I was recently at a Gillian Welch and David Rawlings concert, and there was a little girl a few rows up with blonde hair, just completely lost in the music. Singing at the top of her lungs. Moving her whole body like nobody was watching. And nobody was, except me, and I couldn't stop watching her.

Then they played this song called "Ruby," and it's actually a play on the Rapunzel story. Someone standing below the tower, calling up, asking her to finally let her hair down and come out. And the whole time I listened, I kept thinking about how many of us are living exactly like that. Locked up in our own perfectly built tower, and too scared to climb down.

We curate our little castles. The perfect home, the perfect routine, the perfect version of ourselves we let people see. It looks safe from the outside. It looks like we've got it all figured out. But so much of it doesn't even feel real, doesn't feel like us, because we built it out of fear instead of truth. We're not actually living out there in the world. We're just watching it through a window, high up, where nothing can touch us and nothing can go wrong.

That little girl at the concert wasn't hiding in any tower. She wasn't wondering if she looked silly, or worrying about the picture someone might take, or bracing for judgment. She just let her hair down, so to speak, and moved.

I think about the version of me that was five or six years old. Fearless. Loud. Living entirely by my own rules. What did I dream about back then, before I learned that staying inside the tower was safer than climbing out of it?

Because that's what happens as we get older. Our heart whispers something, an idea, a direction, a small bold move, and instead of climbing down to go find out, we brick up the window a little more. We tell ourselves all the reasons we might fail, all the ways we might be bad at it, all the people who might judge us for trying. And we stay up there, comfortable, curated, and quietly dying inside.

Hiding behind the perfect suburban walls was never the plan. It was just the easiest place to stop.

So here's what I'm asking myself today, and what I want to ask you: what would it look like to let your hair down? Not the whole leap out of the tower. Just one small, bold step toward whatever your heart keeps calling you toward.

You're going to feel the nervous butterflies. Climb down anyway. What do you honestly have to lose, besides a view you never actually wanted?

XOXO,

Kara

P.S. In the age of AI, authentic human connection is your superpower. If you're an association, company, or team looking for a keynote that gets people talking about what it really means to be human right now, I'd love to connect. Inquire about booking me to speak →