Rooted and Rising

Feeling lonely, isolated, or left behind can make you wonder if something is wrong with you—especially when you're single, your friendships are changing, your friends are busy, and social media makes it look like everyone else is happier, more successful, and surrounded by people.

But loneliness doesn't mean you're unlovable, unlikeable, or failing at life.

In this episode of Rooted & Rising, Dr. Carmela Maxell talks about loneliness, learning to be alone, adult friendships, single motherhood, burnout, leadership isolation, comparison, self-worth, and the unexpected ways solitude can help you reconnect with yourself.

Loneliness has a way of turning a circumstance into a verdict.

Your friends are busy, so maybe nobody cares.

You're single, so maybe you're unlovable.

Your phone is quiet, so maybe nobody is thinking about you.

Everyone else seems to be buying houses, taking vacations, getting promoted, getting married, finding the love of their life—and you're over here celebrating because your favorite snacks were on sale and you saved 50 cents a gallon on gas.

And suddenly, being alone starts to feel like you're being punished.

Carmela gets deeply personal about a season when loneliness felt overwhelming: navigating single motherhood, carrying the isolation that can come with leadership, watching friends become consumed with their own lives, and sitting in the uncomfortable silence when there was nobody around to distract her from herself.

She cried.

She sulked.

She shopped.

And unfortunately, Amazon learned entirely too much about her. 😂

But one unexpected conversation with a friend changed the way she looked at all that empty space.

What Carmela saw as loneliness, her friend saw as something she desperately wanted:

Room to breathe.

This episode explores the difference between being alone and being abandoned, why highly capable people can feel especially lonely, how social media convinces us everyone else received an invitation to life that we somehow missed, and why functioning, succeeding, and being needed don't necessarily mean we feel seen.

And perhaps most importantly, we talk about what can happen when loneliness makes us so desperate for connection that we accept company that costs more than solitude.

Because somebody being there doesn't automatically mean they're good for you.

Sometimes familiar isn't healthy.

Sometimes familiar is just available.

This isn't an episode telling you to romanticize loneliness or pretend human beings don't need connection.

We do.

It's about learning not to use loneliness as evidence against yourself.

You can want love and still appreciate your life now.

You can crave companionship without treating your present like a waiting room.

You can miss people without abandoning yourself to keep them.

And you can discover that some of the empty spaces you thought proved something was missing might actually contain something you haven't had in a very long time:

Space to hear yourself.

🎙️ Loneliness Is Not a Curse: When Empty Space Starts to Feel Like Rejection

Because being alone is not the same as being unwanted.

And maybe the goal isn't to build a life that looks so full nobody could possibly imagine you're lonely.

Maybe it's to build a life that still feels like yours when nobody else is in the room.

Stay rooted. Keep rising.

We’ve somehow created a culture where exhaustion is impressive, calling out makes us feel guilty, unused PTO is a badge of honor, and “pushing through” is treated like proof that we’re hardworking.

But just because you can keep going doesn’t mean you should.

In this Sunday Seeds of Thought episode of Rooted & Rising, Dr. Carmela Maxell explores how different generations inherited their own versions of work-until-you-drop culture—from survival and company loyalty to hustle culture, side hustles, constant availability, and the pressure to optimize every damn minute of our lives.

We’re talking about why functioning while exhausted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re okay, how being highly capable can make it easier to ignore your own limits, and why rest shouldn’t only happen after your body or mind forces you to stop.

Sometimes self-care isn’t a facial, a vacation, Pilates, or a perfectly curated Sunday reset.

Sometimes self-care is calling out.

Using the PTO.

Canceling the optional thing.

Going to bed early.

Leaving the laundry exactly where the hell it is.

And admitting:

“I could push through this—but I don’t have to.”

Because productivity is not a moral value. Rest does not make you lazy. And there is no trophy waiting for the person who ignored their body the longest.

Before another week begins, ask yourself:

What do I need in order to make it through this week without abandoning myself?

🎙️ Sunday Seeds of Thought: You Don’t Get a Gold Star for Running on Empty

A Sunday reminder from Rooted & Rising with Dr. Carmela Maxell:

Take care of yourself before everything is finished.

