How I Learned to Love the Place I Couldn't Wait to Leave

A love story twenty-five years in the making

Aug 27, 2025

I was supposed to publish this last Wednesday, but life had other plans. My son broke his elbow on August 20th - the first day of school and the day before his 7th birthday. As I sat in the surgery waiting room, thinking about the post I was missing, I couldn't help but laugh at the irony. I'd just written about summer chaos, and apparently the end of summer wanted to make sure I knew chaos doesn't follow a calendar.

Anyway, he's doing better, and here's the post I've been wanting to share...

For the vast majority of my younger years, I just wanted to escape St. Louis.

You hear that a lot from kids here. It's almost like they don't know what they have in their own backyard, and I was definitely guilty of it. The city felt too small, too familiar, too much like home when I wanted an adventure.

The Dream Takes Shape

I followed my brother to college in Ohio because, honestly, I had no idea what I was doing at 18. But everything changed when I landed my first internship with designer Betsey Johnson in New York at 19. Suddenly, I was in heaven.

Dying fabric samples at Betsey Johnson - Summer 1999

My entire world revolved around the city for the rest of my college career. Every summer in New York, working remotely when I had to be back in Ohio, completely convinced this was my destiny. I even had a position lined up after graduation and walked with my class in May 2001.

There was just one problem - I had one class left to make up because I'd switched majors, and they were making me go back to Ohio for it. So I reluctantly returned in August 2001, planning to finish that one class and move to New York permanently.

Then came 9/11, and everything changed.

The Unexpected Return

I continued working remotely for a bit, but was encouraged not to move back to New York at the time for obvious reasons. So I found myself back in St. Louis, still absolutely convinced this was just temporary. I would be back in the city full time eventually.

I met my now ex-husband, an artist who had attended RISD and whose parents were from Manhattan. We both talked about moving to New York - it felt inevitable. But life has a way of happening while you're making other plans.

Dreams come and go, years pass, and you wake up one day (in my case, divorced) realizing you're still exactly where you started.

The Lost Years

For a while, I was genuinely lost. Newly divorced, not sure what I really wanted to do, going through the motions of a life that felt like it belonged to someone else. I had great friends and a great social life, but there were moments - quiet moments when I was alone with my thoughts - where I legitimately remember thinking that I would never live out those childhood dreams of working in fashion or doing something ‘big’.

I was living in St. Louis. I thought that ship had sailed.

I think it happens to most people. You reach a certain age and you start to "accept" your situation, your location, the cards you think life dealt you. You convince yourself you can't change it anymore. I heard friends talking about "settling" - for jobs, for relationships, for places they never really chose.

Celebrating my 35th birthday with girlfriends | My darling ‘single-girl’ townhouse

I was slowly accepting that maybe New York wasn't in my cards after all, that maybe those dreams were just young and naive fantasies.

The Wake-Up Call

I'm not sure what it was that made me finally wake up and realize that I am the only one in charge of my life. Maybe it was the fact that I had already left my husband and realized the world didn't stop spinning? Maybe it was watching other people settle and realizing I didn't want to be them?

What I knew for certain was that I didn't want to wake up at 90 and look back at my life realizing I didn't follow my dreams or trust my instincts.

So I became determined to turn my "crazy" ideas into something tangible. Baby steps at first - learning along the way, still learning now - but actually moving toward something instead of just accepting what felt like default settings.

Washington University night class to learn pattern-making

Finding My Person

That's when I met my current husband, and I realized how incredibly lucky I am because he turned out to be my biggest cheerleader. Instead of someone who made me smaller or more cautious, I found someone who believed in the crazy ideas and encouraged me to chase them.

It's funny how meeting the right person can change your entire relationship with risk-taking and dreaming big.

New York trip with my new family - 2018

The Revelation

Fast forward to now. I'm 46, remarried, mother to four children, and I cannot imagine leaving St. Louis. The irony is not lost on me.

I'm in New York all the time now for work, which feels like such a gift. It's still my favorite place in the world, and I hope to have a place there one day. But now I recognize what a blessing it is to be building from here.

I see our award-winning cultural institutions that rival any major city, our free museums and zoo district that make family life incredible, our phenomenal hospitals that saved my son this summer (and last week!), and our philanthropic community that shows up for each other in ways that still surprise me.

An impromptu afternoon at our (free) St. Louis Zoo | Wandering through the incredible grounds of our City Garden

The biggest irony? Now I travel to New York for work, bringing what I've built here to the place I once thought I needed to escape to. I'm designing luxury brands from the heartland and taking them to Manhattan, proving that zip code doesn't determine your potential.

What I've Learned

Maybe the lesson isn't about St. Louis specifically. Maybe it's about recognizing that sometimes the place you're desperate to leave is actually preparing you for something bigger than you could imagine when you were young and dreaming of escape.

I spent so many years thinking I needed to be somewhere else to matter. Now I'm building brands that matter from the place I couldn't wait to leave.

Turns out, home was here all along.

What about you? Have you ever come full circle on a place you thought you needed to escape? I'd love to hear your story in the comments.