There’s a saying that a comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there. I’ve come to believe that’s only half the story. Sometimes, the comfort zone is also the soil where your roots run deepest, and where you return—changed, grown, and ready to bloom again.
As a native of the Alamo City, I grew up on a quiet but historic street with very few children beside me, my brothers and younger sister. My core childhood memories are colored by bike rides down Broadway to the old Pat’s Drug Store, and stops at Sugar Bakers and Nomadic Notions. Fiesta meant our city erupting in decorations and colorful explosions of cascarones, and my mom working her creative magic, decorating our 1908 Victorian in Alamo Heights. My parents never failed to take us to the Texas Folklife Festival on the old Hemisfair grounds to enjoy raspa, honey straws and visit the petting zoo. I remember being introduced to First Fridays in South Town as a little gal, dancing to live bands as my mom perused sidewalk art.I grew up slow in a time when life felt simpler, the pace gentler. Back then, bumper stickers joked, “Keep Austin Weird” and “Keep San Antonio Lame”—but from my vantage point, San Antonio was always soulful, alive, and endlessly welcoming.
When I graduated from college, I chose to begin my career in public relations in San Antonio, and dove into my hometown with new eyes. Working at a downtown advertising agency that truly had its finger on the pulse of San Antonio’s evolving arts, culture, and economic development scene, I came to understand the city from inside out. That job didn’t just make me a better PR professional; it made me a better, more appreciative, San Antonian. Our team tracked the heartbeat of downtown—from campaigns that brought vibrancy to the arts, to strategic initiatives that shaped the city’s growth. It was there that I earned the remarkable opportunity to travel across the country to collaborate with global brands, and work alongside celebrities; yet each trip reinforced the old adage, “there’s no place like home.” Indeed, San Antonio gave me a front-row seat to its culture and also its evolution.
San Antonio eventually nudged me out of my comfort zone and it was another marketing mentor who encouraged me to sharpen my skills in a Top 10 market. Nearly a decade into my career, I uprooted myself to Houston. The city and its traffic swept me up in its sprawl, offering a crash course in navigating a much larger, faster-paced city, all while I was juggling the demands of graduate school and leading a sizable PR team at a large, independent ad agency. There, I experienced life on a grander scale: complex campaigns, high-profile clients, and the constant buzz of city movement. Houston challenged me to go further, think bigger, and manage more. The culmination of my years in San Antonio and Houston prepared me for my next leap. My husband and I had to make a choice between Colorado and Oregon. We chose Portland, a creative mecca surrounded by Mother Nature. It reminded me of San Antonio in its own way: underestimated by outsiders, but proud, creative and full of soul. I found purpose-driven work, leading teams of highly creative people. The happiest years of my career began there, and every weekend was a roadtrip away from the next adventure.
My firstborn arrived in Portland, but our ties to San Antonio never faded. My little boy learned to walk on trails and coastline, his first teeth met the flesh of local berries from the Fruit Loop in Oregon. Still, my grandmother faithfully mailed boxes of H-E-B butter tortillas and Texas Pecan coffee to our Pacific Northwest doorstep. No matter how fulfilling the adventure, we always carved out time to return home, at least once a year until we felt a pull. As the pandemic wore on, San Antonio emitted a quiet, persistent signal to return that became impossible to ignore. I returned to San Antonio eight years after that first leap; not as the ambitious up-and-comer, but as a mother and a grateful journeyman, hungry to reinvest in the soil where my roots first grew deep. In 2021, we restored my childhood home, welcomed another beautiful son, and rediscovered San Antonio’s evolving spirit—its liminal beauty, its heart, and its hospitality.
Just this year, my husband returned from a two week visit to Australia and New Zealand with a gift: a breathtaking boomerang – that ancient symbol of return. I learned somewhere not all boomerangs are designed to return. Some are crafted solely to keep going in one direction, to serve a purpose and then land elsewhere. Others are shaped in such a way that they arc back home with intention and precision. This distinction maps beautifully to our own life journeys. Not all journeymen are meant to come back, but I was always shaped by the idea of home. Like a returning boomerang, my path may have taken me around the country, but the balance and purpose that shaped me made sure I’d find my way back to San Antonio, more seasoned and ready to take root all over again.
Having lived in three river cities—San Antonio, Houston, Portland—I know each place brings its own rhythm, pace, people and lessons. You can live anywhere, but only a few places truly feel like home. For me, San Antonio is that place: a city where kindness is currency, where breakfast tacos are a love language (ours are the best—sorry, Austin), and where strangers have a habit of quickly turning into friends.
I tell newcomers to be ready to meet the friendliest, most genuine people you’ll ever encounter. San Antonio is a city that listens to your life story, it welcomes, and it remembers. The nostalgia of my childhood here are now the gifts I get to pass on to my children. Where I once stared out the window as we passed an old derelict brewery, now my sons share ice cream and laugh as they run through the splash pad at Pearl. Where I once explored the San Antonio Children’s Museum downtown on Houston Street, my children now run through The DoSeum, which has become their ‘Third Space’, as familiar to them as our home.Reintroducing them to classic haunts and exploring new gems feels a little like time travel and a lot like coming full circle.
My advice to anyone on the edge of change: venture. The experiences you collect, the lessons you learn only deepen your sense of belonging upon your return. My guiding mantra comes from Joanna Gaines who said, “I believe that we’re all made ready. Whatever season you’re in, whatever life may throw at you, whether it feels like success or like failure, expected or unexpected, you are made ready. Made ready to learn, to celebrate, to endure. To handle all of the things that get thrown your way every season and to know yourself and take stock of your resources—of all the beautiful things you’re already made of.”
San Antonio isn’t just my hometown. It’s the identity I take with me where I go and the community I choose, again and again, to grow with. I am unspeakably proud to have run the race that was set out before me, and so happy that the adventure led me back home, roots deeper and branches stretching wider than I could have imagined. If you ever wonder if you’re ready to leave your own comfort zone, trust that your adventure awaits. And when you return, don’t be surprised to find yourself blooming again, and to new heights, right where you started.