From Wide Open Skies to Salty Air: Why I Chose Saint Petersburg as Our Home

I was born and raised in Oklahoma, a place that teaches you how to stay. How to endure. How to grow roots even when the soil is dry and the storms come fast. Oklahoma is honest in that way. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. It teaches you resilience early—how to find beauty in simplicity, how to rely on community, how to wave at strangers because someday they won’t be strangers anymore.

But even as a child, I felt it: the quiet pull of somewhere else. Not better. Just different. I loved my home, but I knew it wasn’t where I would stay forever. Some people are meant to bloom where they’re planted. Others are meant to transplant themselves until the light feels right.

Salt Lake City came next. Two years wrapped in mountains and majesty. I fell in love with the way the earth rose up around me, the way the outdoors demanded humility. I learned to hike not for accomplishment, but for grounding. I learned how silence can be healing, how fresh air can reset a nervous system. The mountains felt ancient and wise, like they had seen everything and were unimpressed by your worries.

But winter lingered too long. Cold settled into my bones in a way that felt less poetic and more punishing. I realized something important about myself there: I am not meant to live braced against the elements. I don’t want to survive my environment. I want to be nourished by it. I want warmth to be a companion, not a reward for enduring months of gray.

Dallas was louder. Faster. Shinier. Two years of movement without meaning. Of conversations that felt like auditions. Of ambition that often outpaced authenticity. It wasn’t a bad place but it was a hard place to feel known. Everything felt transactional. Who you knew. What you did. What you could offer. Highways stacked on highways. Concrete stretching endlessly. I missed dirt under my feet. I missed the way nature humbles you. I missed sincerity.

And then there was St. Pete.

It didn’t demand that I become someone else. It didn’t ask me to prove myself. It simply made room.

Kirstin Rilee Photography

Here, the ocean is not a luxury, it’s a constant. A reminder. A teacher. It teaches patience, rhythm, and surrender. It reminds you that time moves differently near water. That not everything needs to be rushed or optimized or monetized. That some things, like watching dolphins surface or pelicans glide, are enough all on their own.

Saint Petersburg is sunshine in the most literal sense, yes, but also in spirit. Light spills into your days whether you’re ready for it or not. It’s a city that invites you outside. To walk. To wander. To notice. To breathe. To live your life in the open.

It’s diverse and layered and imperfect. It’s artsy and eccentric and unapologetically itself. Murals bloom on buildings like public love letters. Small businesses feel personal, run by people who care deeply about what they’re creating and who they’re creating it for. It’s a place where community isn’t a buzzword; it’s something practiced daily.

And it feels tropical in a way that softens you. Palms swaying. Salt in the air. Warm evenings that stretch on like permission. This is where other people come to escape their lives and where I chose to build mine.

That choice became even more intentional when I became a mother.

I didn’t just choose St. Pete for me. I chose it for my son.

I wanted him to grow up knowing the names of birds and fish. To feel sand between his toes and sun on his face. I wanted his childhood to include nature not as a destination, but as a backdrop. I wanted him to grow up seeing people of all kinds, living all kinds of lives. To understand early that the world is wide, creative, and full of possibility.

I wanted a place that values presence. That slows you down just enough to remind you what matters. A place where afternoons can be spent outside, where sunsets are events, where life doesn’t have to be postponed until weekends or vacations.

Raising a child here feels like an act of intention. Of hope. Of choosing joy without denial. Of saying: this world is complicated, yes, but it is also beautiful, and we will not miss it while rushing through.

Every city I lived in shaped me. Oklahoma gave me roots. Salt Lake City gave me reverence. Dallas gave me discernment.

But St. Pete gave me alignment.

This is where my life makes sense. Where my values and my days line up. Where I’m not fighting my environment, but flowing with it. This is where I am planting roots, not because I’m afraid to leave, but because I finally found a place worth staying.

I didn’t end up here by accident.

I chose this place on purpose.