PostSecret, the international phenomenon that provides people with a medium for anonymous confession in postcards, helps confessors to feel understood by others and less alone in an increasingly chaotic world, creator Frank Warren said Thursday at Boston University.
Warren, inventor of the wildly popular book and Internet series, spoke to a packed crowd of more than 450 people at the BU Barnes and Noble Thursday to promote his most recent work, ‘PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God.’
‘Sometimes when we think we are keeping a secret, that secret is actually keeping us,’ Warren said. ‘By letting go, we are liberating ourselves. That’s one of the values of PostSecret.’
The PostSecret series includes five books and two websites dedicated to providing strangers a place to confess their deepest secrets, which they mail to Warren on homemade postcards. The postcards contain everything from hopes and desires, to confessions of shameful or embarrassing acts, to admissions of fear and guilt.
About 200 postcards are mailed to Warren’s home each day from all around the world, adding up to nearly 500,000 secrets throughout the past five years. He is still surprised by the response that his project has elicited, he said.
‘When I started PostSecret, I knew that I’d appreciate the secrets,’ he said. ‘But I’ve been shocked by how the project has resonated with people, not just across the country, but around the world.’
Warren initiated PostSecret in 2005 by handing out 3,000 self-addressed postcards to random people on the streets of Washington, D.C., he said. The postcards invited people to write their secret, decorate the card, and mail it to Warren’s house as part of a ‘group art project.’
‘PostSecret was a crazy idea,’ he said. ‘But there are thousands of ideas out there that are better that are just waiting for someone to have that crazy faith.’
On New Year’s Day of 2005, Warren said he launched postsecret.blogspot.com as a means of publishing the secrets he received. After gaining popularity, his efforts expanded into a book series in which some of these postcards are published.
PostSecret has a particularly wide audience among college students, Warren said, because of their eagerness to look beyond appearances and discover the truth about people.
‘Young people are at that point in their lives where they are really searching for what’s authentic and what’s bulls–t,’ he said. ‘They’re trying to find out the truth rather than trying to protect this image of who they think they are to people.’
After speaking sharing some of his favorite postcards, as well as some that were banned from publishing, Warren opened the floor to audience members to share their deepest secrets.
School of Engineering freshman Jo-Ann Loh said though she did not tell a secret herself, she heard several she could relate to and may now consider submitting a postcard of her own.
‘The whole night was overwhelming,’ Loh stated. ‘I was a fan before, but now I’m speechless.’
Warren emphasized the theme of community the experience helped foster.
‘You may forget specific things that were said, but I hope you never forget the secrets that your classmates shared to remind us of how connected we all really are,’ he said.
Warren said he publishes at least one of his own secrets in each of his books, calling the process ‘cathartic,’ and divulging that his newest book features two of his secrets on page 103.
CAS sophomore Allison Amaro said she has been a fan of PostSecret for two years.
‘It’s just so poignant,’ Amaro said. ‘There are so many secrets you read where you think, ‘That’s mine too,’ but you never had the courage to put it out there.’
College of General Studies freshman Eli Eisen said he agreed.
‘It’s liberating to know that thousands of people can read your secret without judging, but sympathizing,’ said Eisen.
Warren ended the night with the same message stamped in the books of those who stayed for the book signing: ‘Free your secrets and be who you are.’
‘Each of us has a secret that could break your heart if you knew it,’ he said. ‘If we remembered that about friends and strangers, there’d be more understanding and compassion, and maybe even more peace in the world.’
Staff reporter Saba Hamedy contributed to the reporting of this article.
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