Stephen Petus was in the early stages of working on his next album when an unexpected, and potentially life-threatening, medical issue arose. After a variety of tests, many of which were recorded and appear throughout the finished record, the issue was determined to be benign. Afterwards, as Petrus was feeling he had been given a new lease on life, he happened upon a home-recorded audio cassette at a yard sale - unaware that it contained the personal dictations of a man recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, largely recorded on a boat in the same harbor where Stephen lives. Having been given a glimpse of where his diagnosis could have gone, Stephen decided to give the anonymous voice new listeners and began incorporating sections of the tape into the album. As Petrus describes it, Amor Fati is an album “cloaked in fear, uncertainty, relief, sorrow and uplift.”