Beneath the Scars with Zoe

gentle content note: This episode explores difficult experiences and themes that may feel heavy for some listeners. Please take care of yourself and listen when you feel ready.Why do we stay? Why do we go back? And what happens inside the person who hurts us?In Part 2 of Why Do We Stay?, we go deeper than the relationship itself. We explore the science behind anger, rage, emotional regulation, trauma, brain injury and mental health, and ask a difficult question: can someone genuinely be sorry for hurting you and still be unable to change?Then we take that conversation into the reality of surviving abuse—where fear, love, isolation, hope and survival can become impossible to separate. Zoe shares a deeply personal part of her own story, including leaving an abusive relationship, becoming pregnant, experiencing profound loss, and the grief and rage that followed.But this episode isn’t about staying stuck in the past. It’s about what happens when the healing begins.We talk about the layers of trauma, why familiar doesn’t always mean safe, recognising red flags, learning the difference between boundaries and walls, and finding the healing approaches that work for you. Most importantly, we talk about the truth that every survivor needs to hear: you are not alone, you are not what happened to you, and your story is not over.Because sometimes the deepest investigation isn’t about why we stayed.It’s about discovering who we become when we finally realise we don’t have to stay.Come with me into the deep dive.This is Beneath the Scars with Zoe and I’m happy your here

What did you mistake for love? That’s the question I want to start with today.Because sometimes we spend years asking the wrong questions. Why did I stay? Why did they treat me that way? Why didn’t I leave sooner? Why does she keep going back? Why would anyone put up with that? We can be so quick to judge someone’s choices without ever stopping to wonder what happened underneath them.This episode comes from Chapter Three of my new book, The Great Investigation, a book built around one simple idea: what if we learned to ask ourselves better questions?Because our brains can be incredibly quick to judge. We see someone struggling, behaving differently, staying in a relationship that hurts them, repeating a pattern, or making choices we don’t understand, and almost instantly, we create a story about who they are. But where did we learn to do that? Who taught you to judge?So much of what we carry is learned. Racism is learned. Shame is learned. Prejudice is learned. The language we use is learned. The beliefs we form about ourselves and other people are often handed to us long before we’re old enough to question them. And sometimes, we don’t even realise we’re carrying someone else’s beliefs.So what happens when we finally stop and investigate?Instead of asking, “Why did I stay?” we can ask, “What did I mistake for love?” Instead of asking, “Why didn’t my intuition make me leave?” perhaps we ask, “Why did I stay when something inside me was telling me to go?” And instead of looking back at every relationship and deciding whether it was a success or a failure, we can ask, “What did each relationship teach me?”Because perhaps the people who hurt us aren’t simply chapters we’d like to erase. Perhaps they’re clues. Perhaps the patterns we keep repeating aren’t proof that something is wrong with us. Perhaps they’re invitations to investigate what we were taught, what we believed, what we tolerated, and what we confused with love.And maybe this isn’t just about the people we’ve loved. Maybe it’s about the way we’ve learned to see ourselves, too.So today, we’re going to look at the mirrors we’ve been handed, the mirrors we’ve chosen, and the reflections we’ve spent years believing were actually us.This is The Great Investigation.And the first question is a simple one—but it might change the way you look at your entire history:What did you mistake for love?

Welcome back to Scars Beneath the Scars. This is Episode 13, and this one might make some of you stop, some of you think, and maybe even question what you thought you understood about power, control, dominance and submission.Because what if surrender isn’t weakness? What if dominance isn’t about anger or control? And what if the difference between abuse and surrender isn’t what it looks like from the outside, but whether there was a choice?I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I’ve had to really look at my own assumptions, especially when you bring trauma, trust, sexuality and healing into the conversation. And what I discovered surprised me.So before we judge the whip, the word “Daddy,” the dominant, the submissive, or the people who choose to explore this world, let’s take a step back and ask a different question: what happens when somebody finally feels safe enough to surrender?This is Episode 13: The Difference Between Power, Control and Surrender.

