In this episode of The Dr. Zoe Show, licensed therapist and life coach Dr. Zoe Shaw shares a personal "superwoman" win (finishing a speech) and a fail (missing a school principal’s son’s birthday invitation due to voicemail overload), using the anecdote to illustrate the challenges busy women face in managing communication. She then defines what she means by a "strong woman"—someone who defies expectations, bounces back from adversity, and is grounded in faith—and outlines ten habits that strong women consistently practice: (1) overcoming adversity, (2) asking for help, (3) seeking knowledge daily, (4) speaking their mind despite fear of judgment, (5) embracing their femininity without trying to be like men, (6) respecting and recognizing men’s strengths, (7) knowing themselves through self‑examination, (8) reaching outward to nurture, teach, and give, (9) loving vulnerably, and (10) staying rooted in faith. Dr. Zoe emphasizes that these habits are not perfect or always present, but are patterns that can be cultivated. The episode then moves to a "Real Talk" segment where she answers a listener’s question about dating a partner in recovery. She advises letting sobriety stand the test of time, asking about family history of addiction, watching for red‑flag behaviors (dishonesty, defensiveness, unexplained absences, new addictions), and maintaining a clear, honest assessment of the relationship. She concludes with calls to action for listeners to subscribe, join her newsletter, and seek coaching or therapy if needed.
Questions this video answers
She should let his sobriety stand the test of time, ask about his family history of addiction, watch for red‑flag behaviors such as dishonesty, defensiveness, unexplained absences, or new addictions, and maintain an honest, clear‑eyed assessment of the relationship, possibly seeking external support.
Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.
Welcome to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. I'm a life and relationship coach and a motivational speaker, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. My passion is helping women find their superpower, learn to embrace it, and share it with the world. Connect with me by texting the word join to 38470 or go to my website at drzoeshaw.com. Hello! My Superwoman win for the day, I got, really for the week, I got my speech finished. So for you listeners who are listening regularly, I talked about my speech last week and I got it finished. So yay, that's my win. Now I've just got to perfect it. My Superwoman fail is that the principal of my daughter's school, my 12-year-old daughter, I have her in a special needs school and The principal's son is also in her class, and she called me and left a message a couple of weeks ago inviting me to her son's— or inviting my daughter to her son's birthday party. And my daughter loves her son, and I just got the message and the party's way gone and over with. Now, my voicemail clearly says, look, text me because I'm not so great about checking my voicemail, but I missed The invitation. And so I also felt bad because she is the principal of the school and we had actually recently had an IEP. And I was thinking, I wonder if she was thinking about the fact that she had left me a message and I never responded. It was a little awkward. I called her, I apologized. But anyway, the yucky part is that my daughter would've loved to go to the party. So I missed that. I thought I was checking my messages, but you know, between your voicemails, which I have a couple telephones I have to check, your emails, your LinkedIn, your Instagram, your Facebook. It's like so many messages. It's hard to keep up with all of them. So that was my superwoman fail. Today, our topic is 10 things strong women always do. And I guess one thing that strong women don't do is always check their voicemail because I do consider myself a strong woman. Not perfect, but strong. So the title is Always Do. Now, always is a very strong word because it's rarely ever true. We'll talk about that another time when it comes to communication, because that's really a word you should not be using. So what we're really talking about today is about what strong women do most of the time, because none of us are perfect. None of us always. I think that this is a really important topic because if you studied the, quote, successful people in the world at all, what you learn is that they have a life of habits. Their lives are not haphazard. They're structured, but yet flexible, which is what I love, because inflexibility is actually a character trait that is connected with not being successful. And so it's not a character trait of success, but rather the opposite. So we're talking about an interesting quality, one that encompasses being disciplined enough to have regular, strong patterns and habits, but also flexible enough to know when you have to chuck them, when you have to bend them, or when you have to just totally revamp your habits altogether. If you read any of Malcolm Gladwell's or a number of any other people who study the qualities of successful people, these are the kinds of things that will show up. I have a love-hate relationship with that term successful because it really means nothing without context. So in this context, I would like successful to be defined as someone who accomplishes most of what she attempts to accomplish. And honestly, we all have the capacity to do that. You just have to put some things in place. