure I will, but I’m just going to admit that it’s hard, and finding strength and admitting that.

So, you kind of used your blog as therapy.

Oh, yeah.

Would you recommend that to other mothers and other women?

I would, absolutely. I mean, just because for me, sitting down and realizing that other people were going to be reading it helped me articulate what I was feeling. He used to call me from work and be like, “I just read your web site and had no idea that you were feeling like this. Why didn’t you tell me?” And I was like, “I didn’t know to tell you because I didn’t know I was feeling it until I got down and wrote it.”

And it’s a good blog entry. [laughs]

[Laughs] You know, oddly, he’s not jealous of web browsers.

Jon: I got to learn stuff about her that I never would have in our conversations, just by reading her blog.

So good for your relationship, really.

Jon: Yeah.

H: It was, really. I’m a much better writer, I think than I am a talker, and it would flow better that way.

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The final part of this interview concludes tomorrow as we discuss marriage, Mormons, hate mail, more Oprah, and the pitfalls of Internet fame.  It's a good one.  Stay tuned.

Part one of my interview with Heather and Jon Armstrong can be read here.

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