Postsecret Comes to DU: A Review

Photo from Postsecret.com

“My name is Frank Warren and I collect secrets,” began the speaker in Davis Auditorium on April 20^th.  For the first time ever, the creator of Postsecret came to University of Denver.  In addition to explaining what Postsecret is and how it got started, Warren also shared one of his own secrets and allowed the audience to share as well.

Postsecret began in 2004, when Warren handed out thousands of blank postcards with his address on one side, blank on the other, asking strangers to artfully confess a secret they had never shared with anyone. The secrets began trickling in, people began to feel a lift in their hearts as they let go of something, and a community was created. Today, Warren has released five books, all with different secrets, in addition to a weekly updating of the Postsecret blog and briefly creating a Postsecret app for the iPhone, which had to be ended due to malicious anonymous content.

The first book was published in 2005, titled Postsecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, followed by My Secret: A Postsecret Book, in 2006. In 2007, two more books were released, The Secret Lives of Men and Women:  A Postsecret Book and A Lifetime of Secrets: A Postsecret Book.  The latest book was released in 2009, and was titled Confessions on Life, Death, and God.

Despite some of the controversy that arose with the Postsecret app, this organization has done much to further and better society. Because of some suicide secrets that were posted on the site, Warren chose to partner with International Suicide Prevention to remind people that there was always help available for those who needed it.  A partnership with HopeLine has also been formed, and Warren raised over five hundred thousand dollars for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

If you haven’t had a chance to see for yourself what Postsecret is all about and possibly find a secret that might change your life, head over to the site now.