"Everyone has at least one secret that could break someone’s heart; we hide much more than we know. When we keep our secrets inside they feel like walls, but when we find the courage to share them, they become bridges. For eight years, I have been collecting secrets from strangers. They arrive at my home anonymously, written on postcards and decorated with artwork. I have received more than half a million, from all over the world.
I started this extraordinary project by printing 3000 self-addressed postcards with simple instructions inviting people to write an artful secret, stamp it and let it go. I walked the streets of Washington, D.C., handing them to strangers. It felt like a crazy idea but soon secrets began to find their way to my mailbox and millions of people began to visit postsecret.com to read some of these soulful, sexual, silly and shocking secrets.
One arrived on a flattened and stamped Starbucks cup; it read: “I give decaf to customers who are rude to me.” Another came written with a child’s hand: “I pretend to sympathise with my friends who are always fighting with their mothers … I would give my left arm just to have my mother alive to fight with.” That secret was illustrated with a picture of a prosthetic arm. I realised I had accidently tapped into something that had been there the whole time. Something full of mystery and wonder that I still don’t fully understand.
The secret that I receive most often is: “I pee in the shower.” I continue to be surprised every day but rarely shocked. The postcard I consider the most shocking was decorated to look like New York’s Twin Towers. It read: “Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead.”
What shocks me most is the scope of the project. The PostSecret community continues to grow. There are five best-selling books, and the secrets have been exhibited in over a dozen museums. Last year, readers of the blog voluntarily worked to create the most complete and comprehensive database of international suicide-prevention hotlines: suicideprevention.wikia.com.
Today I travel internationally, showing the postcards banned from the books and the stories behind the secrets that have transformed lives. Sometimes when I’m going through the dozens of secrets I get in a day, I will find two from different continents written in different languages expressing the exact same secret. And that brings me to my favourite secret out of the hundreds of thousands I have received: 'We are all part of something bigger, and we’re all part of it together.'"
https://www.postsecret.com/
Harper's BAZAAR Australia, April 2013