Heather Brooke Hamilton (Armstrong)

Heather Brooke Hamilton Armstrong was a miracle and a fighter, and she wrote generously about her pain and struggles and her joys and her triumphs. Why she left this earth on May 9, 2023, is peripheral because in the 47 years she floated around here she created two extraordinary children, Leta and Marlo, and she lived an abundant life of writing, music, photography, traveling, family, and shared the love of her partner, Pete.

When we find ourselves without our beloveds, we look for the open, spacious light areas where others can witness our grief. There’s a good reason for this: sharing our pain with a listening audience becomes a tool for healing. Heather knew this and practiced it often in her writing career. None of us realized it was preparing us for losing her.

She was a larger-than-life woman who possessed an astounding talent for writing gorgeous sentences, a crackerjack incisive wit, and she was a stunningly brilliant storyteller. Those parts of her remain with us and live through us, if only we’ll remain true to keeping that light of hers lit. She burned brightly.

Heather was vulnerable. If she had a desire, it was for gentleness and kindness. What came easily to her was silliness and absolute bathroom humor, but this fierce and fragile creature never did have enough fun. Not in 47 years, that’s too short. We can all agree that she didn’t pee her pants from laughing nearly enough. Nowhere even close.

There was so much she knew. She was certainly educated, but importantly, she was wise. Yet, there was so much she didn’t know. Which is likely why she would search for answers on her travels.

Heather was a mirror: she would reflect everything back to you if you dared pass along a compliment. I’d try to thank her for some kindness she did for me, and she immediately turned around that compliment and told me that she had learned some invaluable life lesson from me.

Heather. Shut up and take the compliment.

She couldn’t do it. “No, no, you don’t understand. You’re brilliant and you just taught me…”

She reflected the light you possessed and refused acknowledgement of her own. It was infuriating and incredible, all at the same time.

Did she ever comprehend how many lives she saved? I have read so many versions of the same sentence about her in the last week: I didn’t know Heather personally, but she saved my life.

She was actively saving lives with her words. Including her own, for a long time.

And yet.

She swallowed the darkness of the comments from insecure women who couldn’t live their lives out loud, joyful and vulnerable at the same time, like Heather did. Heather’s bold and brilliant stories sent a cadre of nasty women who combined forces to bring her down. That was their quest.

I wish she could have seen her the way we saw her instead. Our light would have overpowered that darkness.

Shauna, sweet friend to both Heather and me, reminded me recently that Heather did live and was so damned alive, living ferociously out loud, raising talented, generous, lovely & kind children, raucously traveling and photographing her adventures like it was art, tending to family and nieces and nephews, loving Pete & attending concerts, calling her mother every single day, and writing and writing and writing.

How do you live that fully while also having a brain telling you that you don’t want to?

To live fully and not want to live. I wish that I could have understood this tangible, terrible paradox within her. I’m bereft that I couldn’t understand. So many of us are.

“I have so much I want to share with you and learn from you. You have so much light inside, always have,” she told me. She told me that. She told many of us that. Heather had the ability to tell us things and teach lessons as she learned them, flailing about on a stage. That stage, and her raw writing, could be described as crouching down fully unclothed and standing up, very slowly, and turning around only to realize a million people are watching you and there’s nowhere to turn or cover up so you just keep ever-so-slowly unfold your naked body to an upright position.

But she did it. Repeatedly. She had so much light inside her. Some of it was hard-won and some of it came very naturally. It burned with magnificent brightness.

Her light didn’t extinguish, and she left it for us in the benevolence she left behind, so that we may revel in it, bathe in the lightness, and remember the rawness and realness of the formidable woman we deeply mourn.

Heather is survived by her partner, Pete Ashdown, and children Leta and Marlo Armstrong. Her mother Linda Oar, stepfather Rob Oar, father Michael Hamilton, stepmother Nelta Grace Hamilton, sister September Hogan, brother Ranger Hamilton.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to Every Mother Counts by clicking the DONATE link above. 

If you wish to make a donation to be used for college, you can do so through these donation links:

For Leta Armstrong: https://bit.ly/gift4leta

For Marlo Armstrong: https://bit.ly/gift4marlo