What does “ride or die” really mean when we take away the fantasy?In this episode of Beneath the Scars with Zoe, we dive into the deeper meaning of loyalty, trust, friendship, protection, passion and choosing someone—not because you need them, but because life feels better with them beside you.We hear the phrase “ride or die” everywhere: in music, movies, friendships, romantic relationships and even throughout some of the most complicated stories in history. But somewhere along the way, we’ve confused loyalty with blind devotion and staying with someone no matter what they do. Zoe explores why that isn’t real loyalty at all, and why betrayal can be the very thing that destroys the foundation a ride-or-die relationship is supposed to be built upon.Drawing from her own experiences with love, heartbreak, betrayal, vulnerability and the walls she’s learned to build when someone breaks her trust, Zoe explores what it actually means to be safe with another person. She talks about the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, protection and possession, intensity and intimacy, and why your lover should also be someone you genuinely like—your friend, your confidant and the person you can laugh with when life gets ridiculous.This isn’t about finding a perfect relationship. It’s about finding something real.It’s about having someone who knows you deeply, makes you laugh, can handle your intensity without trying to tame you, and never asks you to become smaller to make them comfortable. Someone who can hold your vulnerability without weaponizing it. Someone who can be passionate with you, peaceful with you, honest with you and still choose you when life isn’t easy.Because maybe being someone’s ride or die was never really about asking, “Would you die for me?”Maybe the better question is:“Would you live beside me?”Join Zoe as she explores the kind of love where loyalty isn’t blind, passion isn’t chaos, protection isn’t possession, and commitment doesn’t mean losing yourself.A love where two whole people choose each other.My ride or die. My lover. My best friend. My safe place.

Welcome back to Beneath the Scars with Zoe. Today we’re going somewhere a little more intimate, a little more uncomfortable, and hopefully somewhere that makes you question some of the things you’ve been taught about sex, pleasure, your body and intimacy.We’re going to talk about the complicated relationship so many of us have with our sexuality and the way we see ourselves. We’re going to talk about insecurity, body image, shame, desire, sexual tension, pleasure, trust and what happens when the experiences we’ve had with other people follow us into the bedroom. Because sometimes the person standing in front of us isn’t the person we’re reacting to. Sometimes we’re reacting to somebody from our past, to something somebody said, something they did, or something they made us believe about ourselves.We’re going to talk about why some of us struggle to let go and simply experience pleasure, why our minds can suddenly take over when our bodies are trying to feel, and why we can find ourselves watching ourselves from the outside instead of actually being present inside our own bodies. We’re going to explore the difference between sexual release and intimacy, between performance and sensation, and why trust can completely change the way we experience touch.And we’re going to talk about tantric sex, because I think there is a lot of mystery and misunderstanding around that word. What actually is tantric sex? Why is slowing down so different from simply rushing toward an orgasm? What happens when we stop treating sex as an act and start experiencing it as sensation, anticipation, connection and trust? And could some of those principles help us reconnect with parts of ourselves that have become disconnected through insecurity, shame or past experiences?We’re also going to have a conversation about sexual exploration. Because I genuinely don’t believe there is anything wrong with being curious about your own body, learning what feels good to you, or exploring different ways of experiencing pleasure. But exploration should never mean ignoring your own boundaries or somebody else’s. Who you’re exploring with matters. Your body needs to feel safe with that person. You need to be able to communicate, slow down, stop, change your mind and know that you will be respected.And if this is something you’ve been curious about but you’ve never really known where to start, stay with me until the end. I’m going to include a simple tantric massage guide for those who are interested in exploring. It isn’t about giving you a rigid set of instructions that you have to follow. It’s about giving you some understanding of the principles behind it, how to approach it, how to create the right environment, how to use touch with awareness, and how to pay attention to the responses of the person you’re with.Because this isn’t about performance. It’s not about proving how good you are at sex or trying to achieve some particular outcome. It’s about learning to slow down, communicate, listen and actually experience what is happening.And perhaps that’s the biggest message I want to leave with you throughout this episode: there is absolutely nothing wrong with exploring your sexuality and learning about your own pleasure. But explore with curiosity, explore with consent, and most importantly, explore with somebody your body feels safe with.Because sometimes our minds can say, “I’m fine,” while our bodies are telling us something completely different.And that’s what we’re going to get into today.The scars we take to bed, the stories we carry into intimacy, the things that can get in the way of pleasure, and whether learning to feel safe enough to experience our bodies again can change the way we experience sex, intimacy and ultimately ourselves.

