Soothing Self
Three women talking and laughing over coffee at a wooden garden table in morning light.

What changed. What connects. What comes next.

If something changed and nobody warned you, you're in the right room.

Anxiety. Waking at 3am. Recurrent UTIs. Dry eyes. Aching joints. Driving suddenly feeling wrong.

You may still have regular periods. You may never have had a hot flash. You may just know that something is different and you don't feel quite like yourself. It can start anywhere from your late thirties.

Soothing Self is a research-led guide to perimenopause: the symptoms that don't look like perimenopause, what might be connected, and what to do next.

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Sometimes the hardest part is knowing what question to ask

When one symptom appears, you deal with that symptom.

You feel anxious, so you look into anxiety. You keep getting UTIs, so you investigate UTIs. Your shoulder freezes, your eyes turn gritty, your sleep falls apart, and each problem seems to belong in its own little box.

I thought the itching was an allergy.

I thought the fatigue might be long COVID.

I was told the numb hands were carpal tunnel.

I thought my bedroom was getting hotter. It was night sweats.

I kept treating the UTIs as UTIs. For three to four years.

That is exactly what happened to me. For years I never asked whether any of it might be connected, because I thought perimenopause would start with irregular periods and hot flashes.

I had neither.

The breakthrough wasn't somebody diagnosing me on the internet. It was another woman my age describing a problem I recognized and telling me what her specialist had told her. Suddenly I had a better question to take back to my own doctor.

That is what Soothing Self is built to help you do.

Start with whatever brought you here

You don't need to make a plan just because you've landed here.

Look something up. Read one thing. Get the answer you came for.

And if it makes you think, "Hang on, I've got that too," follow the connection.

You might start with:

Dry eyes that suddenly won't settle

Why perimenopause can affect your eyes, what else can cause it, what you can do now, and why getting stubborn dry eye looked at early matters.

Already know it's perimenopause or menopause, maybe on HRT, and still sorting out symptoms that haven't settled? This is for you too.

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I built the thing I wish someone had handed me

At 42 I felt fit, confident and happy in my own skin.

At 45 came the recurrent UTIs, anxiety that had no reason behind it, a panic attack, joint pain, and a growing collection of symptoms I kept solving one at a time.

I still had my periods. I didn't have hot flashes. So I never put perimenopause in the question.

I researched for years, saw doctors and specialists, read the medical material, joined enormous groups of women comparing notes, tried things, discarded things, and slowly built a picture that made sense.

I'm Frances Holloway. I'm not a doctor and I'm not a menopause expert.

I'm the woman who went through it, did an unreasonable amount of research, and built the resource I wish I'd had sooner.

About Frances

Here's how I keep the lines clear

Experts provide the expertise.

Research provides the evidence.

Women provide the lived experience.

I join the dots.

On Soothing Self those things stay separate. My experience is labeled as my experience. Community reports are never presented as proof. Research is linked and its limits are visible. A product does not earn a better recommendation because there's an affiliate link attached to it, and anything that matters for your safety is never behind a payment.

None of this replaces proper medical care.

The aim is simpler than that: to help you understand what might be worth looking at, find useful information, and arrive at the next conversation with a clearer picture and a better question.

Start with what changed

You don't need to understand all of perimenopause today.

Start with the symptoms you actually have.

See what might be connected.

Read as much or as little as you need.

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