In this solo episode of The Dr. Zoe Show titled “Why Being a Strong Woman Is Not Enough,” host Dr. Zoe Shaw opens by welcoming listeners to her “Redefining Your Superwoman” series, which blends psychology and Christian faith to help women develop a deeper, more nuanced strength. She shares a recent win—her book selling out on Amazon on day one—and a relatable fail—breaking her favorite blue mug—using these anecdotes to illustrate her low risk monitoring and the importance of self‑reflection. Dr. Shaw then critiques the cultural trope of the “strong woman,” tracing its roots to historic women who were strong out of necessity yet undervalued, and questioning whether modern, vocal displays of strength truly serve women. She argues that strength without wisdom is hollow, likening it to a bodybuilder who can lift heavy weight in one direction but lacks flexibility. Instead, she proposes a new kind of strength grounded in wisdom, discernment, and adaptability—qualities that allow one to pivot, embrace mistakes, and seek divine guidance. Practical steps are offered: cultivate open‑mindedness, learn from failures, ask God for wisdom, and engage in deep self‑knowledge. The episode concludes with a call to action—subscribing, leaving reviews, texting for weekly encouragement—and an invitation for listeners to join a community of women pursuing quiet, resilient strength.
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Hi there, welcome. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and today we are talking about why being strong is not enough. Hi there, I'm Dr. Zoe. I'm glad you're here. This is the place for developing your strength as a woman and helping you navigate difficult relationships in your life, including that sometimes difficult relationship with yourself. Being a strong woman is not about what other people can see, and it's not about how loud you are about it. It's a quiet knowing. This isn't therapy, but you may feel like you've been to therapy after one of my episodes. Here we also explore the intersection of psychology and faith, all with the purpose of creating a new kind of strong. Welcome to Redefining Your Superwoman. But first up, my win and my fail. My win is that my book sold out on Amazon the very first day. Amazon probably underestimated how many people would buy, and honestly, I love being underestimated. So thank you for all of you guys who have purchased the book. If you haven't yet, Amazon— it's probably restocked by now by the time this episode drops, but you can get the book anywhere that books are sold— Target, Walmart, Barnes& Noble, and all the other online retail places. And if you have read my book, please leave an Amazon review. Reviews determine the exposure that a book gets in both the long term and the short term, so a review is very, very much appreciated. And while we're talking about reviews, the same goes for this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review with 5 stars. It'll help other women be able to find the podcast. So my fail— I broke my favorite cup and I can't even blame my kids. I'm not sure if you've noticed this about me, but I love big blue cups and my blue mugs, they make their way into a lot of my pictures, so that's why I said I'm not sure if you've noticed. I'm a tea drinker and I'm a sucker for those huge blue-hued pottery mugs. I just love them and they're not cheap. And I knocked my favorite one over on my nightstand as I was getting ready for bed and it shattered on the floor. The problem is, I'm not really bent towards being careful. There's something in my makeup—I don't know if it's genetic or if it's environmentally based—but my risk monitor is set super low, which is why I tend to get myself into a lot of different calamities. Basically, I overestimate the likelihood of something being safe. So anyway, I put the mug on the edge of my nightstand because for some reason that seemed like a good idea, and it toppled and broke. I think I. Not right away. I hit it somehow and it toppled and broke, and I was so disappointed. Luckily, the next day was my birthday and my husband actually replaced it with 2 beautiful mugs. And I'm focusing now on trying to bring my attention to the possible dangers of putting my mug too close to the edge. I know this seems like a silly fail, and at my age I certainly should have learned this a long time ago, but seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up. This is real life, and that was my fail. So let's talk about why being a strong woman Isn't enough. Strong woman. This term is thrown about so much that honestly, I'm even a little sick of hearing about it. Were the pioneer women, the immigrant women, the slave women who are the foundation of this country, who built this country with their raw, bare hands, not strong women? So what does strong woman mean anyway? All of this might sound really ironic coming from a woman who touts strength, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these women were strong. My great-grandmother, who was born in the late 1890s, she was one of the strongest women I know. She died when I was 8. So this strong woman thing certainly isn't new. But yet they were undervalued, their strength was taken for granted, and still, despite birthing babies with no assistance, toiling the land, washing clothes with no washing machine— God forbid— and tending to their sick, women have been seen as the weaker sex. Yet now, in this modern world, we are strong with our words. We use our keyboards and our phones. Our fingers touch buttons to get things done for us. So where actually is that strength? Could any one of us strong women survive a day in the life of a woman born hundreds of years ago? I don't believe that feminine traits like empathy, vulnerability, or listening are weak. I believe that both masculine and feminine energy is necessary to make this world go round. But yet we do still fight. We fight the inequality, we fight being paid less for the same job, but are we really strong? What then does it mean if the women before us were even stronger? Is strong enough? So many questions swirling around my mind this week. And more questions even. In addition to being strong, can we be well-rounded? Can we be women of integrity? Can we honor our femininity and our intelligence? Can we let go of the clichéd image of a strong woman? Because when we try to emulate her, we fall short. Because sometimes the phrase is not a complimentary one, ladies, but it's one that celebrates a woman's ability to put up with things that she should not, questioning her need to change when she really should. Being strong doesn't mean accepting the unacceptable. When we say a woman is strong, it can also sound like, eh, she's