Some people are thinkers and some are feelers, and Tamara Lee spent most of her life in her thinking brain. Having worked at OnTrack Financial Education & Counseling from 2011 to 2021, she used her thinking brain to educate and empower women through financial education.

A shift began in 2018 when Lee participated in a one-year Sex, Love, and Relationship certification course with Layla Martin. She learned about herself outside of her thinking brain on a somatic level, and one particular area of certification was in women’s empowerment. This course was a deep dive into agency with women, both in their sexual power as well as their financial power.

“Even though the reasons behind my taking this certification were selfish for me around relationships, it really helped me when working with women, which we don’t always see when we’re thinking of finances. Other financial educators are not addressing the emotional side or navigating the world of patriarchy, but this really helped me tap into my own emotional sense around money.”

Lee became a coach focused on helping women in a more holistic sense, examining potentially dysregulated emotions around things like taxes, retirement, the worth of business services and pricing those appropriately. She also examines money stories from women’s upbringings and how those affect women, how they feel about money, and their challenges around money.

Women often share their fears surrounding money, no matter how much money they actually earn. They are nervous about having enough to have the life they want, whether that means enough to get by, take vacations, buy a house, or retire. Many women who are now in their 50s, 40s, or even 30s or younger heard different messaging surrounding money than men did in their childhoods.

“Parents told their sons to go out and do what you’ve got to do to provide for a family,” Lee said. “They were told they can do anything; to take risks and see what happens. It wasn’t until the mid 1970s when women were first allowed to get a credit card or get a mortgage without a man, and women’s rights have progressed really fast over the last 50 years. We are still playing catch-up to those old beliefs, ancestrally speaking.”

What the mothers of older generations saw and passed to their daughters is dramatically different than what today’s mothers of young children experience and may teach their children, though they now have their own struggles. Women are no longer expected to be homemakers exclusively, but are often still expected to perform those duties while also having successful careers. Still, many of those old stories still come into play in the mindset of many women.

As Lee taught financial classes to groups over the years, she consistently noticed that the majority of attendees were women. An inherent strength of many women is to do well when communing together. When isolated, women may not allow themselves to share feelings and concerns about money. It can be helpful to normalize conversations about one’s financial life and receive supportive accountability from a trusted person

“Because money, like sex, is a very private subject, these topics are considered taboo,” Lee said. “Most of us think no one else can be going through the same situations, or they think they are bad, placing blame and shame on themselves because they haven’t been able to accomplish a goal within a certain time period. What I see with my clients is normalizing that; letting them know they are not an outlier. This helps to build their confidence.”

Cultivating self trust in one area of life has a side effect of rippling out toward other areas. Calling in a vision of a future self who is living in the way of their dreams, and listening to that intuitive voice, is often when one’s trust in their own abilities becomes ingrained. When women develop the vision of the thing they want the most and build confidence in their ability to achieve that, not only can they reach their goal, they can achieve much more.

Implementing cognitive behavioral tools as a holistic strategy can provide insight into how a person is thinking and feeling, which affects actions, which affects results. Using tools like breath work, guided meditations, and inner child work to tap into the messaging that is coming through to the present moment can make a big difference in how women handle personal issues, including finances.

“The percentage of women who ever earn more than $100,000 a year in business revenue is very small compared to men,” Lee said. “So many women are working on their financial goals alone and secretly. Allowing women to talk about money openly in this way is probably one of the biggest healers.”