For most people, when they hear someone else reveal a secret, whether dark and scary or embarrassing and funny, it places a weight on their shoulders as if the secret becomes their own. But for Frank Warren, who receives approximately 200 secrets in his mailbox every day, the experience is more of eye-opening than anything else.
Warren is the founder of PostSecret, an online blog and book series that publishes anonymous secrets that people send to Warren on postcards.
“PostSecret is a project I started five years ago,” Warren said. “I invited strangers to write down their deepest secret and mail it to me. When they first found their way to my mail box it was a trickle … but now I get a consistent amount every day from all over the world.”
In the five years that PostSecret has been running, Warren has received more than half a million postcards. With those postcards he updates the PostSecret blog each Sunday. Warren has missed posting fewer than five times in the five-year span, he said.
Warren released the first book, “PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives,” in 2005 and in 2009 published his fifth book “Confessions on Life, Death and God.” The books contain secrets that have been shared on the blog, as well as exclusive secrets that were not previously published on the Web site.
Warren also tours around the country to college campuses and art institutions to share secrets and tell the PostSecret story. Warren will be at Ohio State on Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. in the Mershon Auditorium.
Warren does the tours to “share some of the funny and inspiring stories behind the secrets,” he said. “And what is happening more and more at these events is that young people are coming up to the microphone and very publicly sharing their own soulful, funny, sexual, shocking secrets and that can be very emotional.”
For members of the PostSecret Community, a companion site to the blog found at postsecretcommunity.com, a strong sense of connection resonates through shared postings and reactions to secrets; a sense that Warren says is mirrored by the audiences at the public events.
“I feel like I am able to bring that relationship to a physical place,” Warren said. “And bring together all the people for one night who have been following the Web site by themselves, together all along.”
Warren said that the kindness of strangers is clearly evident at all of the events that he does, referring to a specific instance in New York when a women shared her secret thoughts about suicide and the entire audience empathized with her and showed her outstanding support, he said.
Warren said that one of the most rewarding things that has come out of his community art project has been the realization that people feel a sense of redemption and of “letting go” of their secrets when they write them down and send them away.
But another way that PostSecret aids in helping people is through its partnership with Hopeline, the national suicide prevention hot line. The PostSecret blog has raised over a $100,000 for Hopeline and Warren himself volunteers answering the phones.
Warren said that he urges people to volunteer with Hopeline and said that there are call centers in every state.
“I feel like I have been exposed to so much, so many of these deep revelations that reveal our humanity in ways that I think increase empathy,” Warren said. “I certainly see that for me and so even though the project at times can be a lot of work, it always feels very meaningful. Giving voices to those that have not been heard.”
The PostSecret blog can be found at postsecret.blogspot.com and all of the books can be purchased at Amazon.com. Tickets for the event can be found at the Ohio Union and are free with a BuckID.
