Dr Kirstey Holland is the Founder of The Holland Clinic. Helping women in perimenopause restore energy, clarity, metabolic balance, and a deep sense of vitality—so they can feel like themselves again, and function at a high level. Through a structured, doctor-led approach, women are guided through the Hierarchy of Healing—a process developed over 26 years of clinical practice that addresses gut health, hormones, metabolism, and the nervous system in the right order. This work is brought to life through the Holland Clinic Protocol: Eat, Sleep, Move, Think, Connect, Test, Prescribe. Author of This Is Perimenopause.
I've been hiding something
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Hi gorgeous, I need to be really honest with you, Reader. I am sitting down to write this because I have been hiding something, and I do not want to hide it any more. For 26 years I have been inside a clinical room with four walls. And behind those four walls, with one woman sitting across from me, I have been practicing something much bigger than the version of me you see online. You already know I am a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, with a double degree in acupuncture and herbal medicine. You know I am a practitioner of environmental and nutritional medicine. You know my work is biopsychosocial. Body, mind, social context. What I have not been saying loudly enough is this.
You are a soul, in a human suit, on planet Earth, and you have your own genuine curriculum.
Your lessons this lifetime are divinely timed. And until we honour that layer, biochemistry can only take you so far. I am also a trauma-informed coach and mentor. I am deeply spiritual. I am grounded and I am intuitive. And every single week, inside the Vitality Clinic conversations, that is the Kirstey who shows up. The one who still writes the prescription, still titrates the progesterone, still reads your tongue. And also the one who will ask you what your six year old needed. The one who will sit with you while you write the letter to the mother you never got to say it to.
The one who will name the shame before it even leaves your mouth.
Let me tell you what actually happened in that room this week, Reader. One of the beautiful women in the clinic lost her mother last month. She didn't go to the funeral. And we sat together in that grief, and the enmeshment, and the over-functioning that had begun as a little girl doing the dishes just to hear, "you're such a good girl." I invited her to write the letter. The angry one first; she had already written that one. Then the gentle one that says, "I know you're on your way. I forgive you. I hope you can forgive me." We spoke about the soul contract. "Yes, I know I signed up for this when I came back." We spoke about breaking the genetic chain, ending the cycle, becoming the mother her mother never got to be. Another beautiful woman, a twin, realised her entire life of over-functioning and people-pleasing had been a quiet search to be accepted inside her sister's circle. And at 50, she is finally becoming who she always was. Not one half of the twins. Her own sovereign self. The teaching from Michael Meade sat right in the middle of that conversation; we have to individuate, leave the whole, so that we can one day return to the whole as our own person. This is Internal Family Systems. This is attachment work. This is what Richard Schwartz calls the Self that has always been intact underneath all the parts. Another beautiful woman, newly diagnosed with ADHD at 41, brought in what I call the precious grief. Not the crying-in-bed grief.
The softer, heartbreakingly beautiful grief for the little girl she was, who always felt different and could never name why.
We sat with her six year old. Her eight year old. Her sixteen year old. We reparented each one of them. And then we did the part of the work I love most; we turned to her future eight year old and we promised we would make her proud. Here is what I want you to know, Reader. I draw from Richard Schwartz and Internal Family Systems, the parts of you that carry the load, and the Self that has always been intact underneath them. I draw from Lisa Miller and the Awakened Brain, the understanding that your spirituality is not separate from your biochemistry, it is folded into it. I draw from Ellen Vora and the Anatomy of Anxiety, true versus false anxiety. I draw from Michael Meade and the work of initiation and return. I draw from Lonnie Jarrett and Nourishing Destiny, which is the inner, spiritual tradition of the Chinese medicine I was trained in. And yes, quietly, I draw from a larger spiritual framework, because it is the framework that has held me together through my own hero's journey. Inside the Vitality Clinic I run a book club component, where we sit with these teachers and apply them directly to the perimenopausal woman; her body, her psyche, her circle, her soul. Because there is no other season in a woman's life where the biochemistry and the soul are so loudly asking to be addressed together. I also want you to know who I really am. My nervous system was dysregulated in utero. I grew up with violence. I have a high ACE score. I spent decades inside fight, flight, fawn and freeze. I danced barefoot in my kitchen at night for years, processing my own stuff, working through it alone, putting my little boy to bed and then quietly alchemising. I have written the letters. I have done the shadow work. I have forgiven. I have reparented my own six year old and my own sixteen year old. And at nearly 50, for the first time in my life, I know what a peaceful nervous system actually feels like in a body. I am not your guru. I will never stand in front of a room of women and lecture you about cortisol and melatonin. I am shoulder to shoulder with you. Self-referenced, sovereign, still alchemising, still learning. And I am here because I know, from 26 years of practice, that women do not heal in a lecture. They heal in a room.
They heal in the sharing.
They heal when shame dissolves in the presence of other women who have been there, and a clinician who knows how to hold all of it at once.
The Vitality Clinic is $97 a week. Four live conversations. No question left unanswered. The full biochemical protocol, the prescriptions, the tongue diagnosis. The book club. The psycho-emotional and spiritual work. Direct clinical access for clarifications, questions, our full dispensary. And a room full of women doing the real work, together. If something in you has been quietly saying yes while you were reading this, please do not ignore that. That is your soul tapping you on the shoulder.
And in my experience, she is rarely wrong.
You can reply to this email and ask for more details. Or book a Discovery Call [link] Or open the door to The Vitality Clinic, to do the work that's waiting to be done. [link] And if you are not ready, that is okay too. Keep reading. Keep listening to the podcast. The book arrives 17 July. Pre-order starts in May. I will be here. Warmly,
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The Holland Clinic
Dr Kirstey Holland is the Founder of The Holland Clinic. Helping women in perimenopause restore energy, clarity, metabolic balance, and a deep sense of vitality—so they can feel like themselves again, and function at a high level. Through a structured, doctor-led approach, women are guided through the Hierarchy of Healing—a process developed over 26 years of clinical practice that addresses gut health, hormones, metabolism, and the nervous system in the right order. This work is brought to life through the Holland Clinic Protocol: Eat, Sleep, Move, Think, Connect, Test, Prescribe. Author of This Is Perimenopause.
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