I found PostSecret in 2005, mostly by accident. I wasn’t the person I am now but I was on my way, as in I didn’t yet know why people and their struggles fascinated me so much. In some cases, I didn’t know how attracted I was to the subject of human behavior and, in that mindset, found this site. It was like back in the old west during the Gold Rush, where thousands would camp alongside rivers and fish for gold nuggets; eventually, finding gold became a rare occurrence, so when someone found a nugget it was cause for celebration. This golden nugget led me into a world where people are far from perfect, and are united by their hopes, dreams and fears in this equalizer, this blog that would publish the world’s deepest, darkest secrets every Sunday.

People from across the globe would send Frank Warren homemade postcards anonymously with their secrets written on them. He would them post them on the website, without fail, and has to this day. Various books have been published with thousands of postcards that were never published online, and the website has won several awards. There’s nothing spectacular about the website in terms of its appearance. It’s all about the content. Rich, heartfelt content of immeasurable value.

From Wikipedia:

PostSecret began as an art installation for Artomatic 2004 in Washington, D.C.

The idea of the project is simple: completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they have never before revealed. There is no restriction on what the content of the secret must be, only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams.

Since Frank Warren created the website on January 1, 2005, PostSecret has collected and displayed upwards of 2,500 original pieces of art from people across the United States and around the world.

The site, which started as an experimental Blogspot and is updated every Sunday with approximately 20 new pieces, has a relatively constant style, giving all “artists” who participate some guidelines on how their secrets should be represented.

The initiative has caused people from all over the US and around the world, young and old, to start their own websites and “walls of secrets,” where they put up their secrets anonymously. A lot of the secrets are heartbreaking. A lot of them are funny. But all of them are honest, and it makes the daily struggle of life seem that much more bearable when you know there are other people out there who are fighting just as hard as you are. I’ve never submitted a secret myself, not because I don’t have any secrets but because I tend to wrestle with my absolute truths and vanquish them. I was close to doing it once though. I might do it sometime down the line, and you’ll probably never know it was me. The video in this editorial is my way of helping get the project out there, because I feel that the right to express ourselves and be heard is inherent in all of us, and we have to exercise it and defend it at all costs. Visit the PostSecret website by checking out the links section of this site, or by clicking here.

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