The Queen's Path

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Not a heroine, a queen

There have been many efforts to adapt the Hero's Journey to fit women's stories. However, the problems with adapting this model have some central failings in understanding women's experiences. Women have to contend with issues that men never have to concern themselves with. Women have to worry about sexuality- not just their own, but the sexuality of the men around them. Women have to worry about the role of motherhood and marriageability. Women have to be concerned with their physical safety. The Hero's Journey as adapted for women, assumes women are "wounded" not that we have structural inequalities constraining our choices.

When women take a Heroine's Journey they are already on the Queen's Path, as all women are. Every woman must reconcile the Divided Woman. If she takes the Heroine's Journey, without acknowledging it, then she is ostracized from the beginning. She is blind to the Path of the Queen. Any heroine automatically gets set in the track of the MIPE archetype. As heroes are by definition not compliant, a MISOR cannot take a Hero or Heroine's Journey. The MIPE is therefore outside of what is acceptable for her before she even makes the first move. This means that a woman who endeavors to be a Hero or Heroine will enter the Quest without recognizing that even if she succeeds in her goal, she will fail in her Quest. Not because she is incapable, but because the archetypal journey REQUIRES that she be a QUEEN first. Think of the Queen's you already know- Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai, Shonda Rhimes, Stacey Abrams, Christine Lagarde, Greta Thunberg, Anna Wintour, and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. These women, regardless of their age, have all decidedly rejected being EITHER a MIPE or a MISOR. They rule their domains with grace and power. They ignore calls for them to sit down. They are not hobbled by those who would want to "put them in their place".

If a woman on a Hero's Journey doesn't acknowledge the journey of the MIPE, she will find herself up against the expectations of culture that she fit into the MIPE ending. For a MIPE, the story ends with either trying for, and failing at, Happily Ever After, or worse, Animus Possession, where the MIPE is overcome with ambition, will, or rage. Whether MIPE or MISOR, every woman must realize the sacred nature of her being through embodied transcendence. This experience opens the door to sovereignty for her. Sovereignty is the experience, knowledge, and physicality of owning herself. Every woman deserves to be her own Queen. This archetypal structure is NOT new, we have been telling the story for a very long time. But it has not been presented to women as an archetypal story in the same way that the Hero's Journey has been told. Women all over the world need the story of the Divided Woman. They need it to empower them against tyrannical regimes. They need it to fuel parity, in pay, benefits, and legal protections. Women need more models that demonstrate to them that being "submissive" is a construct, one that we continue to reinforce by the ways we structure our stories.

It is time to tell our own stories- ones that unite the Divided Woman, giving every woman the right to own herself.

Transformative psychology for Better narratives

Women Can't Take a Hero's Journey

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.

The Divided woman is in every story you've seen

From storytelling to psychology, we are influenced by the narrative of being the hero or heroine of our own journey. But the problem for women, is that we are a mismatch to the original Hero's Journey. Women are taught early on that what is expected of us, and what we want often can't exist in the same place. I call this experience "The Divide." In some stories, a single character moves from one side of the divide to another. In others, she's represented by two characters who come together.