About Dr. Stacey Simmons

I am  a writer and psychotherapist who grew up in New Orleans, but who currently lives out in the boonies of Los Angeles where I keep my horses. I am a neurotic polymath with a PhD in social psychology. I'm fluent in French, and have a passion for women’s issues and neuroscience. I left a career in animation and visual effects to become a psychotherapist. In my graduate research, I discovered an analog to the Hero’s Journey for woman-driven narrative- and it is NOT a Heroine’s journey! I've been speaking at writer’s groups and conferences since this discovery. The book entitled THE QUEEN'S PATH: A REVOLUTIONARY GUIDE TO WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT AND SOVEREIGNTY will be published by Hay House Publishers this year. The book is set to come out on election day, November 5, 2024. 

I've lived all over, but in 2012, I returned to Los Angeles, and  enrolled in Pacifica Graduate Institute's Depth Psychology program. The program at Pacifica was psychoactive, and often deeply challenging. When it came time to choose a research topic for my thesis I wanted to stick with animation. I  wanted to examine the representation of women across the entire Disney canon from 1937's  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to 2013's Frozen. But that was too ambitious to be completed in a master's program, so I focused on just two films: Disney's Frozen, and Maleficent.  

What I discovered would have ramifications for storytelling across every genre. I had inadvertently stumbled onto the REASON the hero's journey had never worked for me personally- not only as someone who loved story, but as a woman looking for archetypes to explain my own life's trajectory. Why had the quest never welcomed me? What was it about being a woman that made it difficult to find the elixir of life and bring it back to my people? Was there something wrong with me? Was I doing it wrong? 

No.

It's just that the Hero's Journey is not for women. We have our own path. On the Hero's Journey (or Heroine's Journey) women are seen as impostors. We don't belong there- and all the stories, myths, and narratives- whether fairy tales, or psychological examinations tell us not just the why, but the how.

All women go through an archetypal process of being DIVIDED, and if we are lucky, we have the opportunity to reconnect the divided pieces and become sovereign over our own lives. The Divided Woman is in every culture, in every story- and at the end of the path, she becomes a QUEEN. 

Today I have found my domain. I am a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor at Hope Therapy Center with offices in Burbank and Newhall, California. I work primarily with creative people. As this path came into focus through my research I realized that I too had been living the archetypal pattern without realizing it. Everywhere I had been a MIPE, in the university, in technology, in entrepreneurship, in studios. I had tried to be a Hero, and was almost always met with open arms at first, and later pushed to the margins. That is the MIPE archetypal pattern.  In the workplace, the safe role is the MISOR, the helper, the one who is quiet, demure, and submissive. I was terrible at that. I constantly examined, re-examined, and relaunched myself to do better work, learn more, be a better hero-- to no avail. Because for a woman to have power, she must either double down on the MIPE role, and run the risk of being consumed by her will, or she must become a queen, reconnecting the ostracized pieces of herself, and experiencing her own physical transcendence, then gathering her tribe around her. 

I am also a certified psychedelic psychotherapist. I provide Ketamine assisted therapy, and occasionally take people on retreats. I have a book on psychedelic mushrooms coming out February 2025 with Black Dog & Leventhal entitled: MUSHROOM PHARMACY: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS. The book is filled with nerdy neuroscience research, and cutting edge examinations of the ways that scientists are experimenting with psychedelics to bring relief to patients suffering with everything from Treatment Resistant Depression to Chronic Pain.

I am also the first American clinician to be formally trained in Auto-Induced Cognitive Trance (TCAI) with Corine Sombrun at the Trance Science Research Institute in Paris, France.

I have a following of over 300k on TikTok as #WitchMom where I share spiritual advice and practices.