Every Sunday morning is pretty much the same – coffee, pancakes, and reading PostSecret.com. Sometimes those pancakes have chocolate chips in them. This has been my ritual for years now ever since discovering the PostSecret project. The premise of the whole thing is to send a handmade, anonymous postcard that tells a personal secret no one knows about.
While eating syrupy pancake goodness, I have read postcards that brought tears to my eyes, horrified me, made me laugh, angered me, made me hate humanity, and made me love the human spirit. There are secrets I can relate to and some I just can’t understand. Each one though is someone’s secret. Someone put in the heartbeats and breaths it took to make that secret and mail it so I try to respect each one.
Finally last Tuesday night I got to see Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret, speak at UNC Charlotte. I’ve been wanting to see him for a long time! Things fell into place and I was able to go with a new friend (yay!). It was awesome, a night of laughter (number one secret? peeing in the shower) and some really sad moments too. At the end, Frank encouraged people to come up to the mic and tell the audience their secret.
When people find out I like PostSecret so much, the first question is if I have sent in a postcard. No, I haven’t. Sending in a postcard is a way to help people cope with their secret. For them to tell someone. For me, the only way to deal with a secret is to tell it to myself. My big secret? I was Queen of Denial. I made Repression of Reality a science. It is truly amazing how the mind can be manipulated. Once I learned this about myself, I started keeping private journals that are completely and totally about being honest to myself. Everything I ever needed to put on a postcard, I put in the pages of my journal and that helps me cope. For now. Someday though, I may have need for Frank’s mailbox. Seeing that others have the same sort of secrets also helps me know that I am never alone in what I deal with.
nico serene 
My attention was snagged with pancakes…mmmm….pancakes. Never heard of this Postsecret thing but sounds interesting. The thought of putting out a secret anonymously sounds cathartic in a safe sorta way since no one but you would know it’s yours…well, that’d be the hope at least, right. I feel there are reasons for secrets sometimes, but the large ones can do a lot of damage, not only to the keeper but to others should it get out. I try not to keep them but I think it’s only human to collect a few in a life time. 🙂
Good post. It’s interesting learning of others’ rituals-akin to peeking in windows.
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