Everyone has secrets.
No one knows this better than Frank Warren - author, volunteer and founder of the PostSecret Project. Warren will speak at the SUB Ballroom today at 7:30 p.m. for free.
Warren began PostSecret in November 2004. The project was inspired by a dream in which three postcards he had bought earlier that day appeared. One card in his dream read, "You will find your answers in the secrets of strangers."
Warren began to spread the word. He made postcards and asked people in his Maryland community to write their secrets and mail them back to him. He now gets more than 200 postcards per day from around the world. He uses the translation program on Babblefish.com to translate secrets. He uploads new postcards weekly on Postsecret.com. His four books are filled with colorful and creative postcards, each with a written secret.
"Every week (on the Web site) there is a funny secret, a sexual secret, a heavy secret, a hopeful secret," Warren said.
He looks for secrets that are surprising, authentic, creative and touch on all aspects of human emotion when selecting postcards for his books and Web site. Eating disorders, loneliness, self-harm and relationship struggles are a few common subjects he sees in the secret postcards.
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Warren says that many people are "trying to find that one person they can tell all their secrets to so they don't have to write them down on a postcard."
He relies on his wife, daughter, co-workers and himself when he needs people to talk to.
Warren said that one of his favorite parts of the PostSecret Project is going on tours to speak at colleges across the U.S. This tour goes through April. UNM is one of the twelve colleges he is visiting, as well as Texas Tech and Amherst College in Massachusetts. Warren said speaking at colleges is important to him because he wishes he could have had something like PostSecret to relate to when he felt alone or without direction.
"That's my favorite part, really - traveling and sharing the stories behind the secrets with young people," he said. "(Students) are searching for authenticity. They want to know what's phony and what's real. Also, I think young people are more courageous in sharing parts of themselves that their parents would never talk about."
On Wednesday, Warren will present secrets that were banned from the books by his publishers. He also allows students to share their own secrets toward the end. Warren says he's surprised students can share their own secrets not just on anonymous postcards but in front of their peers. "At the end of the presentation, (students) always seems to bring the audience together in a very powerful way, and I hope that feeling of openness and compassion stays on campus after the event is over," he said.
Instead of making money by putting advertising on his Web site, he promotes the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, 1-800-SUICIDE. He helped it raise more than half a million dollars in 2008. Warren said he supports this hotline because it's important to have a resource that can potentially save lives.
While he gets postcards containing painful or heavy secrets, he also reads secrets that are hopeful, insightful and funny.
"The secrets surprise me every day," he said. "They're inexhaustible like songs or poems." Warren said he feels privileged so many people have trusted him with things that they may have never shared with any other person.
"I would invite the people especially to come who think they don't have any secrets," he said. "They might be surprised."
