The Queen's Path:

I discovered that storytellers have been telling the same archetypal story about women for 6,000 years. Joseph Campbell was the first to codify the Hero's Journey in 1949, even though the story of the hero has been told for millennia. We have been telling a story about women since the first poem was written down in Ancient Sumer. It is the story of someone I call The Divided Woman. Though her story has been with us since the first poems were written, her story has just been codified in THE QUEEN'S PATH in 2024. Even though we see her every single day, we haven't known her. 

In talks and at lectures, when I describe the Divided Woman, I usually get the exact same response. The woman or women I am speaking to, give me half-hearted attention, because they're tired of being sold some story about how they can improve their lives by calling on an archetype. But I'm not selling a woo-woo version of Goddesses for women to identify with. No, I am illuminating an archetypal pattern that has the potential to free women from internal and external forces that keep us disempowered, isolated, and striving for acceptance.

Suddenly the women I'm speaking to, give me their attention. I explain that each one was put on a track at the young age of 7 or 8 years old. And as a result, she was either set on the path to ideal womanhood, as Maiden in Search of Relationship (MISOR, pronounced MEE-sohr). Or she was sent into girly purgatory as Magical, Isolated, Powerful, & Endangered (MIPE, pronounced MEE-pay) where she would always be alone, often trying to claw her way back to being accepted for who she is, whether she fits the ideal or not. When she doesn't fit it, she sees herself as a failure. At this point in our few minutes together, she is often welling up as if someone has finally seen her struggle, as though someone has insight into her life. She has finally been seen.

When women take a hero or heroine's journey without FIRST achieving sovereignty, they are banished. A hero goes on a quest, overcomes obstacles, and in the end acquires a boon, then returns to his people to share his wisdom. It's not that women can't go on a quest and succeed in the tasks of the hero, it's that when she returns with the boon, no one listens. No one wants what she's selling. If she's not a queen when she comes home, no one will care that she bested all the heroes or slayed the dragon.

The way forward- towards sovereignty- is not to rage against the system. The path for women to succeed beyond the Divided Woman is to take the Queen's Path, align her experience with the archetypal path, and REDEFINE HER STORY. In doing so every woman can be empowered and learn the truth about her potential. She is not banished to a marriage OR to a tower. She has the opportunity to become a Queen, with absolute sovereignty over her own life.