Q&A with Dr. Stacey Simmons

Question: Why did you write THE QUEEN’S PATH?

• Answer: It started as a master’s thesis. I knew there was more to it, but I struggled with it. Was it just a story model? Was it a real experience in people’s lives? I had started to see it everywhere and I was confused. I was trying to figure out if I was inserting it into my clients’ stories- like when you notice that half the cars on the freeway are the same as the one you recently bought- Was I just obsessed? Or was it real?  I cooked up some food, and invited some friends and colleagues over to help me figure it out. One of my friends from grad school left early completely overcome. She sent me an email later explaining that I had given her a key to a life-long mystery. This revelation profoundly upset her, and made her see how she had been torn between her true nature and her family’s expectations her whole life. Her story showed me how important it was. The story of the Divide and ultimately sovereignty wasn’t an either/or… it was in stories and it haunted the unconscious in real women’s lived experience. I broke down in tears, realizing how important the discovery was, and what a big difference it could make. It was profoundly humbling.

Q: You’ve had an interesting career path; how did you get where you are today?

• A: OMGoodness! It has been circuitous to be sure! James Hillman said that the path only looks clear when you look behind you. That’s 100% true for me. I wouldn’t be here without having worked in entertainment, been a Wiccan priestess, gotten a PhD where I studied modern witch hunts, been a devout Catholic, searched for my ancestry in Judaism, worked in a University, started a company and failed, and gone into a profound Jungian analysis that upended and inspired my life- eventually leading me to become a therapist. Every step had a part to play in this discovery and my writing this book.

Q: As a working therapist, what portion of the principles in the book are based on your patients' experiences versus your own personal struggles?

• A: I don’t know that I could separate them out. I am a woman on the Queen’s Path too! My clients have helped me see the imprimatur of this archetypal journey, even though each client has experienced the journey differently. I don’t know that I can separate my archetypal journey from that of my clients. We are all on the same path, we’re just in different places along it. 

Q: The vocabulary in TQP is fascinating. You introduce many new terms but also play with the meanings of existing words like sovereignty. Why was it necessary to invent/reinvent these words?

• A: So many of the words we use have lost their gravity. In my therapy practice I ask my clients to get precise with their language. When words or concepts get mushy, or start to become hollow, we need new descriptions. Sovereignty is not a new word or concept, but it has typically been reserved for kings and/or nations. The UN changed that when it declared in 1948 that the rights of nations flowed upward from the sovereignty of a country’s citizens. That really hit home for me. There are other women writers who have also reclaimed that and similar words. After my discovery I learned that Sharon Blackie reclaimed the word, sovereignty too, and another colleague of mine had a very similar thesis about women’s lives, she called it “regency”. 

Q: A key concept in your book is the idea of an archetype. What is a quick definition of an archetype?

• A: An archetype is a collection of behaviors and qualities seen and experienced together across cultures. 

Q: You define two competing archetypes in the book—the MISOR and the MIPE. How do these two types differ from the “traditional” good girl/bad girl labels?

• A: Ohhh- they aren’t competing at all! They’re complements, though we often place them in competition with one another! The MISOR stands for Maiden In Search of Relationship, she’s who we would normally associate with the Good Girl- but she’s not always a good girl. She’s the one who follows the social norms. She’s protected by culture, she adheres to the standards. She is both Sleeping Beauty and Regina George. The other, the MIPE or Magical, Isolated, Powerful, and Endangered is the “other” woman. She’s the typical “bad girl” she’s the outsider, the one who doesn’t follow convention. Her magic isn’t always actual magic, it’s usually something that separates her from the social norms- she’s smart, beautiful, powerful, athletic, or yes… magical. She’s both Maleficent and Janis Ian. The secret is they’re both traps- meant to keep women comparing ourselves to a standard rather than following our own desires. 

Q: What is a monomyth and what is the Hero’s Journey?

• A: Joseph Campbell described his discovery of the Hero’s Journey as a monomyth. To him this was the archetypal journey that everyone goes through in life. But in his model, there’s no clear path for women. Women are either absorbed in the myth as heroines- (which has BIG problems) or women are the center that the hero is trying to get to. Neither of these reflect the real, lived experience of women.  

Q: You introduce an interesting duality in the book, being cursed AND being marked. How do these two concepts work together?

