My Life. In Six Words.

On Monday evening I was dropping my daughter off for an extra-curricular activity at a local school. While standing with her, my eyes drifted to the bulletin board in the hall. There was a double page spread from a national paper stapled there, and a whole bunch of white paper sheets with what looked like mini-poems on them.

Intrigued, I walked over and checked it out. The article was on ‘Six-Word Memoirs’. Basically, boiling your existence into a short, six-word blurb.

The memoirs on the bulletin board were amazing…

I am a sneaking ninja. Stealthy.

Six Siblings Make a Girl Tough!

Father died young. Grew Up Fast.

Working Janitor. My ambition lacks ignition.


And on, and on. Some of them were just lists of traits…Loving, Working, Sleeping… things like that. Some of them were full sentences.

I’ve since searched the internet—turns out this is quite a phenomenon. Magazines, newspapers, and news channels across the world have done articles on the six-word memoir. There are even books on the subject. So I'm a bit behind the times.

Anyway, as I was driving home Monday night, daughter safely ensconced in her activity, my mind whirled. Could I do it? How could I turn all of the things I do into a six word bio? My life is a neverending series of hats—I wear a different one every hour.

I couldn’t get it out of my head. Even while I was falling asleep that night the words were rolling through my mind. I help. I heal. I work, play, laugh, cry, push, hold, write… I’m a mother, a wife, a physio, a horse-holder, a diabetes nurse, and a shoulder to lean on.

And then it hit me. Everything I do involves building someone else up. My success is their success. My triumph is a good A1C. An A+ on a test. A patient rolling in to the clinic in a wheel chair and walking out his own feet weeks later. A military man standing at the front of the parade. Even in writing, I just want to share. I want to make you, the reader happy.

My six-word memoir?

Success doesn’t always mean coming first.

For me anyway. My success is standing in the wings. It makes my heart sing. Yah, I might have cheated a bit with the contraction. But I think that’s me in a nutshell. I haven’t been ‘first’ at anything since high school. But I’m content with where I am right now.

What’s yours? I’d love to hear it. Leave it in the comments. Or maybe make one up for someone else you know. Give it a try.