EPISODE 10 — WHO THE HELL IS OUT THERE?Sex, Swipes, Scams & SituationshipsDating has changed—and bloody hell, what a world we’ve walked back into.Once upon a time, we dreamed of meeting someone across a crowded room or reaching for the same onion in the supermarket. Now it’s swipes, DMs, ghosting, catfishing, scams, situationships, sexual expectations and an endless parade of possibilities.In this episode, we dive into the strange, funny, frustrating and sometimes downright bizarre world of modern dating—and ask the question so many of us are secretly wondering:Who the hell is actually out there?Because somewhere between the sex, the swipes, the scams and the situationships, there might still be someone looking for something real.But underneath all the chaos is a bigger question: Are we becoming so cynical about modern dating that we’re forgetting there are still good people out there looking for something real?Maybe the question isn’t just Who the hell is out there?Maybe it’s who the hell are we brave enough to let in?

Sometimes we just need that reminder …Keep Going …

Welcome back and this is Fifty Shades of WTF. Yes, that is actually the title, because if you’re over fifty, single, divorced, dating, thinking about dating, recovering from dating, or simply watching the whole dating world from a safe distance while wondering what the hell happened to people, you probably understand exactly where I’m coming from. Dating after fifty is a completely different bloody game. When I was younger, I thought dating was about finding love, getting married, building a life and growing old together. I thought I’d have that great love story where, at ninety, we’d still be smacking each other’s arse and giggling like teenagers. That was the plan. Apparently, somebody forgot to tell my two ex-husbands.So here I am, fifty, divorced twice and back in the dating world, looking around and occasionally thinking, “What the actual fuck happened?” Because dating at this age isn’t just about finding someone attractive and deciding whether you fancy going for a drink. We’ve accumulated decades of life, experiences, relationships, heartbreak, lessons, scars, bad decisions, good decisions and, in some cases, enough emotional baggage to require its own bloody baggage carousel. And yet here we are, downloading dating apps and trying to decide whether a photograph of a man holding a fish tells us anything useful about his personality.But underneath all the humour, there’s something I really want to investigate. I’m not here to give dating advice, and I’m certainly not here to tell you how to have a successful relationship. After two divorces, I think we can agree that would be slightly ambitious. What I want to do is look at ourselves and ask some uncomfortable questions about why we chose the people we chose and why we stayed where we stayed. We tend to ask ourselves, “Why did I put up with that? Why didn’t I leave sooner? Why wasn’t I stronger?” But I’ve started wondering if we’re asking the wrong questions. Maybe the better question is, “Why did I believe I needed to stay?” And perhaps the biggest question of all is, “Why did I believe that was all I deserved?”That’s where the investigation gets interesting, because suddenly we aren’t just talking about our exes anymore. We’re talking about ourselves, our childhoods, our fathers, our mothers, our experiences, our wounds and the things we learned about love long before we ever went on our first date. That is where The Great Investigation comes in. Not as a way of blaming our parents or our exes, and certainly not as an excuse for the choices we’ve made, but as an invitation to become curious about ourselves. What were we looking for? What were we trying to prove? What did we believe love was supposed to feel like? What did we believe we had to do to be chosen? And what did we believe about ourselves?Because maybe dating after fifty isn’t just about finding someone new. Maybe it’s about finally understanding ourselves well enough to stop repeating what we’ve already lived through. It’s about figuring out the difference between chemistry and chaos, being loved and being needed, partnership and motherhood, compromise and disappearing. And if we’re going to step back into the dating world at fifty, we might as well have a bloody good laugh while we’re investigating it.So welcome to Fifty Shades of WTF — dating again after fifty, finding ourselves somewhere between the train wrecks, the red flags, the right swipes and whatever the hell comes next.

Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussion of the death of a child, SIDS, grief, loss, and the devastating emotional pain that follows. Some of the content may be difficult or triggering for listeners who have experienced child loss or bereavement. Please listen when you feel emotionally safe to do so.Sometimes an episode isn’t planned.Sometimes it simply comes from somewhere inside you that says, I need to share this.This is one of those episodes.For Episode Eight, I’m sharing some of my crumbs of pain—pieces of writing I originally wrote in my very first book, Inside Me, alongside parts of my own story that I’ve carried for many years.I’m going to talk about my daughter, Maxie, and the devastating loss of her life to SIDS. I’ll talk about the kind of love that can be so enormous that when it is suddenly taken from you, it feels like it has destroyed every part of you.Because sometimes we don’t understand just how deeply we can love someone until we are forced to live without them.There are pieces of grief that never completely disappear. We learn to carry them differently. We learn how to breathe around them. We learn that healing doesn’t mean forgetting, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the pain never visits again.I’m still coming through it.Maybe I always will be.But I came through places I once thought would destroy me.And within those places, I found words.Words that became Inside Me. Words that held my pain when I couldn’t. Words that eventually helped me begin to understand that even the deepest wounds can become part of the story of who we are—not the end of it.So today, I’m opening those pages again.These are my crumbs of pain.And perhaps, somewhere within them, you might find a crumb of your own.

Welcome back to Beneath the Scars with Zoe.In this episode, I want to talk about something I believe we don’t talk about enough when it comes to trauma: the body.We often think healing begins with talking about what happened to us. But what if your body has been carrying the story long before you ever found the words for it? What happens when your nervous system has spent years protecting you, and your body has learned to stay tense, guarded, disconnected, or on alert?Today, I’m sharing some of my own experiences, including a moment during my hot-stone training that completely changed the way I understood the relationship between trauma, sensation and safety.I’ll also talk about what I’ve learned through my work with Shiatsu, acupressure, Jin Shin, Reiki, reflexology, lymphatic work and gentle therapeutic touch—and why I believe healing doesn’t always have to begin by telling your story.This isn’t about claiming that trauma can simply be “massaged out” of the body. It’s about something much deeper: learning to listen to the body, respecting its boundaries, and creating enough safety for it to soften.Because sometimes the question isn’t only, “What happened to you?”Sometimes we need to ask:“What happened inside your body when it happened—and what does your body need now?”

This is one of my most vulnerable episodes yet. I share the raw truth of my own healing journey—not as someone who has figured everything out, but as someone who has had to walk through the very things I now help others navigate.I talk about the experiences that shaped me, the moments that brought me face-to-face with myself, my spiritual journey, and what it took to begin understanding the reasons behind my behaviours, my coping and escaping mechanisms, my sense of worth, and the way I learned to love myself and others.Because healing isn’t about pretending the past didn’t happen. It’s about understanding how the past can influence the choices we make, the relationships we create, the things we tolerate, the ways we protect ourselves and the stories we carry about who we are.And when we begin to heal, something changes. We start seeing life differently. We develop better tools. We recognise our patterns sooner. We learn healthier ways to cope. We begin making different choices—not because life suddenly becomes easier, but because we are no longer facing it with the same tools we had before.There is a lot of raw truth in this episode, but there is also hope.I share my story because I want my vulnerability to give someone else permission to share theirs. You don’t have to hide your story to heal from it. Sometimes, bringing it into the light is where the healing begins.This is my story of how I began healing when the odds felt completely stacked against me—and what I’ve discovered on the other side.Because healing doesn’t change what happened, it changes what happens next.

