What happens when the career you’ve built no longer fits the life you want? This week, Andrea and Krista sit down with Dr. Kelly Kasteel—emergency physician, Mum, and founder of Emerge Wellness.

After 17 years in emergency medicine, Kelly found herself facing burnout, questioning her identity, and navigating the very real challenges of perimenopause. She shares how the pressures of COVID, coupled with a traumatic workplace incident, became the catalyst for stepping away and reimagining her future.

What started as an interest in aesthetics quickly revealed something much bigger: women in midlife (including herself) were struggling to find support, answers, and care. Determined to fill that gap, Kelly immersed herself in learning all the information she wasn’t taught in medical school and now helps women navigate hormones, perimenopause, confidence, energy, and overall wellbeing.

We dive into the symptoms so many women experience but rarely talk about, the evolving conversation around testosterone, and why self-advocacy is one of the most important tools we have. It's an honest, empowering conversation about reinvention, resilience, and taking ownership of your health—because, as Kelly reminds us, no one's coming to save you.

Whether you're curious about hormones, feeling stuck in a season of change, or simply wondering if what you're experiencing is "normal," this episode offers practical guidance, reassurance, and plenty of reasons to keep asking questions.

Bio

Dr. Kelly Kasteel, MD, CCFP-EM, known as Dr. KK, is the founder of Emerge Wellness MD in New Westminster, BC, Canada. After 17 years in emergency medicine, she built one of the most in-demand aesthetics practices in Vancouver's Lower Mainland, the kind of place where you finally feel like you have a girlfriend who also happens to be your doctor. She's known for a boutique, natural-outcomes approach at accessible price points that leaves women looking like themselves, just better. She believes aesthetics and hormone health belong together, and her own perimenopause journey and testosterone therapy is what brought those two worlds under one roof. You can find her candid, evidence-based take on midlife women's health on her Substack, Dr. KK: Hot and Informed, and on Instagram at @drkellykasteel, where she shows up with the same warmth and radical honesty she brings to her clinic every day.

Website https://www.emergewellnessmd.com/ 

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drkellykasteel/
Substack https://substack.com/@drkellykasteel 

Dr. Kelly’s words - Radically authentic, warmly disruptive, refreshingly real, unapologetically direct, brilliantly approachable

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Guest: Dr. Kelly Kasteel

Founder/Host/Producer: Andrea Rathborne

Producer/Co-Host: Krista Gruen

Editors: Andrea Rathborne & Krista Gruen

Audio Engineer: Alex McCarthy

Episode sponsors:  Zaleska size-inclusive jewelry