fine, she can handle it. When maybe she really shouldn't be handling it. When maybe she should be allowing herself grace to slump under the burden and ask for help. Strength is not about caring more. It's not a challenge, and it's not a badge, and it's not masculine. When we use the term strong female or strong woman, it indicates that she's an anomaly, not like other women. We don't say strong man unless we're referring to his unique or increased physical strength. And yet, I do still want to see myself and other women I admire as strong. So I'm asking lots of questions, which has led me to the line of thought that what we need to strive for is wisdom and discernment. Those aren't flashy, sexy words like strong. That's definitely not clickbait for sure. But if you want to know what I'm praying for, it's wisdom. Strength is a moment-by-moment choice, but wisdom, that needs to be cultivated and forged. That takes some real intention. Strength without wisdom has no foundation, in my opinion. So as I tout strength, which I do, I am at the same time seeking to understand it better. To use an athlete's analogy, bodybuilders appear on the outside to be the strongest amongst us, right? The diameter of their biceps and the quads are, are crazy impressive. Their ability to push weight against gravity is unparalleled, but rarely do they compete in anything other than a unilateral lifting of a super heavy weight. There's no knowledge in their muscle memory of how to pivot and shift outside of its line of movement as it moves the weight. There's no flexibility in their strength. The compensatory muscles are often ignored in a quest to push the weight in a singular direction. So I hope you get what I'm talking about. Pushing a singular weight in a unilateral direction is what women do when they're just trying to survive, and often that's touted as strength. Don't get me wrong. It does take a lot of strength to tout that weight, and it can be overwhelming and exhausting, and many women feel that way. But although impressive and honorable to push that much weight, I think God has something more for our lives. I think he wants us to develop a different kind of strong where we learn to pivot and bend, demonstrate flexibility as we move that weight. And to me, that looks like wisdom. As I've thought about and pondered the woman that I want to become, which I often do, and I hope you do too, I think of what qualities I want to ask God to cultivate in my life, and I keep coming back to wisdom. I've been praying for wisdom for years, and I suspect that I probably will be until my dying day. A lithe basketball player may not seem so strong, but on any other athletic competition other than bodybuilding, he'll outperform and outlast a bodybuilder any day of the year. See, we don't need to look strong to be strong. We just need to practice carrying our weight in all the different ways. With the wisdom of when to pass the ball and to whom. With the discernment that sees steps beyond our next move. True strength, ladies, is not loud, but it roars in its own kind of impenetrable way. It's not afraid to yell, but it never chooses that as a first line of defense. So, How can you gain more wisdom? Be a little more open-minded. True wisdom is not closed-minded. Remember all the questions I asked at the beginning of this episode? You must consider other perspectives as possible truth in order to increase your wisdom. Being closed-minded leaves us completely ignorant and blind to the best path. Wisdom is open to all possibilities, and it considers every angle before coming to a conclusion. So as you think about What you believe to be true. As you think of options when you're decision-making, be aware of the ideas that you quickly dismiss without consideration. Dig a little deeper and ask yourself why. Sometimes we're programmed really early in life to believe a certain thing or a certain way. Challenge yourself. Know why you believe what you do and you'll believe it more deeply. Release your fear of mistakes. I once heard that someone was asking their mentor, how do I get over my past mistakes? And he said, focus on making new ones. That helps. The truth is that you have many more mistakes to make in your life, and you will for the rest of your life. We become paralyzed when we allow ourselves to do nothing in fear of making a mistake. There's a quote that says, the woman who made no mistakes never made anything. I made some liberties with that quote, but Theodore Roosevelt said it first about a man. And unfortunately, this is the truth. Wisdom is certainly gained from the lessons learned through our failures, and that's exactly why I feel we should honor them as the skilled professor that our failures are in our life, which is why I share my wins and my fails as a practice of accountability for forced reflection and to help you honor yours. Number 3, seek God for wisdom. I actually used to be afraid of asking for things like wisdom, increased strength, even Increased faith because I worried that God would put more difficulty in my path to help create that, and that's the last thing I felt like I needed in my life. But this was actually an immature line of thought. Difficulty is not the only way that wisdom is developed, and if you desire it, I suggest you ask God for it. He knows exactly how to cultivate that in your life. Number 4, learn yourself first. Before you set out to impart your wisdom, get to know yourself deeply. Who are you? What drives you? What things are good and what things are detrimental to you? Because it's not the same for everyone. What are your strengths and what are your deficits? What are your passions and what motivates you? Knowing yourself better sets a firmer foundation for all of your other wisdom. Without self-reflection, we miss a lot of cues in our environment that help us to actually make wise choices. So let's not always shout our indignation to the world, although I do believe there's a time and a place for that. Let's go inward and find a different kind of strength, one steeped in the wisdom of the ages, one that will see the course, one that knows when to rest and when to push, when to confront and when to stay silent, a wisdom that can pivot with the weight and not break. May we be women of quiet strength who can recognize the value of an internal holding up and not be swayed by the lure of an external displaying of force. You've got this. Thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. New shows go up every Tuesday. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and text the word strong to 38470 to get my weekly encouragement. I look forward to connecting with you amazing women on social media throughout the week. Have a super week.
