Hello lovey humans,

Marissa spent years inside a prestigious job that signaled to her that she was doing well. Turns out those signals were the problem. "I achieved every promotion one could get at the firm. The last one, Senior Partner, came about two and a half years ago. It should have felt like a mountaintop moment. Instead, when I got the news, I fell into what I can only describe as a nearly two-day depression."

Now she's building something very different. This is Marissa's story.

The Respectable Dopamine Machine

Like most corporate work, Marissa's days were demanding, but because it came with a steady drip of kudos and confirmation she put up with it. She crushed the meetings, was responsive on the emails, and made it a habit of cleaning up messy problems the company encountered. She admits that she liked the rush of being needed.

Her addiction was the respectable version of being sharp, fast, indispensable. And the trap was that all of it looked like competence. She could run a wall-to-wall day of meetings, end it exhausted, and still feel reassured that work was being done. But something was wrong. Regardless of the amount of effort, she was always left feeling like she hadn't done enough. "I had also developed a nearly constant sense of guilt," Marissa noticed that high-achievement culture makes us feel as if every moment of your life that was not focused on achieving something was not real life.

Her body telling her that all that motion wasn't adding up to anything she believed in. We've all been there. A day can be full of forward movement and still feel like you're standing still. The corporate machine is superb at manufacturing activity and pats on the back. It was sending her reward signals but those empty signals weren't feeding her soul.

Stepping Into The Unknown

Marissa points out the illusion we all eventually see, "I began to feel that my life, in its entirety, was being performed for an invisible audience. That realization has been hard to sit with, but also clarifying." Once the dissonance became too much and she left to find out what she really wanted.

She is now in that awkward phase where you have to trust yourself. She's letting go of familiarity and walking towards ambiguity. Marissa is smack in the middle of figuring out what comes next. "It is not entirely clear yet, but it is becoming clearer. What I know is that I feel deeply called toward helping people find more meaning and purpose in their lives." That calling has multiple facets, and while she's being patient about what they might be, she's not standing still.

Marissa is actively seeking answers by running experiments. The first experiment is called The Portal. It is a series of two-day retreats beginning this fall near New York City focused on transitions. Like the work we do at Second Harvest, The Portal combines both proven methods for personal change, and a healthy dose of the "hippy stuff" Marissa has come to love and trust: immersive music, rave lights, embodied practices, and experiences designed to help people get deeper into their own internal knowing.

She has also started writing about meaning, purpose and soul inspired musings on Notes From the Field of Life.

Faithful Before the Evidence

Building something new carries hope and the wide open silence of possibility. That can be fear inducing for those of us that have lived in worlds that constantly fill any ambiguity with noise and distractions. Most of us know, in our heads, that the things that matter take time. Whether you're raising children, building character, learning to trust, developing a vocation, or falling in love. Patience and stillness is required. But we’ve been trained to crave the constant ping of the notifications as the small confirmations we’re still on track. When those signals vanish, their absence starts to feel like a verdict. Slow growth reads as no growth. Stillness reads as failure.

Marissa has accepted that some things are hard to measure because they’re deep, not because they’re vague. A calling forms the person doing the work. Marissa’s new season is all about trusting that alignment isn't about the external notifications, it comes from inside. No quarterly review reveals whether this morning’s conversation will matter in ten years.

Why Marissa Is a Second Harvester

She isn’t reinventing herself. She’s remembering who she was before the titles and the promotions. None of it is entirely new, it’s a return to being someone she can’t measure but has decided to trust anyway. Marissa left a job that reassured her every hour. She’s chosen work that won’t do that intentionally.

"I spent a long time inside a life that looked successful from the outside and, for many years, genuinely gave me a lot. I am grateful for it. But I am also ready to stop performing for the invisible audience." That’s sounds like someone who finally trusts the difference between the easiest evidence and the deepest truth.

With love, Richard & Devon