My friend, Amy Christensen, is a certified life coach with a passion for adventure and helping women discover and tap into their own adventurous spirits. Based in Boulder, Colorado, her company Expand Outdoors focuses on helping women get outside literally and metaphorically: to step outside their comfort zones, take more risks (the healthy kind) and live a richer, more fulfilling, active, adventurous life. She is an awesome coach and a truly beautiful human being.

To celebrate the launch of her gorgeous new website, Amy held a Name Your Gremlin Contest. Her talented niece made the adorable little guy pictured here, based on one of the gremlins on Amy’s website.

Just for fun I entered the contest, and guess what? I won. Now I have my very own gremlin, whose name is Daemon/Baldur. Perhaps I should explain.

This is what I wrote for Amy’s contest (with a few minor embellishments because, well, I’m a writer and everything always needs more polishing):

My gremlin is named Daemon, but when he lost the tuft of hair on top of his head, he put on a skullcap and re-named himself Baldur, after the Norse god of light, summer, and innocence—mostly because he hates snow. He suspects he’s no longer innocent, but gremlins are not very self-aware. He thinks he’s my loyal protector, but in reality he manipulates me with his silvery words. He swoops in on his silky bat wings and soothes me with his constant stream of comments: It’s okay. You didn’t really want to enter than contest. Sleep in. You don’t need to take that yoga class. You can’t do that! You’re a single mom with a disabled kid. It’s too hard. You need a break. No one will hire you anyway. Sometimes he talks in my mother’s voice. Sometimes it’s my dad’s. Sometimes it’s the voice of a well-meaning friend, or even, I hate to admit, my own. But always he keeps me safe, reminds me to be practical. He slithers into the dark places in my heart, slips into my dreams at night. He keeps me risk-free and silenced. He keeps me tame.

I don’t want to be tame. I want to be a vibrant, healthy, empowered woman. I want to write a book, start a business, launch nonprofits, instigate change. I want to learn to ride a horse, sail a boat, and complete a marathon, even if I have to walk. I want to travel the world. I don’t want my singleness or my daughter’s autism or our gender to stop us. Ever.

I didn’t intend to write a manifesto, but that’s kind of what I did. I like it—especially the part about not wanting to be tame.

Soon Daemon/Baldur will be shipped to California—the land of light and (almost) endless summer—and will come to live with me. I promised Amy that I would give him a good home (there’s a little hook in the ceiling of my office that has his name on it). But I also promised that I would never, ever listen to him again.

Do you have a gremlin or inner critic you want to silence? What are those negative voices telling you?

Until next time,
Cynthia Patton