PostSecret
Sometimes secrets are hard to keep. Other times secrets are hard to tell. Sometimes they are a fun surprise. Other times they are the key to complete destruction. Sometimes they are funnier than any joke we’ve ever heard. Other times they are just as hard to hear as the worst diagnosis our doctor could ever give. But no matter what, no matter who we are, and no matter where we live, we all have secrets.
In his ingenious book released in 2005, Frank Warren shares the secrets of people all over the world, secrets they have never told anyone, and secrets that are now laid bare for everyone to read. They range from funny—“When I’m mad at my husband…I put boogers in his soup,� to blatantly truthful—“I waste office supplies because I hate my boss,� startling—“he’s been in prison for two years because of what I did. 9 more to go,� and very often heartbreaking—“Sometimes I wish that I was blind just so I wouldn’t have to look at myself everyday in the mirror.�
More than just words on paper, each secret is revealed on a homemade postcard sent to Warren. Each card is unique, filled with drawings, colors, photographs, or magazine cutouts. One is written on a Starbucks coffee cup. Another on a parking ticket. It is as if a piece of a person has actually been pasted on each postcard and sent out for the entire world to see.
The project started when Warren began handing out and leaving postcards with instructions to write down a secret in a creative way, a secret that no one else knew, and mail it back to PostSecret. For Warren, it began as project of healing for himself. But as is so evident in the book, the project turned into an act of healing for so many people who sent in cards.
“After I created my postcard, I didn’t want to be the person with the secret any longer,� writes a person from Texas. “I ripped up my postcard and I decided to start making changes in my life.�
Although I do not yet have a coffee table to call my own, “PostSecret� has become my favorite coffee table book. It is beautiful and it is intriguing. It is like no other landscape or painting book I’ve ever browsed through on a coffee table. And although it certainly is not as innocuous as “The Ultimate Picasso� or “National Geographic’s Greatest Photographs,� it is a book that will impact every person who reads it.
I want this book on my coffee table because it is real. I want to share it with others because it helps us to know we are not alone. I want people to look at it because it is filled with a sense of freedom and of finally being able to let go. I want "PostSecret" on my coffee table because it truly is book of courage, understanding, and healing. And if I could give anything to everyone I meet, that would be it.
As Warren says: “We all have secrets: fears, regrets, hopes, beliefs, fantasies, betrayals, humiliations. We may not always recognize them but they are a part of us…I believe that each one of us has the ability to discover, share, and grow our own dark secrets into something meaningful and beautiful.�
Beautiful, depressing, funny, heartbreaking, liberating, madding, thought provoking, and hopeful all at the same time, “PostSecret� is nothing short of trip through an emotional scrambler and into the depths of the human heart that is sure to be one of the most powerful books you will ever read.
PostSecret also exists as a traveling art exhibit and on the website www.postsecret.blogspot.com. New postcards keep arriving in Warren’s mailbox every day.
In his ingenious book released in 2005, Frank Warren shares the secrets of people all over the world, secrets they have never told anyone, and secrets that are now laid bare for everyone to read. They range from funny—“When I’m mad at my husband…I put boogers in his soup,� to blatantly truthful—“I waste office supplies because I hate my boss,� startling—“he’s been in prison for two years because of what I did. 9 more to go,� and very often heartbreaking—“Sometimes I wish that I was blind just so I wouldn’t have to look at myself everyday in the mirror.�
More than just words on paper, each secret is revealed on a homemade postcard sent to Warren. Each card is unique, filled with drawings, colors, photographs, or magazine cutouts. One is written on a Starbucks coffee cup. Another on a parking ticket. It is as if a piece of a person has actually been pasted on each postcard and sent out for the entire world to see.
The project started when Warren began handing out and leaving postcards with instructions to write down a secret in a creative way, a secret that no one else knew, and mail it back to PostSecret. For Warren, it began as project of healing for himself. But as is so evident in the book, the project turned into an act of healing for so many people who sent in cards.
“After I created my postcard, I didn’t want to be the person with the secret any longer,� writes a person from Texas. “I ripped up my postcard and I decided to start making changes in my life.�
Although I do not yet have a coffee table to call my own, “PostSecret� has become my favorite coffee table book. It is beautiful and it is intriguing. It is like no other landscape or painting book I’ve ever browsed through on a coffee table. And although it certainly is not as innocuous as “The Ultimate Picasso� or “National Geographic’s Greatest Photographs,� it is a book that will impact every person who reads it.
I want this book on my coffee table because it is real. I want to share it with others because it helps us to know we are not alone. I want people to look at it because it is filled with a sense of freedom and of finally being able to let go. I want "PostSecret" on my coffee table because it truly is book of courage, understanding, and healing. And if I could give anything to everyone I meet, that would be it.
As Warren says: “We all have secrets: fears, regrets, hopes, beliefs, fantasies, betrayals, humiliations. We may not always recognize them but they are a part of us…I believe that each one of us has the ability to discover, share, and grow our own dark secrets into something meaningful and beautiful.�
Beautiful, depressing, funny, heartbreaking, liberating, madding, thought provoking, and hopeful all at the same time, “PostSecret� is nothing short of trip through an emotional scrambler and into the depths of the human heart that is sure to be one of the most powerful books you will ever read.
PostSecret also exists as a traveling art exhibit and on the website www.postsecret.blogspot.com. New postcards keep arriving in Warren’s mailbox every day.
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