• A: The curse and the mark go together. In stories, the mark is a sign of the curse. For example, in Frozen, Elsa is cursed by magic, her mark is the gloves she wears. Her sister is cursed by forgetting her sister has power, and she bears the white streak of hair as a mark of the curse from their childhood. In real women’s lives it’s usually something that they can identify about themselves- things that in an ideal world should have no bearing. Whether a woman fits a beauty or body standard, whether she suffered some abuse, whether or not she has children… for example. 

Q: Do you consider TQP to be a feminist idea and is it only applicable to women?

• A: TQP is not a feminist idea. It aligns with feminism, but it is not feminist per se. All women should have sovereignty- that means that if a woman who is a devoutly religious person chooses to be in a marriage where she defers to her partner, she has that right. Sovereignty is the foundation of EVERY woman’s right to make her own choices. On the second part- I don’t think it is only applicable to women, but I haven’t really tested it yet. I have applied TQP to some other stories, mostly in workshops. It is my students who brought this to my attention- I’ve had participants in my workshops point out that Superman is on TQP, as is Batman, and even Harry Potter. I haven’t spent the time yet to find out- maybe in another book.  

Q: You have obviously put a lot of thought into TQP. What would you say to someone who says it is just another book about female empowerment?

• A: I would say it’s not JUST another book on female empowerment. It’s a book on women’s empowerment, (and that includes transwomen and transmen). I’d say that it is a revelation of a mythic structure that’s been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years. Campbell’s discovery was first codified in 1949 in The Hero with a 1000 Faces, that’s 75 years ago. It was only popularized in the 1980’s after the Bill Moyers series The Power of Myth, that’s about 25 years ago. The Hero’s Journey has been around for thousands of years, but was codified less than 75 years ago. The Queen’s Path has been around for thousands of years, but was codified in this book in 2024. Women have our own monomyth. An archetypal organizing principle is more than a tag line for Girl Power.

Q: The book is filled with wonderful snippets of mythology, of both the traditional ancient Greek/Roman variety as well as the Disneyfied versions. How do discussions of those stories help make your points in TQP?

• A: I am an avowed Disney nerd. I love animation. The discovery started with two Disney films, Frozen and Maleficent. But soon I found it everywhere. After the initial discovery I started hearing it in my clients’ stories. I heard it in their struggles, their complaints, their triumphs. Then I started seeing it in other media- books, television, broadway, sacred literature. Once I identified the pattern, it was everywhere- kind of like when you buy a new car- suddenly the car you thought was different is the one you see everywhere on the road. For me finding it in modern and ancient myths shows that it’s an archetypal pattern. When an archetypal pattern is being engaged it means it is deep within us as individuals and in culture. We LIVE it and it lives us. 

Q: Beyond examining physical battles, you look at psychological warfare, paying particular attention to the concept of “divide and conquer.” How would you describe your spin on that term?

• A: I take it to heart. In a society that is built on colonizing power, you have to defeat groups of people. The latin version, divide et impera can be considered more deeply- divide: separate, render, remove, shift, cut, and impera: rule, replace, coerce, co-opt. Like I mentioned earlier, colloquial terms sometimes lose their force or gravity. This is one of those. When we say Divide and Conquer now we could be talking about the way girl scouts divide into groups to conquer the grocery store entrances. Or we could be talking about factions in congress or at the City Planning Commission. We rarely think about it in its most sinister - to render someone from themselves, and replace their authority with that of an external power. But that is what happens to women (and other marginalized people) every day. It is what I see in my clients who internalize shame or self-hatred. It is systematic, and it is so pervasive in our culture that we can scarcely identify it. 

Q: One can imagine that your day job as a therapist involves much discussion of the conscious and the unconscious mind. What role does the unconscious play in TQP?

• A: This is a really fascinating subject, I could talk about it for hours! The unconscious holds those parts of our individual and collective psyches that we either aren’t allowed to have or that are outright rejected by either the individual conscious mind, or the culturally accepted collective consciousness. It is to the unconscious that we banish the parts of ourselves that we don’t like or don’t want to accept, (and for the big cultural pieces- these get banished to the collective unconscious). The fact that this mythic structure is repeated over and over again, but has never been fully codified tells us that it has been relegated to the unconscious. We don’t discuss it. We accept the cultural definitions like the “natural” ideal of femininity (sweet, small, passive, pretty). By contrast, we also accept that those women who cannot embody these ideals are “different” and because we don’t have a definition, we rely on the binary of “masculine,” or worse, “witch” sometimes throttled down to just “bitch.” These cultural expectations and the processes that produce and reproduce them are at least as old as the Ancient Greeks- we’ve been stuffing these into the unconscious for at least 4000 years! So it’s not that the unconscious plays a role in the TQP so much as the TQP is releasing these models from the unconscious into both the individual and collective consciousness. 