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So what we're talking about is a woman who is successful at being strong. What is a strong woman and what habits do these strong women have? I characterize a strong woman as a woman who fights against expectations. A strong woman bounces back from adversity. She's grounded in her faith. She knows who she is, and she recognizes that there is strength in asking for help. She respects herself and others. As I was thinking about and researching for this podcast, I found a lot of things that spoke about what strong women don't do, but what about what they do do? So I dug into my reading and what I know and what I have learned from mentors. Also, basically, this is just the commonality I have found in strong women. So number 1, strong women overcome adversity. But not always quickly or elegantly, which I think is a really important point. Every strong woman I have ever known, I've ever heard speak or read about, has a history of adversity. Usually their story includes crawling, fighting, clawing their way out of their dark place and coming to the light. So yes, you heard me. I'm actually saying that you cannot be strong if you haven't had adversity. If your life has been absolutely perfect with no pain or adversity, You're a weak person. So please don't take offense to this because the reality is that everyone has had some type of adversity that you have had to overcome in your life or that you need to overcome now. And what strong women always— there's that word again— always do is overcome adversity. Some people have a little adversity and never overcome it. And some people have a ton of adversity and never overcome it. It doesn't matter what your adversity is. I'm sure as you're listening to this, you might be thinking about something you're going through now or something you've overcome or something you need to. Strong women figure out a way to overcome it. Remember, I also said that it isn't always pretty. Being strong has nothing to do with doing it beautifully or pretty in any way. Maya Angelou was mute. For years after her rape as a child, she talked about her struggle. It was not a pretty struggle, but the result was a very strong, beautiful woman. Strong women ask for help. Strong women recognize that there is no weakness in admitting that you need help. A strong woman knows herself enough to know her limits and knows when she needs to step in, stop whatever she's doing, and ask for help. A strong woman seeks out knowledge daily because a strong woman understands that she lacks knowledge. It really is true that the more you learn, and I've learned this in my life, the more I learn, the less I know. And I heard that when I was young and it didn't really click until I started getting older and realized, oh my gosh, it's amazing how much you know when you're young. It is ignorant and weak to think that you know everything. A strong woman is curious. She asks questions. She seeks to understand. She doesn't assume that she knows, and she doesn't ever feel ever that she's at a level when she can cease to learn. Strong women speak their mind. Strong women constantly work on their fear of others' judgment. And I, I know I've talked about this a number of times in my podcast when I talked about getting over fear. I think I might've even done it. Last week or the week before, but notice I don't say that strong women don't care about what other people think. They work hard to overcome their tendency to please, their tendency to want to be appropriate necessarily. They work over that fear of being judged. They work on not being concerned with whether someone agrees with them or not. Strong women embrace their femininity. I don't think that the strongest women are the ones who are like men. The strongest women are the steel magnolias, the ones who understand the strength in their femininity, just like Darlene Brock spoke about on our episode last week, Raising Great Girls. She really talked about how you help your daughters embrace their femininity. Strong women don't try to be men. We recognize that our strength comes from who we are as women, and it's different than a man's strength. And because of that, strong women respect men. Now, I know this might be a hard one, especially in this MeToo era, but let me say first that I'm not a feminist. And MeToo has nothing to do with being a feminist. So I'm absolutely not trying to make those two go together at all because they don't. But what I'm saying is that I have thought long and hard about What feminism means. And I am not that. I am a humanist. I believe that all people, regardless of gender, age, religion, and ethnicity or nationality, are equal and should be treated as such. My passion, of course, is in helping other women, encouraging women, igniting women to find their strength, igniting women to find their value and to share it unashamedly with the world. And we do have a history of oppression and we cannot ignore that. But what I do know is that the strongest women I know respect men and can be crazy strong and not in any way devalue the strength that men have. And more importantly, are willing to applaud and recognize men's strength and what men have to bring to the table, which is very different from our strength. Strong women can do this because they're grounded in their certainty of their own strength. Strong women seek to know themselves and seek to be true to themselves. Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. You know, maybe this is a stretch. I don't think anybody's life is not worth living, but a strong woman examines her life just as much as a strong woman seeks knowledge about the world. She seeks knowledge about herself. She's curious about herself. She's curious about her patterns, her motivations. She understands what sets her off, what delights her. She's not living a life blindly reacting and not really understanding what she's doing. She is cultivating a life. Because she knows who she is. And this takes study. This takes examination. This takes time. It takes investment, and it's a lifelong journey. And that's something that strong women value themselves enough to want to do. Strong women reach outside of themselves. Strong women do not keep their knowledge or their abilities to themselves. They seek to influence the world, whether it's their own family, The small community or the greater world at large. A strong woman is a nurturer. And because we as women are nurturers in our DNA, we seek to nurture and teach and educate the world. So a strong woman is a teacher. She's compassionate. She's kind. She is a philanthropist, whether on a micro or a macro level. A strong woman loves. She's willing to be vulnerable, and she understands the benefit of the sacrifice. Of loving others. She doesn't isolate herself. She doesn't close herself