I’ve been called, “the most trusted stranger in America” and it’s been written that no other living person has seen more secrets than me. I don’t know if either of those claims is true, but I do know I don’t get to see all the secrets – I have a daughter.
Years ago, I was driving her and a friend in the back seat of my car. As we rolled along my daughter’s friend asked me out of the blue, “Mr. Warren, can I tell you a secret?” He had no idea I’m something of a world-class expert on secrets.
Because I know how explosive some secrets can be, I take it very seriously when someone trusts me with something they’ve never told anyone before. But in this case, I may have overreacted. Silently, I pulled the car over to the side of the road.
I stopped, put the car in park, and turned to face him directly. “I want you to feel free to tell me anything…” I began, my voice serious, “…but if your secret could cause someone harm, I might need to involve a parent or teacher.” A flicker of fear crossed his face. For a moment, I thought he might bolt out the door.
“Never mind.” he said.
After a PostSecret Event in Boston, the college student who had worked hard to organize it – and her father – gave me a ride back to my hotel. The night was cold and wet as her father navigated his Pontiac Vibe through the empty streets.
The three of us talked about the courageous audience members who, earlier that night, had walked up to a microphone and shared a secret from their life for the first time publicly. We recounted some of their tragic, hopeful, and shocking confessions. “Remember the retired religious studies professor who confessed to delivering some of her lectures while she was high?” I said with a smile.
As we continued down the dark streets, the heater was blowing hard on me in the passenger seat and my eyelids were getting heavy. Just before nodding out, the young woman behind me started talking about her brother with her father. It was a personal conversation about a painful and unresolved part of their family history.
“Dad, there’s something about that time I’ve never told you before.” “Oh shit,” I thought to myself as I stayed motionless. I’m not supposed to be here. “Even though I never admitted it when we were all hurting, I always knew you were right.” She said.
Her father rolled slowly to a stop at a red light and looked in the rearview mirror at his daughter with eyes full of emotion. “I have a secret I’ve been keeping from you too. Remember that CD I gave you afterward with all the songs? Each one was about you.”
“I always knew that Dad. That’s why I can’t listen to it without crying.” She said.
The first time I told my Mom what I was doing with PostSecret, soliciting secrets from strangers and sharing them publically, she called the idea “diabolical”. My Father wasn’t so quick to judge, but said my project sounded “voyeuristic”. I didn’t disagree with him, but I did feel disappointed that he couldn’t see the beauty in it too.
Over the following months, when PostSecret came up during our phone calls, I tried to explain to my Dad why PostSecret was special and meaningful to me. How this anonymous but intimate communication between strangers could reveal that each of us has a secret that could break your heart. How secrets can illuminate deep connections between us that go unseen in our everyday lives.
Two years after collecting my first secret on the streets of Washington, DC, I had received over 250,000. I strung up 2,000 of the postcards at an exhibition in Georgetown. Visitors could walk among the suspended secrets reading the confessions and seeing the emotions on the faces of strangers doing the same thing.
Hundreds of people circulated through that first day and my wife and daughter were there to experience it with me. However, my wife had been keeping her own secret from me. She bought a ticket for my Father to fly out from Arizona to join us. He surprised me the next day and sat with me at the exhibition day after day for a week. Together, we saw thousands of people come face-to-face with secrets and heard many of their soulful stories.
The time came for my father to return home so I drove him to catch his redeye flight. The highway to Dulles Airport was long and dark with little overhead lighting. We could hear the tires rolling along the smooth pavement as we sat alone with our thoughts. My father turned to me and broke the silence by saying, “Hey Frank, you want to hear my secret?”
Before I could answer, he told me a tragic story from his childhood. Something I had never known. It broke my world open. By the time we reached the airport, my relationship with my father had been recast. I helped him with his luggage and as I watched him walk away from the car I thought. “That’s it.” That’s the beauty of PostSecret.