In Episode Five of Beneath the Scars with Zoe, I take you back to the little girl I once was—the girl I thought was angry, difficult and simply too much. What I understand now is that underneath that anger was a child carrying grief, abandonment, fear and pain she didn’t have the words to explain.I talk about my childhood, my relationship with my mother, the wound left by my biological father, losing my daughter Maxie at eighteen, motherhood, toxic relationships and the years I spent surviving rather than healing.This episode is about understanding what lives beneath our anger, breaking the cycle of suppression, finding our voice and learning to meet our younger selves with compassion instead of shame.Because sometimes healing means going back—not to relive the past, but to finally take the little girl’s hand and bring her home.Episode Five — The Little Girl Who Learned to Fight.Beneath the Scars with Zoe.

The word narcissist has become almost impossible to escape in modern dating and relationships. It seems that every difficult breakup, selfish partner, toxic relationship or hurtful behaviour now comes with the same diagnosis: narcissist.But I’ve started wondering whether, in our eagerness to name what hurt us, we’ve actually started watering down a word that carries far more weight than we realise.In this episode of Beneath the Scars with Zoe, I begin with something that might surprise you: I haven’t dated a narcissist. I’ve been with wounded people. I’ve experienced manipulation, control, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse. I’ve experienced people who behaved badly and people who needed healing. Some were simply assholes. But looking back, I don’t believe that automatically makes them narcissists.That distinction matters to me because Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a real clinical disorder, and there are people who have genuinely lived through narcissistic abuse. Their experiences deserve to be taken seriously rather than becoming lost in a culture where the word narcissist is thrown around so casually that it can eventually stop meaning anything.This conversation looks at what narcissism actually is, what the clinical characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder are, and why being selfish, emotionally unavailable, wounded, toxic, controlling or abusive isn’t automatically the same thing as having NPD.I also explore another label we’ve embraced: empath. I’ve always been able to walk into a room and sense when something isn’t right, but I’ve come to question whether that is really some extraordinary ability or whether, for me, it was something I learned through survival. Sometimes being exceptionally good at reading people isn’t a superpower. Sometimes it’s hyper-awareness developed because you had to learn how to read the room.From there, the conversation becomes personal. I talk about being perceived as a strong, independent woman while still having a deep desire to feel safe, protected and able to soften with someone. I’ve often been drawn to men who appeared stronger, only to discover that I was actually the stronger person in the relationship — encouraging, supporting, raising them up and sometimes even mothering them.And perhaps that’s a different question from asking why someone keeps attracting narcissists. Maybe sometimes we need to ask ourselves why we’ve mistaken someone’s potential for their capacity.Ultimately, this isn’t an episode about diagnosing your ex. It’s about learning to look beyond labels and pay attention to character, history, patterns, accountability, empathy and behaviour.Because not every wounded person is a narcissist. Not every asshole is a narcissist. Not every abusive person has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.And you don’t need a diagnosis to know that someone hurt you.But if we’re going to use the word narcissist, perhaps we owe it to the people who have genuinely experienced narcissistic abuse to understand what that word actually means.This is Beneath the Scars with Zoe — a conversation about looking beyond the label and finally getting underneath the behaviour.

