2027 will be the year of the multi-passionate creative. (About damn time, right?!)
It's time to shine for the people I love working with most: the creative athletes and feral women who have something big to say and the talent to bring it to life when AI literally couldn’t even.
But hold up! At the same time, there's a sneaky block that I see these women run into time after time: Self-censorship.
For the types of folks in Justine Mulliez’s community and mine, it can sound like:
“I can’t offer that service; they only know me as a photographer and not a writer.”
“I don’t want to bother my audience, especially since they haven’t heard from me all year.”
“I freakin’ hate the gestures around at the state of it all but I’m afraid my opinions will come off too strong.”
GIRLLLL. THIS is your moment to use that voice. People are sick of AI word vomit that says nothing of meaning. They crave a human who can find patterns across crafts and put together a project that nobody’s done before. They need examples of creatives taking risks and being in the messy middle without wrapping it all in a pretty little bow because HELLoOoO life is messy and we cannot relate to the influencer with the sparkling kitchen and flawless Notion dashboard and perfectly time-blocked Google Cal in her brand colors.
We want your boldest, messiest ideas. We want your unfinished thoughts and spiciest takes and nuanced perspectives. If you’ve been holding back your voice, you’re also holding yourself back from the projects, partnerships, and opportunities that most need your creative brain on ‘em.
But self-censorship is sneaky. Many of the women I work with don’t realize how hard they’re censoring themselves until we start unpacking the big idea they’ve been yearning to bring to life, the one that’s been stuck in Drafts for a year for no reason they can explain.
Self-censorship in a creative business isn't just the post you don't publish. It's the service you don't promote, the rate you don't quote, the pitch you don't send, and the dream collab you don’t pursue.
When I imagine self-censorship, I picture it as five characters. Which ones sound all too familiar to you?:
The Spiraler
Your portfolio site has said "new site coming soon" since 2024. You've rewritten your About page more times than you've invoiced this month, because you can't find the one tidy throughline that explains photographer AND writer AND event producer.
You can't say what you do in one sentence, so you dodge the question. You have seven unfinished drafts of the story you deeply want to share but can’t find a use for yet.
The problem isn’t that you have nothing to say. It’s that you think you have too much, and you can’t find the tidy, happy ending, so you don’t start. Or you do start and overanalyze how to make it “perfect.”
The Permission Seeker
You want to add a new service, but you're waiting for a certification, for a client to ask first, for a sign from the universe, or for someone with a bigger following to offer it so you know it's “allowed.”
You only add a service after a client asks for it, which means the one you desperately want to create remains on the shelf. You're the loudest cheerleader for every other freelancer's launch, and you still haven't launched yours. Because you think you don’t have the “credentials.”
You’d share your opinion… if one other person said it first. So you’re always second or third, nodding at someone else’s take, never realizing YOU are the person someone else is waiting on. YOU!!!!
The Pleaser
You're pitching a brand you love. "I don't want to bother you" is in the first paragraph, naturally. And "just" is in there 4x. “No worries if not!” 😉
When you’re doing creative work for clients, your feedback can get so polite it says nothing. “What if this comes off as harsh? What if I sound ungrateful? What if they’re offended?!”
When you write to your audience, you go back and edit out the heat. You soften the piece and add “in my experience” six times, and if you’re being honest with yourself… by the time you send the final draft, it kinda says nothing. You feel safe, but boring.
The Imposter
You've been developing your craft for years, and work sometimes blends with play. But your bio lists your gear and software, not your results. You're waiting until you've done "one more" before you raise your rate.
You know you have skills, but… you’re not world-famous. You’re not an award winner. So you stay quiet and let the people with the bigger resumes do the talking, even when it isn’t how you experienced it or what you want others to believe.
You set the credential bar one notch above wherever you currently stand. Sure, you’ll share… once you’re more experienced, more established, more certain a project is actually yours to create.
The Good Girl
Good girls have been trained to believe that engaging makes you look sensitive. Staying quiet makes you look unbothered and professional and ladylike and GOOD. But fuck, you’re angry inside.
When a man drops a rude comment on your Instagram, you delete it and never mention it again, because you don’t want to seem like you’re starting drama, and don’t want other man-trolls to find your page, and don’t want to be the woman who makes “everything about sexism.” (Meanwhile, Man-troll has already moved on to the next photo of the next woman.)
The version of you clients meet doesn't match the one your friends know. The scary part is that when what you put into the world doesn't match how you operate inside, people sniff it out. (And they hire someone else.)
This season, I’m working to push aside my Permission Seeker.
I've felt every one of these self-censorship characters in my multi-passionate career. But the one that spoke up most in 2026 was silly ol’ Permission Seeker. She told me that I couldn’t launch my latest storytelling intensive because I hadn’t worked with enough elite athletes. She reminds me to steer away from the word “coach” at all costs because I don’t have a coaching certification. In fact, she waited until Justine brought up the idea of a collab program because I just “couldn’t” pitch it myself.
But when I acknowledge my inner Permission Seeker, and practice un-censoring my work and words and creativity, that’s exactly when I’ve had breakthroughs.
My Substack audience has grown by hundreds in the past couple months because I stopped waiting for permission to write about riskier topics. I pitched myself to be a guest on 16 podcasts the other day without personally knowing the hosts. I am giving fewer and fewer fucks about “permission,” and in return I’m shooting my shot and finding opportunities that wouldn’t come otherwise.
This is what Justine and I are forming Outside Voice around.
It's a three-month program for multi-passionate women, January through March, with a retreat in Moab in February at the center. Justine's coaching explores Choice: deciding which parts of you get amplified in 2027 and reclaiming self-leadership from your inner critic. I’ll help you explore your Voice: developing your message, story, and POV that’s unmistakably yours, with less self-censorship. You’ll show up with the idea that won’t leave you alone, and together in a community of women, we’ll help you bring it to life using your own beautiful Outside Voice.