My Financial System Cannot Tolerate My Humanity
Why Women—Especially Those Living with Chronic Illness—Must Design Financial Systems That Respect Their Capacity
There is a financial reality many women quietly navigate but rarely discuss.
Our financial systems assume constant capacity.
Our bodies do not operate that way.
Across a month, many women experience shifts in energy, focus, and cognitive capacity tied to hormonal rhythms. For women living with chronic illness, those fluctuations can be even more pronounced and less predictable.
Yet the systems that govern work and money—whether in corporate environments or self-employment—are built on a different assumption: steady output.
Consistent productivity.
Consistent availability.
Consistent performance.
When a woman’s capacity fluctuates, the tension becomes visible.
If income depends directly on output, a low-capacity period can quickly become a financial concern. Not because the individual lacks discipline or capability, but because the system she operates within was never designed to accommodate fluctuation.
For women managing chronic illness, this tension becomes even more pronounced.
Chronic conditions like sickle cell disease introduce a level of unpredictability to physical capacity that most financial structures simply do not address. There are periods where energy, focus, and physical strength are not available in the same way they may be at other times.
Yet financial expectations rarely- if at all - adjust to reflect that reality.
Most of us are taught how to earn money, save money, and invest money.
Very few of us are taught how to design our financial lives around the bodies we actually live in.
Recently, I realized something about my own life.
I have always aligned my life with my cycles and my capacity. I learned early how to listen to my body and adjust when necessary. Living with sickle cell disease required that awareness.
But there was one area of my life I never designed with that same awareness in mind.
My finances.
For most of my career, I operated within systems where money functioned almost like an event. Income arrived through structures that absorbed some of the variability in my capacity. I never had to confront the question directly.
But when those structures changed, I was forced to ask a question I had never seriously considered before:
What does my chronic illness mean for my financial life?
Despite living with sickle cell disease, despite understanding the rhythms and limitations of my own body, I had never intentionally considered what those realities should mean for my financial life.
That realization has led me to a series of questions I believe more women should begin asking.
Not just women living with chronic illness, but women navigating hormonal cycles, caregiving responsibilities, and the many realities that shape capacity over time.
If our bodies operate in rhythms and fluctuations, then our financial thinking should account for that.
We should be asking different questions.
What financial structures protect periods of low capacity?
What kinds of income models allow for fluctuation without financial collapse?
How do we build buffers that acknowledge biological reality rather than pretending it does not exist?
These are not questions most financial conversations address.
But they should.
Because self-leadership—especially for women—requires us to design lives that work with our humanity rather than constantly overriding it.
So the question I am now exploring is a simple one:
What does money look like when you design around the body you actually have?
It is a question more women should be asking—especially those navigating chronic illness, hormonal rhythms, caregiving responsibilities, and the many realities that shape our capacity over time.
Because if our financial systems ignore those realities, the result is predictable: women overriding their bodies in order to survive inside systems that were never designed with them in mind.
I don’t believe the answer is to override our humanity.
I believe the work ahead is learning how to design financial lives that respect it.
That conversation—how capacity, biology, and financial design intersect—is one I am increasingly bringing into my advisory work with women leaders.
Because money is not just about numbers.
It is also about the systems we build to support the lives we are actually living.
When women ignore their biological reality in their financial decisions, they often stop trusting themselves.
Why?
Because they keep trying to perform inside systems that don’t match their capacity. When their body inevitably pushes back — through illness, fatigue, or cycles — it can feel like personal failure instead of a design problem.
That erodes self-trust.
Self-trust with money begins when we stop pretending our bodies don’t matter
The Nourished Leader is partnering with the James Black Foundation on May 4th
Women, Money & Self-Trust, where we’ll explore questions like:
• How do we see our financial reality clearly without shame?
• How do we make money decisions we can trust ourselves to stand behind?
• What does financial self-trust actually look like for women navigating real-life capacity constraints?
If this article resonated with you, I hope you’ll join me.
Women, Money & Self-Trust
Highland Creek Golf Club — Charlotte
Monday, May 4 | 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Lunch will be provided, and the conversation will be practical, honest, and grounded in the realities many women are navigating right now.