Stacey Simmons: Women’s Stories Matter, and We Need More of Them

Stacey Simmons, MA, PhD, LMFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Psychedelic Therapist. Her clinical practice focuses on helping creative professionals with everything from early trauma to creative blocks. After a debilitating few years being haunted by nightmares, Stacey left a career in entertainment to become a psychotherapist. She is a clinical supervisor at Hope Therapy Center in Burbank, California. Stacey is a leader in women’s spirituality, having co-founded a church for Wiccans in her native New Orleans. She engages with spiritual seekers on Tik Tok as The Witch Mom @WitchDaily, where she has over 300,000 followers. She is a volunteer researcher with The Integrative Psychiatry Clinic at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, as well as an affiliate researcher with the TranceScience Research Institute in Paris, France. She holds a PhD from the University of New Orleans and a master’s degree from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. Follow her on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.

Stacey Simmons

In this interview, Stacey discusses how her research into women’s representation in family films organically led her toward her new book, The Queen’s Path, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Stacey Simmons, PhD
Literary agent: Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media Group
Book title: The Queen’s Path: A Revolutionary Guide to Women’s Empowermemt and Sovereignty
Publisher: Hay House/Penguin Random House
Release date: November 5, 2024
Genre/category: Self-help/Philosophy/Literary Criticism
Elevator pitch: The Queen’s Path may be the most dangerous book ever published. With it, every woman can step out of the fairy tale track and into her own story—no glass slippers required. The Queen’s Path is a revolutionary manifesto for women ready to shatter the myth of being either a beautiful princess or a wicked witch. It empowers every woman to ascend to her individual queendom, embracing her unique journey to sovereignty. Both a guidebook and a story map TQP changes the expectations of what women can become when they become MORE than heroines.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I was changing careers, leaving the realm of entertainment to become a therapist. I wanted something “easy” for my thesis, so I decided to focus on animation—something I loved, and an industry where I had spent part of my career. I originally wanted to look at female protagonists across the Disney canon from Snow White to Frozen, which was the most recent film at the time. But I didn’t have enough time for that research, so my advisor asked me to focus on a narrower examination. I looked at Frozen and Maleficent and discovered the pattern of the Divided Woman and the United Queen, which eventually became The Queen’s Path (TQP). After graduation I saw the pattern everywhere, in the stories of my clients, in movies and television, in sacred literature. My mind was blown. I had discovered an analog to the Hero’s Journey, that was NOT a heroine’s journey. I had not sought it out, it emerged organically from my research into women’s representation in family films.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

It was about nine years. The thesis idea came about at the end of 2015. I started developing it about two years later. I started teaching the idea at writers’ workshops. I introduced it to my clients. I wrote six different versions of a proposal, the shortest of which was 80 pages. The proposal changed more than the book over time. The final manuscript changed a bit, but mostly it got more developed. It got better. I did have to cut a chapter I really loved, but my editor and I agreed that it broke the flow of the book. Taking it out made it more engaging and easier to read.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Where do I begin? I learned how LONG everything takes. From the day the deal was made to the publication date was about two years. I think the thing that surprised me the most was how everyone else thinks that once you’ve gotten a book deal everything will take care of itself. But the book and the book deal are just the start. I learned to hire people to do the things I didn’t have time to do. I hired one of my nieces, who is an aspiring writer, as an editorial assistant to check sources and the like. She did an excellent job, and she was affordable. I hired a social media manager to help me with my social media platform. I was very grateful that the publishers have such talented artists to do the cover and the interior design. I really loved picking out the cover design. The one I chose really feels like it conveys the spirit of the book.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Because I had been working on the ideas in workshops and groups for a long time, once I started to write it was relatively straightforward. The research culminated in a story map, so that naturally structured the chapters and sections. I learned a long time ago to just write. I don’t wait for inspiration. I put my hands on the keyboard. It doesn’t matter to me if I like what I’m writing or if it makes any sense. I just sit my butt in the chair. But a book like this can be very overwhelming. The subject matter is really challenging, because I knew I was doing something new, something that could be controversial. So, for me the biggest surprise was how much encouragement I needed when I wasn’t writing.

I’d have these moments of crippling doubt about whether anyone would care about or understand what I was doing. Prior to this experience I didn’t understand how much artists need other artists, and how nourishing their influence can be. I had reached out to one of my hero’s, Steven Pressfield, and he was incredibly generous. When I had a hard day or felt like I couldn’t go on I would re-read his emails or go back to other mentors who had told me to keep going. Every writer gets tired of their own work, all of us need cheerleaders and muses.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers will see themselves or their characters in the pages. My book is about a discovery, not an invention. I hope that we will stop leaning on The Hero’s Journey (THJ) as THE archetypal model for story. Joseph Campbell called THJ the monomyth of human experience, except he didn’t include women. Ever since, writers and researchers have been trying to include women in THJ, but we don’t fit the model. Women can only be on THJ if they have ALREADY achieved sovereignty. Women’s stories matter, and we need more of them. We have been telling the stories of Divided Women and Sovereign Queens for millennia. These tales are everywhere- from the biblical stories of Lilith and Eve right down to the most recent iterations in movies like Barbie and television shows like “Agatha All Along.” Archetypal stories live within us, and we recreate them in the art we make.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Listen to your inner voice for its creativity, but not its criticism. Creativity is complex, and the inner critic struggles to understand complexity. So, when the critical voice shows up telling you to give up, don’t listen! If it tells you it hates a sentence in chapter 12, maybe go look at it.

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