Q: You’ve spent significant time in New Orleans and Los Angeles, two cities well known for myth making and storytelling. What sort of influence do those two cities have on your writing?

• A: I love this question so much. I had never thought of it quite that way, but you’re absolutely correct! I come from New Orleans which is very much a place haunted by history. The city is still very European in its influences. To come from New Orleans is to savor good stories and good food. I was shocked when I moved to Los Angeles that a dinner party wasn’t a five or six hour affair. In New Orleans dinner at a friend’s or relative’s home usually means going over to help prepare in the afternoon, cooking, then eating around 7P, and sitting around the table telling stories for hours over a bountiful meal. You go home sometime between 11P and midnight, or sometimes later. New Orleans is electric in that way. There’s a saying, “Nothing dies in New Orleans.” That speaks to both the haunted nature of the town, and the fact that everything is verdant, living, and filled with soul, from the music to the cracks in the sidewalk. Los Angeles is very different, but I suppose I love L.A. for the same reasons I love New Orleans. Myth permeates everything. In New Orleans it breathes in the architecture and the tactile continuity of history, from voodoo to the casket girls. The mythmaking in Los Angeles is always shifting, the town is always trying on new ideas, new methods and technologies, and trying to lead the world in the ways narratives are explored. It’s a pioneering place for writers and storytellers. In L.A. almost everyone shares the same mythology around the world of entertainment. People can converse as easily about Lawrence Kasdan and Joan Didion as much as how much they like the most recent Disney movie or last weekend’s box office returns. It’s a remarkable place for anyone who loves movies and entertainment as much as I do. The two places formed me, I came to Los Angeles the first time at nineteen, and learned my work ethic here. It was the first place that I felt like myself, when I went back to New Orleans at 25 I was an oddball. I worked too much, and took myself really seriously. New Orleanians enjoy life too much to take anything that serious… I’ve come to embody both towns with a lot more joy these days. 

Q: Throughout TQP you reference your mother and her story/path. How did she influence your life and how was that instructive for the book?

• A: My mother was an enigma to me. She was beautiful, brilliant, and dedicated. But she was also troubled. She and my father weren’t a great match and that took a toll on her. I realized later in life that every decision I had made in my life had been in relief to the life she had lived. I was terrified of ending up like her. She was the ever-dutiful MISOR, she believed in being submissive, and wanted the men in her life to be the dutiful providers. It never occurred to her that she could do everything “right” and still have everything go spectacularly wrong. I saw it happen to her, and tried to do everything to avoid that- and what happened as a result was I had the same journey but a different track. I was the MIPE, the smart one, I was never feminine enough. And she struggled to understand that I could have the same complaints as she had when I had made very different choices. I longed for her approval my whole adult life, I know she was proud of me, but that approval never really came. She wanted me to be an affirmation of her choices in life, and I couldn’t give her that. 

Q: How have you changed since discovering the queen’s path?

• A: I am a very different person. I am softer, because I now understand that I could never be a leader the way I thought I had to, which was following the binary explanation of feminine versus masculine. It was very confusing to try to lead with my gifts, only to have people around me discount me for not being “feminine” enough, which was code for “submissive.” But we don’t use that language openly. When we are talking about women being feminine, we’re usually talking about them submitting to authority. I don’t do that the same way these days. I engage in relationships, and the terms are negotiated, but I don’t “submit.”  I learned this by following the path to becoming a therapist. Before attending Pacifica Graduate Institute I had five years of constant nightmares and migraines. I had hit a concrete wall in my life, and none of the old strategies were working, the only thing left was to follow a new path before me. When I did, all of the struggle melted into meaning. That had never happened before in my life. I had always been told that anything worth having would be hard won. And so if it was a struggle to get some achievement, then that meant that I was on the right path. It had never occurred to me that banging my head against the wall trying to break down a barrier might be the thing giving me a migraine. 

