Hello lovely humans,

Amie Stevens spent more than twenty years climbing to the top of her game. Having grown up with epilepsy and endured brain surgery, she had to overcome serious challenges to get there. Then, in a matter of days, the company she had given her life to disappeared. This is her story.

The identity you don’t see

This is a story about identity. For most of her adult life, Amie thought she knew exactly what her future would look like. More than two decades in banking across New England, at top firms including First Republic and J.P. Morgan Private Bank. She was good at it, and she loved it. Banking was her life.

But, along the way, banking stopped being the thing she did and became the thing she was. So many of us have experienced this. Our work becomes us. Our identity. You build a career as away forward, and then one day, the career starts holding you back. The title on the door and the institution behind it become your sense of self. What happens when you can't answer the question, "what do you do?"

Brain storming

Her story of figuring out who she actually was started long before any of that.

Amie grew up with epilepsy, a chronic neurological brain disorder characterized by unprovoked seizures. At twenty-one, after living under the cloud of sudden storms in the brain and on an a constant stream of medication, she made the decision to undergo brain surgery. At an age when most people are still figuring out a major, she was confronting a choice most of us never face at all. She didn’t know what would be possible on the other side of that choice but she leaned into the uncertainty.

The surgery was a success and she was able to come off medication. From there she built the life that the twenty-one-year-old on the operating table could only have hoped for. She got married to her husband Mike, and together they raised two daughters, now sixteen and thirteen, all while building a thriving career at First Republic. Life looked pretty amazing for a while.

The ground gives way

Then, a storm of a different type appeared.

The sudden failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March 2023 caused widespread fear. Depositors quickly pulled cash from banks, draining more than $100 billion from First Republic. The bank run and collapse of First Republic was something Amie never imagined she’d witness from the inside. Watching an institution and a community that had been so central to her professional life vanish that fast was deeply unsettling. And it surfaced a question she hadn’t considered:

Who am I if the foundation I'm building on suddenly disappears? That question became the beginning of her second act.

Instead of recreating, she explored

Amie didn’t try to rebuild exactly what she’d had. She experimented. She gave herself permission to see what else she could make.

She opened an Airbnb in Plymouth, MA overlooking Cape Cod Bay. What began as a property investment became something she didn’t expect to love. It quickly became obvious she was creating a place where families could gather, celebrate, and make memories. Then, she launched a Dryvebox mobile golf business with her husband and her brother-in-law.

For the first time in her life, she was the entrepreneur. She’d spent decades advising business owners and successful families from across the table. Now she was the one learning marketing, sales, operations, and every unglamorous surprise that comes with building your own thing.

But she wasn't done trying new things. She also joined an AI fintech startup. Going from traditional banking into startups and AI in her late forties has meant becoming comfortable being a beginner again. Learning new tools, new language, and new mistakes, all in real time.

Was it a midlife crisis, she wondered, or was there something more to it?

Starting over isn’t starting from zero

“Starting over does not mean starting from zero. You bring everything with you.” Amie could see that what had got her to this point was also a foundation for what came next, not something to shed entirely. The relationships, the judgment, the wisdom, and the resilience built through experiences she’d never have chosen. Her second act was not about walking away from the person she’d been for the first half of her career. It was about discovering she could expand on that foundation.

A banker and an entrepreneur. A mother and a startup executive. A business owner and a beginner. Someone who values stability and someone willing to bet on herself. She was multiples.

Why Amie is a Second Harvester

Amie’s story is one we hear often, and it’s the one the self-help industry packages as reinvention and demolition. They say, burn it down, become someone new, start fresh. But, burning it down isn't what works.

Amie didn’t need to reinvent herself. She needed to remember that everything she’d earned came with her. The bank could collapse and the identity built on top of it could disappear, but the person underneath was never in question. She’d just forgotten she’d done it before. She'd made hard choices before. She'd overcome uncertainty before.

That’s the second harvest. Not a rejection of what you built, but a reunion with who you are underneath the layers of titles and roles. Amie acknowledges, “Resilience isn’t simply about getting back to where you were before something difficult happened. Sometimes resilience means giving yourself permission to move forward differently.”

Twice now, life has handed Amie the opportunity to do something bold and scary. At twenty-one, brain surgery gave her the chance to imagine a life beyond epilepsy. In her late forties, an unexpected collapse gave her the chance to imagine a life beyond the path she thought she’d follow forever. Both taught her that the most meaningful chapters start when the original plan falls apart.

Her second act is still being written. In her words, that may be the most exciting part.

Follow Amie’s journey: LinkedIn, MPWR​

More stories like this soon.

— Richard & Devon

P.S. We recently added several new retreats to the Second Harvest website. We're going to Spain, Portugal, South Africa and the Azores. If you're feeling like you need the space and time to find clarity, we'd love to see you there.

P.S.S. The first Crop Circle cohorts are kicking off next week. If you'd like to join a regular peer group meeting with people like you, let us know.