You don’t get a gold star for running on empty.

And if you have 147 hours of PTO sitting there?

Use a fucking Tuesday. 😂

Stay rooted. Keep rising.

Sometimes your nervous system notices that something has changed—and it’s absolutely right.

But does that mean the story your brain immediately creates about why it changed is right, too?

In this episode of Rooted & Rising, Dr. Carmela Maxell explores what happens when old wounds, past relationships, workplace experiences, abandonment, or betrayal begin filling in the blanks before we actually have all the information.

From unanswered texts and changes in communication to the dreaded “Can we talk?” message, our brains are remarkably good at recognizing familiar patterns. The problem is that familiar doesn’t always mean identical.

Dr. Maxell breaks down the difference between a trigger and a prediction, why trauma can make uncertainty feel threatening, and how to create space between what you feel and what you do next.

In this episode:

• Why your nervous system can get the feeling right—but the story wrong
• How trauma and intuition can sometimes sound remarkably similar
• The difference between facts and the story we attach to them
• Why being triggered doesn’t mean your standards are unreasonable
• How to tell the difference between a trigger and a boundary
• Why emotional regulation doesn’t mean becoming unaffected
• The three-column exercise: What do I know? What story am I telling myself? What else could be true?
• The question to ask before reacting: “What response will I respect tomorrow?”

Because healing doesn’t mean you never get triggered.

Sometimes you’re regulated and irritated.

Sometimes something feels familiar because you’ve genuinely experienced it before.

And sometimes growth means being able to say:

“I’ve seen this pattern before—but I don’t know the ending yet.”

Your past can inform you without running you.

Your trigger is information.

It is not a fortune teller.

🎙️ Rooted & Rising with Dr. Carmela Maxell
New episodes Tuesdays at 7 AM PST.

Follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and share this episode with someone who might need the reminder to pause before letting their past write the ending to their present.

What happens when being the reliable one becomes part of your identity?

You’re the fixer. The problem-solver. The one everyone calls. The person who anticipates what needs to be done and says, “I got it,” before anyone else has a chance.

But being needed isn’t always the same as being valued.

In this Sunday Seeds of Thought episode of Rooted & Rising, Dr. Carmela Maxell explores the uncomfortable line between being loved for who you are and being appreciated for what you provide. From overfunctioning and people-pleasing to boundaries, exhaustion, and the pressure to always be capable, this episode asks an important question:

What happens in your relationships when you stop performing your usefulness?

This week’s challenge is simple: before automatically saying, “I got it,” pause and ask yourself whether it actually needs to be yours to carry.

Because your value isn’t determined by how useful you are to everyone else.

And sometimes, you need to stop volunteering to carry things nobody handed you.

🌱 Stay rooted. Keep rising.

It’s Sunday. The week hasn’t even started yet.

So why have you already rehearsed Monday’s conversation, worried about Tuesday’s meeting, predicted Wednesday’s disappointment, and somehow arrived at Friday emotionally exhausted?

In this Sunday Seeds of Thought, Dr. Carmela Maxell explores the difference between preparation and pre-suffering—and why we sometimes try to solve problems before we even have enough information to know whether there’s a problem at all.

We’ll talk about anticipatory anxiety, our discomfort with uncertainty, the imaginary conversations we keep winning in our heads, and the exhausting habit of trying to predict every possible outcome so we can feel more in control.

Because sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is stop trying to solve for X before life has even given you the equation.

In this episode:

• Why preparation and anxious rehearsal aren’t the same thing
• How we emotionally experience problems that haven’t happened yet
• Why uncertainty makes us fill in the blanks
• How to separate what you know from what you’re predicting
• When preparation stops being useful
• Why your future self deserves a chance to handle future problems
• How to stay in Sunday instead of mentally living through the entire week

You can prepare for Monday without emotionally living through Monday on Sunday.

You don’t have to live next week before it gets here. Let tomorrow introduce itself. Then decide what it needs from you.

🌱 Stay rooted in who you are.
Keep rising into who you’re becoming.