For about a year after seeing the first PostSecret book by Frank Warren, I finally opened it up to find out just *what* was in it. I was surprised by what I found. I’d expected just text, a regular book, but instead I saw an art-like collage of different postcards and homemade “postcards” all with a secret on them. The first one I read?

I started shooting heroin again.

In 2004 Frank Warren started the PostSecret art project. It began as a community thing; he passed out blank postcards with instructions to anonymously send a personal, real secret. Though he only passed out a finite number of postcards, even after he stopped handing them out, things kept coming in the mail. And coming. And coming. Apparently the news was out—free yourself by mailing your secret to a complete stranger (or just enjoy the freedom of knowing you’ve put something happy out there for everyone to read—it all depends on the secret).

PostSecret was the first book to come out after Warren’s blog Postsecret.com won awards and the art project took off like wildfire. It’s 276 pages worth of secrets, ranging from the sad to the joyous, amusing to depressing, passionate to angry, and every emotion in between. The subjects deal with anything and everything, dogs and marriage, youth and molestation, basic office secrets to secrets that run so deep, they never actually made it onto the card.

Each secret is sent in a different way. The owners of these secrets use all sorts of artistic mediums to tell their secrets, so you really do need to look at them to get the full effect of the secrets. They’ll come on regular postcards, handwritten, using letters pasted from magazines, family photos with faces scratched out, drawings, writing in crayons, pens, pencils, markers, some with longer stories and some with just a single word. It’s amazing how much people will go through to illustrate their secret, but maybe that makes it more powerful when they finally release it.

Here are a few of the secrets from the book, taken at random (except one), but trust me, it’s so much better to see the postcards themselves:

In a crowd, (friends, family, strangers) I always wonder which of us will die first.

======

I converted because I think I look sexy in a headscarf.

======

I stole valium from my epileptic dog.

======

(and one of my personal favorites)
It really bothers me to admit this. It freaks me out. I AM NOT A BIGOT! I LOVE PEOPLE. I am a good person. But I think Hitler was sexy.

You truly never know what you’re going to get in this book. Some of these secrets will make you feel truly sad for whoever wrote them and others will make you laugh out loud. There is one in here though...after I read it I stared at it for a long time and I wondered...did someone I know write this? It didn’t look like her handwriting, but half of it was pasted letters anyway...I’m not sure. Either way, you never know when a secret will reach in and remind you of something, perhaps even a secret of your own.

And by the way, if she ever read this and she’s the one that sent in that secret—

It’s okay. I’m fine and you don’t need to worry about it ever again.

NT

More PostSecret Books:
My Secret
A Lifetime of Secrets

P.S. Here's a secret - I stuck a secret into this book so the next person to read it gets just one more...

Recommended: Yes