It Started with Back Pain: Perimenopause Hormone Hell, Fibroids, Cancer or Endometriosis? by Siobhan Donoghue (Book Review #2064)

Siobhan Donoghue’s It Started with Back Pain is an extraordinary journey of self-discovery, resilience, and the refusal to accept “this is just the way it is” as an answer. From the opening line—“It didn’t start with a hysterectomy, it started with back pain”—you’re pulled into a deeply personal and powerful story that will resonate with any woman who has questioned her health, her body, or the vague medical explanations she’s been given.

What begins as chronic back discomfort slowly unravels into a complex medical mystery involving fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, excessive bleeding, estrogen dominance, and the misunderstood phase of perimenopause. Through it all, Siobhan remains unwavering in her belief that there must be another way. That belief becomes the heartbeat of this book—one woman’s determination to listen to her body, trust her intuition, and challenge a medical system that so often dismisses women’s pain.

Rather than settling for a hysterectomy, which her surgeons insisted was the only path, Siobhan took a radically different route. She changed her diet. She examined her environment. She looked into holistic and herbal treatments. And above all, she began asking the hard questions—why is this happening? What does my body really need? What am I being told… or not told?

This book is so much more than a personal story. It’s a wellspring of information for anyone navigating the confusing terrain of hormonal shifts and gynecological conditions that are still, somehow, taboo to speak about. With clarity and compassion, Siobhan sheds light on the hidden connections between gut health, inflammation, environmental toxins, and hormone imbalance. Her voice is calm, intelligent, and deeply relatable. There’s no preaching here—just lived wisdom and a sincere desire to help other women find answers they’re not getting from their doctors.

What makes this book stand out is the tone: vulnerable yet strong, emotional yet deeply rational. Siobhan doesn’t write as someone who’s “figured it all out” but as someone who’s been through the fire and came out with lessons to share. Her words are honest, raw, and incredibly validating for the reader who has ever felt gaslit, confused, or alone in her health journey.

In a time when women are still too often told their pain is “normal,” this book gives voice to the silent struggles so many endure. It’s for the woman bleeding more than once a month and being told it’s stress. It’s for the young girl who was put on birth control at 17 for “bad periods” and didn’t realize it was endometriosis. It’s for the woman deep in perimenopause who feels like her body has betrayed her.

It Started with Back Pain is not just a title—it’s a metaphor for how disconnected we often are from what’s really going on beneath the surface. And through every page, Siobhan shows us how reconnecting—with our bodies, our intuition, and with holistic truth—can lead to profound healing.

This book will give you goosebumps. It will make you cry. It will make you feel less alone. And most of all, it will make you believe that you are not crazy, and you are certainly not broken. You are just not being told everything. Siobhan Donoghue is here to change that.

Written by Jeyran Main

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