Why do we stay in relationships that hurt us? And why, even after we leave, can we sometimes find ourselves repeating the same patterns with completely different people?In this episode of Beneath the Scars with Zoe, I get into the uncomfortable stuff—the kind of things we don’t always want to look at too closely. I talk about what abusive relationships can actually look like from the inside, how they often begin with someone being everything you’ve ever wanted, and how slowly that can turn into control, manipulation, criticism and psychological warfare.I’ve experienced physical violence, threats and broken bones, but for me, it was the psychological damage that stayed. Being told you’re fat, ugly, weak, useless or that nobody would ever want you doesn’t simply disappear when the person does. Those words can become part of the voice inside your own head, and sometimes the hardest part of healing is learning which voice is actually yours.I also talk about betrayal, being made to question my own reality, and how exhausting it becomes when you’re constantly trying to prove what you know happened. But eventually, my healing took me much deeper. I had to stop only looking at the people who hurt me and start asking myself what I’d learned about love, where I’d learned it, what I’d come to believe about myself and why certain patterns could feel so familiar.That took me all the way back to my first love at nineteen, and into my own father wounds. I began to understand that sometimes the person who hurts us isn’t where the story began. Sometimes there are deeper wounds underneath the ones we can immediately see.That’s where The Great Investigation came from. My workbook explores relationships, boundaries, identity and self-worth, giving us the space to ask the questions we might otherwise avoid. In this episode, I’ll also share a reading from the book and explain why I believe asking the right questions can be the beginning of real healing.This isn’t about blaming ourselves for somebody else’s abuse. It’s about understanding ourselves, recognizing patterns, rebuilding our boundaries and figuring out who we are underneath everything we’ve been taught to believe.Because maybe the question isn’t simply, Why did I stay?Maybe it’s, What happened to me while I was there—and what am I ready to discover about myself now?This is Beneath the Scars with Zoe. I’m not here because I’ve got everything figured out. I’m here because I’m still investigating too.If you’re ready to ask some of your own questions, you can find more about my books, my work and contact me at: Zoehethershaw.com

Morals, Loyalty & the Lines I Don’t CrossTrigger warning What do morals and loyalty actually mean to me? In this episode, I get personal about the values I was raised with, the things life has taught me, and the lines I simply won’t cross. I talk about cheating, friendship, reputation, sex, intimacy, societal expectations, and the difference between being wanted and being valued. I also explore where our moral compass comes from — our families, our experiences, our wounds, and the society around us — and whether the beliefs we carry are really ours or something we inherited. This is a conversation about truth, accountability, loyalty, healing, and learning to decide for ourselves who we want to be.

Welcome to Beneath the Scars with Zoe — and what better way to begin than with a reading from Chapter One of my book, Storm Bound to Fire. 📖🔥In this first episode, I take you inside the story, where love, longing, wounds, and the things we carry from our past all collide. I also open up a little about my own father wound, what love has taught me, and what happens when we start looking beneath the surface of the people we think we know — including ourselves.So grab a cuppa, get comfy, and come beneath the scars with me.Episode One — Chapter One: Storm Bound to FireBecause sometimes the best stories begin with the things we survived. 

Welcome toBeneath the ScarsHi, I’m Zoe, and welcome to Beneath the Scars.This is simply an introduction to who I am, where I’ve come from, and why I’ve created this podcast. I’m reading this one because I don’t want to miss anything important, but the conversations that follow won’t be scripted. They’ll be open, honest and real.I’ve lived a lot of life, and I’ve experienced things that have shaped the person I am today. I’ve learned that sometimes the things we carry aren’t visible from the outside, and that behind someone’s choices, reactions or behaviours, there can be a story we know nothing about.That’s who I hope to reach with this podcast — people who have experienced trauma, loss, abuse, grief, difficult relationships, survival, healing, or simply those moments in life when you’re trying to understand yourself and wondering why you respond the way you do.You might find yourself somewhere in my stories. You might recognize someone you know. You might hear something that helps you understand yourself a little better, or perhaps understand someone else with a little more compassion.I’m not here because I have all the answers. I’m here to share what I’ve lived, what I’ve learned, and the things I’m still figuring out.So before we get into the stories, I wanted you to know the woman behind them.I’m Zoe and this is where we begin.…Welcome to Beneath the Scars.