Maria Alla

I'll never forget the sound of my parents arguing about money when I was seven years old. That's when I learned my first lesson: money wasn't just about numbers—it was about survival, shame, and fear.

At nineteen, I left Romania for the United Kingdom with a suitcase full of hope and a belief that if I just worked hard enough, I'd finally be safe. I became a bookkeeper because numbers felt logical and unemotional. Or so I thought.

But as I spent years managing other people's finances, I started seeing what the spreadsheets couldn't capture. Behind every income statement was a human being with a story—with fear, shame, and deeply ingrained beliefs about what they deserved. I saw business owners earning six figures who felt broke. Women working 60-hour weeks who couldn't break the £3,000-a-month ceiling.

That's when I realized: we don't have money problems. We have feeling problems about money.

Now, I guide women in business through the deep, somatic work of healing their money stories—not through willpower or hustle, but through feeling, processing, and rewiring the unconscious patterns stored in our bodies and nervous systems. My book, Money Feels First, is the culmination of two decades of healing, studying, and working with hundreds of women who are ready to finally break free from the money stories they inherited.

Because here's what I know: your relationship with money isn't built in your mind. It's stored in your body, your nervous system, and the stories you carry from generations past. And healing it changes everything.