do you know some secret worries of wealthy women

You wouldn't think that a group of wealthy women would need help with money. After all, they can certainly afford the best lawyers, accountants, brokers, financial advisers that money can buy -- never mind really cool cars and jewelry.So why would 16 such women shell out $675 (pocket change, really) for a three-day sleep-away camp for women and their money in spendy Palm Beach, Fla.?OK, it wasn't really camp. It was Women, Meaning & Money, a workshop created by financial planner Susan Bradley, author of the book, "Sudden Money: Managing a Financial Windfall." But it felt like camp. We played games, learned new skills, stayed up talking long into the night about the boys we liked and our confusion over annuities.And although every woman there (except me, of course) certainly could afford all kinds of professional financial advice, that's not why they'd signed up. They wanted to learn how to take charge of their wealth, from the inside out. As Bradley said to the attendees, "I hope to give you tools to understand your relationship to money. It's not just emotional; it's your belief system, your values. It's about interior finances."The impact of sudden moneyAre you buying this? Because until you sit in a room with women who are truly, painfully bedeviled by the specific issues of wealth, it's hard to understand. In fact, for most of these women, their wealth came in the form of a sudden windfall, and it was not a welcome event in their lives. As Tina, a participant who gained a fortune but lost her husband at 29, said: "A windfall often comes attached to a terrible loss -- a divorce, a death, an insurance settlement, (a severance package) from losing a job. We are ill-prepared to deal with loss, just as we're ill-prepared to deal with money."The biggest eye-opener for me was realizing that being the recipient of money does not automatically solve all your financial problems. That whether you have $5,000 in the bank or $5 million, you still need help not only to make smart money decisions but to live a fulfilling life. Joan: Too young to inheritJoan was still in college when she got her first trust fund. A few years later she came into another inheritance, and the two totaled well over $5 million dollars. Although she'd grown up in a wealthy environment, no one thought to prepare her to manage her fortune. "It took me almost 20 years to unravel it all," she says.Eventually she took her money out of the family trust and embarked on educating herself. "I needed to have a sense of ownership," she says. "I didn't want to feel like I had to ask permission to make decisions about my own money." Joan's financial coming-of-age has been just as much about what the money means -- in her life, to her friends, to her two young children -- as about the money itself. Because she learned early on that money could make relationships go sour, Joan, a soft-spoken woman and down-to-earth dresser, goes out of her way to downplay it. "The greatest compliment to me is, 'I had no idea you had money -- you seem so normal.'" She laughs. "People actually say that!"Joan discovered Susan Bradley's work about a year ago, and came to the conference for personal and professional reasons. Like a lot of participants, she was amazed at the comfort she found just in swapping stories, in hearing that other women have been and are in her shoes.Now she hopes to expand her own consulting business to work with more clients who have been through circumstances like hers. "I guess it's a blessing that through my business I can put a small piece of my story out there."Diane: The hoarder's daughterAn only child, Diane's experience of money was epitomized by her father's obsessive frugality. "If I was taking a shower and the water was running for longer than he thought necessary," she recalls, "he'd just turn the hot water off."Imagine her shock seven years ago, when her father passed away and she had a meeting with lawyers who put down two fat portfolios in front of her and her husband. "We kept reading over the numbers, and we couldn't believe it," she says.Life didn't change drastically -- at first. She and her husband paid off their debt. They took their kids and some family members on a trip to Disney World. Her big splurge was spending a whirlwind weekend in New York for her anniversary. They stayed in a suite at a fancy Fifth Avenue hotel. "There was a marble bathroom at one end, one at the other end. It came with a 24-hour butler and everything."While Diane will admit her inheritance has allowed her to have some fun, the broader experience has been more about anger and disappointment. She never felt close to her father. "I feel like he left me the money because there was no one else." The money, she says, is almost the only connection she has to him -- and he's gone.Her accidental discovery of Women, Meaning & Money has been a godsend, she says. "I feel like I've been in denial for seven years. This is the first time I'm realizing that (getting a windfall) is a process. Everyone deals with different parts of it at different times for different reasons. What's important, I'm realizing, is just that you deal with it. I don't want to perpetuate the secret with my kids, the way it was done to me."Darlene: the self-made womanThe difference between women who get a sudden windfall and women who have earned their wealth is huge. Consider Darlene Orlov, the president of Orlov Resources, a management training and consulting company in New York."I have no guilt around money," she says. "I'm very savvy about my money. I understood it while it was growing, and I got good advice."What attracted her to the idea of attending a workshop on money and meaning was just that, "If you run a successful business for two decades you get a feeling for how to make money. But you don't necessarily know how to invest it for yourself."A successful entrepreneur and an avid collector of Depression-era art, Darlene wants to redefine the role money plays in her life. She's not sure how much money she needs, or how to make the transition, someday, into retirement. "My attitude has always been, if you need more pie, make more pie! But retirement is about living on a fixed income."One of the exercises that had the most impact on her was something that Bradley calls the "touchstone" exercise. A touchstone, basically, is a very personal mission statement; it's how you want to better use your resources to create the kind of life you want.Darlene spent two and a half hours one night working on her touchstone statement. And it was a revelation. "It's still in process, but one thing I realized is that I want to use my resources to help my family and to help others." She laughs. "I used to think it was sappy, 'I want to help other people,' but now I can see how pivotal that can be."One last thoughtThere were many things I liked about the Women, Meaning & Money experience. I liked the food. I liked meeting new women. I liked the history lesson that focused on financial benchmarks of the last century (did you know that the Fed was formed in 1913?) I even liked learning about bonds. Not that I remember that part. And I really appreciated being rewarded with chocolate when I got an answer right.But first and foremost, I appreciated the focus on "interior finances," especially as brought to life by the touchstone exercise. That, to me, formed a common ground. You don't need a million dollars to ask yourself what your values are, what's most important to you, and how you can better use the resources you have to honor those things.