I Spent My Life Masking — Then Thousands Of Strangers Said I Made Them Feel Safe

Kari Burroughs Kraakevik Sun, October 11, 2026 at 1:56 PM UTC

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“Panic arrived before I could process what the commenter had actually written. I felt the hives begin to rise across my skin.”

“You’re so cute when you sway,” one commenter wrote on one of our early posts.

My heart stopped.

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Oh no. I was rocking again.

I had been sitting at our grand piano beside my husband, Joshua, singing in front of a phone mounted on a selfie stick precariously balanced on the piano. I thought I was simply performing, but somewhere during the song, my body had started moving on its own — and someone had noticed.

Panic arrived before I could process what the commenter had actually written. I felt the hives begin to rise across my skin, and ironically, I started rocking even harder to soothe myself.

But wait — they said it was cute?

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Full stop.

Huh?

To understand why a compliment sent me into a panic, you have to understand that I had learned over my lifetime not to rock.

At 25, I got tired of living by other people’s rules. So I built a business.

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I had spent years trying to convince academia to take me seriously. A woman composer in a clearly male-dominated field? Name three women composers — I dare you. What was my path forward supposed to look like? I discovered that presentation was half the battle, so I constructed my own rule book: what to wear, whom to speak to, when to speak, when to push back and when to stay quiet.

Rules have always made me feel as though I can succeed. They are part of my survival strategy as an autistic person. The problem is that people do not always follow the same rules. Worse, the rules change without warning.

So, I became an entrepreneur and made my own rules.

But building a business required another mask: the mask of I know what the hell I’m doing. The mask of I am not terrified; I am thriving.

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I lived inside that mask for 15 years because masking was always what I did best.

My 40th birthday arrived with muted bugles. It felt remarkably similar to 39, only with a few more white hairs. (They looked blond on me — lucky me.)

By then, my businesses were stable enough for me to step back and return to music with Joshua. My adorable husband is 24 years older than I am and possibly the only person around whom I have never needed to mask.

We formed a duo called Take Two and, at the recommendation of one of my students, began posting videos on TikTok. We performed in our living room, always with a mug of tea nearby. There were missed notes, strange facial expressions, and frequent moments when one of us laughed hard enough to derail the song completely. And more double chins than anyone could imagine (the camera angle is not kind to us).

The videos began going viral.

We received millions of views.

The author and her husband, Joshua, at the piano in their living room.Courtesy of Kari Burroughs Kraakevik

People started requesting songs. At last count, we had received 1,897 requests and gained more than 100,000 followers. Naturally, my hyper-organized autistic self keeps every request on a color-coded spreadsheet that I update every 48 hours. So yes, that number is absolutely correct.

It didn’t surprise me that people liked the music. Joshua and I are professional musicians, after all. What surprised me was what viewers said they liked about us.

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“I love y’all. I’d love to have parents like you,” one person wrote.

“You make me feel safe and like loved. I don’t know how to explain it! Thanks for being you,” another commented.

“This song hits different when you’re older. Honestly, it makes me nostalgic for something I never had.”

One viewer wrote that if we were their parents, they would “100% feel loved and happy.” Others asked us to adopt them, begged us never to divorce or told us that watching how we interacted with each other made them believe in love.

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And the comment about my swaying was only the beginning.

Another viewer said they loved my “Betty Boop” voice — the high, animated voice I had long tried to conceal in conversation because I was afraid it would make me seem flirtatious, overly feminine or unserious.

Other people called me motherly and warm. I am not a mother, and my warmth had often felt like an Achilles’ heel: too enthusiastic, too familiar, too much. Yet somehow, that part of me was reaching strangers through a phone screen.

One of our most viral videos is a 45-second cover of Audrey Hobert’s “Sue Me.” We recorded it while I was wearing pinstripe pajamas, on day three of the stomach flu, without makeup, in literally one take. I ran to the bathroom immediately afterward.

But for those 45 seconds, I was truly happy — and that was what showed in the video.

“You look so beautiful and in love.”

“Your PJs are so cute.”

“You give me hope for a love like this.”

I would never have dreamed of filming or performing while sick, in pajamas or without makeup. Yet that was what made the video feel real, believable and — dare I say it — safe.

Seventy percent of our followers are under the age of 20. Think about that: 70%. We are a middle-aged couple singing requests at our piano. When I first saw the number in our analytics, I assumed it had to be a mistake. I kept refreshing the page.

Then it began to make sense.

Most of our viewers have grown up surrounded by edited versions of life: perfectly Photoshopped family portraits, filters, auto-tune, live vocal correction at concerts and now AI. Meanwhile, an “old” couple singing familiar songs imperfectly and joyously has been called “the only real thing I’ve seen today.”

The irony is not lost on me that this “real thing” exists on social media, a place known for presenting perfected versions of ourselves. I began to wonder whether our young viewers had inherited a world already wearing a mask — and were simply trying to catch glimpses behind it.

At first, I assumed they were misreading me — or seeing only a tiny, curated portion of me. Like maybe I didn’t look that bad on a small screen? But when thousands of people independently described me as comforting, motherly, calming and real, it became harder to dismiss.

Sure, viewers said they loved the performances, but I was even more thrilled that they were responding to us — the way we looked at each other, the way we laughed through mistakes and the moments I previously probably would have edited out.

The characteristics I had tried for decades to correct were precisely what strangers interpreted as trustworthy, comforting and familiar.

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The author and her husband, JoshuaCourtesy of Kari Burroughs Kraakevik

I spent my life trying to make myself safe for other people: predictable, professional, not too emotional, not too feminine, not too enthusiastic and, most importantly, not visibly autistic. I firmly believed other people would feel comfortable only if I presented myself and acted in the right ways.

Until now.

One hundred thousand followers did not undo decades of masking. I still think it’s important to make the people around me comfortable — to an extent. There is a difference between consideration and erasure, although I am still learning where that line falls.

What those strangers taught me is that my unmasked self is beautiful, too.

I still enter rooms looking for the rules. I still panic during meetings and solve my Rubik’s Cube under the table. But now, I pay attention to what is happening around me in new ways, and I no longer assume that my panic is proof I have done something wrong.

The changes I make are smaller and perhaps quieter.

What if I don’t correct that note?

What if we don’t do another take?

What if I still sway?

Every few videos, I catch myself rocking.

The difference is that now, I don’t make myself stop.

Kari Burroughs Kraakevik is a Colorado-based writer and composer whose work explores identity, neurodivergence and belonging. Her writing has appeared in The Colorado Sun, The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, ColoradoBiz, ONE ART and Empyrean Literary Magazine, among other publications. She was one of four finalists for the Women’s Fiction 2026 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Gold Rush Literary Award. Her favorite thing to do, however, is perform with her husband, Joshua Rich, as the musical duo Take Two. You can find more from Take Two on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. For more from Kari, visit her website.

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