Q: If you could choose only one “trap” to avoid on the queen’s path, what would that be and why? 

• A: The presumption is that either the MISOR or the MIPE is the end goal, or that one is a better way than the other to come into sovereignty. The experience of being divided is the real trap. The whole thing keeps women from our sovereignty, balancing on whether or not we are enough, if people like us, if we’re doing X, Y, or Z thing right. I learned the hard way that there is no version of submission that will bring a woman to sovereignty. You cannot submit yourself free. You can submit yourself SAFE, and that is what women are doing most of the time. So I suppose the thing to be on the lookout for is always that thing in us that tells us that submission is natural, and that there is an ideal. The reality is that submission is a choice, and can be a tactic, but it is not natural. So beware the trap that tells you that submission is natural, and that natural is the same as good. And as part of that beware any person, system, or expectations that tell you what the ideal YOU is. Sovereignty is figuring out for yourself, and loving that version, whether she fits in or not.

Q: Who do you think are some well-known examples of women who are leading sovereign lives or are at least on the Queen’s path?

• A: Oh SO MANY modern Queens! I’m just going to rattle off the first dozen or so as they come to mind: Vice-President Kamala Harris, Beyoncé Knowles for sure! Superstar Taylor Swift, Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai, Oprah Winfrey, Rachel Maddow, Shonda Rhimes, Former PM of New Zealand Jacinda Arden, Colleen Hoover, Dolly Parton, Former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, Jennifer Anniston, Maya Angelou, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elana Kagan, Margot Robbie, Director Greta Gerwig, Director Gina Price Bythewood… there are MANY! This is a list of recognizable queens, but there are just as many queens in my life and yours who aren’t famous. Fame and fortune aren’t prerequisites to sovereignty!

Q: TQP includes opportunities for journaling and other written exercises for self-awareness and intellectual growth. How did you decide to incorporate these tools into what is an otherwise straight forward narrative? Do you regularly use these types of exercises either personally or professionally?

• A: I am a writer so… my first choice is always going to be to sit down with a pen and paper. I find that writing catalyzes and crystalizes concepts that sit around in my unconscious. Some of these can create problems, others are just a weird blur in my psyche. Sometimes a prompt or a question is like sending a ping or a text to the unconscious. The response is just an amorphous blob until the right question is asked. I ask my clients to do art of any kind, writing, drawing, singing, dancing. Most women find themselves oscillating between submission and sovereignty. There haven’t been clear tools to help us get out of the patterns that trap us in the most painful parts of TQP. My hope is that by showing that there are steps, and then showing what they are, more women will feel the pull of sovereignty.

Q: What do you hope people will take away from reading The Queen’s Path?

• A: My hope is that women will read The Queen’s Path and find that they have more authority in their lived experience. The Divide tells women that everything that they are doing is wrong. And further, it makes us believe that our experiences are idiosyncratic- that they’re ours alone- we’re the only ones failing, we’re the only ones struggling… what’s wrong with me?  The Queen’s Path shows that there is an archetypal model, and that our own unique journey has an archetypal underpinning. The hero’s or heroine’s journey only works for those who are born (or present) female if they FIRST achieve sovereignty. Sovereignty means you own yourself first. That doesn’t mean you have to ascribe to feminism, it means you see your worth and honor it before you enter into any negotiations for power and authority. You NEVER come from the place of seeing yourself as “less than.” You always see that you have choice, power, and authority over your own being. Feminism is not the enemy, and to some degree, neither is patriarchy. The enemy is the Divide. The enemy is the hidden agenda that says that women are less. Women are subjects or objects. The enemy is the force that says that women are functions before we are people. That is the enemy. Sovereignty counters that. Sovereignty demands women’s humanity before any other “ism” and before any role. That is what I want for all women everywhere. Lastly, I hope The Queen’s Path becomes a useful story model for women’s narrative. Whether that narrative is a film, novel, or the way a therapist helps her client find meaning in her life, all women need an alternative to a hero or heroine’s journey that tells them that they are broken, wounded, or have to fit a narrow definition of what it means to be a woman. Narratives help us make sense of our place in the world, and I hope that TQP helps women tell better stories both to the world and to themselves. Maybe if we tell more stories of sovereignty, eventually this model will be obsolete. When all people have the same expectation of sovereignty, then the Divide will be closed, and we won’t need this model any more. That would be amazing. Sovereignty for everyone!