off from love. She is brave, and she knows that in loving she can be hurt, but she loves anyway. Last, a strong woman is grounded in her faith. A strong woman knows why she believes what she does, and she can defend her faith and walk out her faith because she isn't afraid to challenge her faith. A strong woman lets faith guide her steps. So those are 10 things that a strong woman does. Like I said before, it's a journey. It's not something you should automatically be. So as you're looking at that and checking it off, even as I go through that, I'm like, oh, yep, I need to improve there. Yep, that's where I need to work. This is about recognizing places that you can grow. Next up is Real Talk. This is Real Talk where I answer questions from my listeners and share my own musings and encouragement. Please reach out if you have some questions you'd like me to address on the show. All questions are anonymous. I take your confidentiality seriously as if you were my own client. You can email questions to zoe@drzoeshaw.com, or you can connect with me on any of my social medias. This question, like many of my questions, was curated from my column at thegritandgraceproject.org. And you can always submit your questions directly to me. Or you can submit them to Grit and Grace, and I will answer them at some point. It does take a while for those questions to be curated on the site. So this is from a concerned friend. I have a friend who is getting serious with someone who's a former addict. He's been through rehab more than once, but this last time seems to have been successful. He's healthy and dedicated to his long-term recovery. I want to be supportive of my friend and I know that people can change with hard work and commitment. However, are there some things that my friend can do to protect herself in this new relationship? Are there questions she should be asking him and are there warning signs she should be aware of? I want to believe and hope for the best, but I also want to be realistic. What a wonderful friend you are to be so concerned. You know, there aren't a lot of questions that she should be asking because really when it comes to addiction, talk is cheap. She needs to let his sobriety stand the test of time, and that's really going to give her all the answers she needs. So yes, of course, people can change. People can change with hard work, motivation, and commitment. I wouldn't be doing the work that I do in my life if I don't believe that. And when people do change, their story is inspiring. So there is one question, though, that I think that anyone dating someone who has a history of addiction should want to ask, especially if she's thinking about or considering marrying this guy, and she might want to have children with him. The question The next question is, what is his family history with addiction? This will give her some information about how likely his addiction and his struggle with addiction was genetically based, how much it was environmentally based, and how likely it is that their future children could struggle with this. We do know that addiction can have a genetic component, and that's really why you would want to ask that question, just so that you know what you're getting into. There are certain things that every woman should do to protect herself in a blossoming relationship. Every woman must be willing to To examine the relationship with eyes wide open. This is so hard. I think one of the hardest things that I work on with clients who are dating is being able to examine that relationship with eyes wide open. And sometimes you just can't do it on your own. You really do need to bring people in to help you, people you care about. It's important to be honest with yourself about his deficits and his strengths, because many women, once you start getting emotionally involved, you make the mistake of viewing a new love interest with those rose-colored glasses. And that's what you should be doing after marriage, not before. When you make excuses for red flag behavior, instead of seeing it for what it is, all you do is create problems for yourself long-term. And looking back on your relationships, you can see it so clearly, but when you're in it, it is kind of tough. So you have to be diligent about doing that. So red flags that she might wanna watch out for would be really just typical with anyone struggling with an addiction, dishonesty, Defensiveness, unexplained missing time, odd behavior, any level of drinking or drug use, reduced productivity, or if she starts to see a change in his sleeping habits, or even— this is very common— a development of an alternative addiction. Many people who tend to have addictive behaviors, when they stop one addiction, they just start another one. Now, the goal sometimes with that, because it's not necessarily a bad thing, but the goal is that if you're stopping an addiction, And you're gonna start another one, or you find yourself, you wanna make sure that's a higher functioning addiction, you know? So, you know, you, you wanna go from, you know, maybe drugs to, you know, collecting statues or something, or exercise, something that's a healthier addiction. So my best advice is take it slow, keep your eyes wide open, and let his sobriety stand the test of time. There's no reason to rush into this. So very, very good question. Thanks for tuning in to the Dr. Zoe Show. New shows go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe so you don't miss a show. And if you're interested in coaching or therapy, or you just wanna get a little more help, go to my website at drzoeshaw.com or any of my social medias at the handle Dr. Zoe Shaw. Join my free newsletter by texting the word join to 38470. And I look forward to connecting and speaking with you wonderful ladies on social media throughout the week. Have a super week.
You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, redefining your superwoman with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your mind in the superwoman game. Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends and subscribe To her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of The Dr. Zoe Show.
