Jill Smokler, a mother of three who started the blog “Scary Mommy” as a diversion from bedtime battles and toddler tantrums, and built it into a juggernaut that drew millions of readers to its pages, died on June 29 at her home in Pikesville, MD. She was 48.

Ms. Smokler “built her life’s work on a single, radical idea,” her brother Matt Epstein said in a statement. “That you could love your children more than anything in the world and still say, out loud, that the job is grindingly difficult.” In addition to her blog, which she started in 2008, she wrote three books.

When she started, her co-stars included her husband, Jeff Smokler, who traveled three days a week for business, three kids under 4, and Penelope, the family’s golden retriever.

“Motherhood,” Mrs. Smokler told Time Magazine, “was loud, chaotic, messy, and nothing like the magazine photos I stared at or the families I saw on TV.”