Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In 2004, Frank Warren began a massive undertaking: he distributed 3,000 blank postcards and invited strangers to share their secrets with him. This project grew into PostSecret.com – which now holds more than half a million secrets. Warren found that this initiative reveals our common fears, hopes, loves and desires – which are otherwise invisible. With Post Secret, he gives people the opportunity to anonymously relieve their silent burdens.

Frank Warren: Half a million secretsAt TED2012, Warren shared some of these secrets, showing the impact that the revealing of a secret can have. Today’s edition of TED Weekends on the Huffington Post explores his talk. Below, find two essays all about the power of secrets. Plus, make sure to check out HuffPo’s slideshow of 10 particularly poignant secrets that people have revealed to the site.

Frank Warren: We want to tell our secrets… Anonymously

Secrets can be transformative: Sharing a secret with another person, or just with ourselves, can change who we are.

Two questions I often hear are: Do you think these anonymous secrets are true? And what happens if you get a secret about a serious crime?

I think of each postcard as a work of art, and as self-revelatory art. Secrets can have different layers of truth. Some can be both true and false; others can become true over time depending on our choices.

Sometimes a secret we keep from ourselves only becomes true after we read it on a stranger’s postcard. Early in the project I received this email:

“Dear Frank, Do you know that I left my boyfriend of a year and a half because of the postcard that read, ‘His temper is so scary, I’ve lost all my opinions.’ It hadn’t even occurred to me what was happening, and it took a total stranger writing it down to make me realize what the hell was going on in my life.” Read the full essay »

Pepper Schwartz: The Secrets We Keep From Our Partners

I recently did a study that, among other things, looked at the secrets and lies that people keep from their spouse or committed partner. You know, the person who we share vows with, the person who we say “I love you” to, the person we share a bed and a life with — that person. The national and international study of 80,000 people, part of which appears in The Normal Bar (with Chrisanna Northrup and Jim Witte) indicates that secrets and lies are commonplace in relationships, not only in the United States, but in the world. 43 percent of men and 33 percent of women say they keep major secrets from each other — in fact, 27 percent of people who said they were in an “extremely happy relationship” also admitted to having major secrets from their partner.

In France and Italy , big secrets seem to be a way of life; approximately 75 percent of men and women there said they had them. As for lies, 75 percent of our men, and 71 percent of the women said they occasionally lie to their partner-and that was even true for 69 percent of the happiest couples. Read the full essay »

That’s absurd!
5 quirky talks remind us that life is funny, weird, sweet, absurd. Watch talks by Improv Everywhere’s Charlie Todd and Postsecret’s Frank Warren, and more.

Spoken-word fireworks
7 brave and beautiful expressions from some of the world’s most talented spoken-word performers — like Anna Deavere Smith, Sarah Kay and Rives — who weave stories in words and gestures.

He started with a crazy idea. In November 2005, he made 3000 postcards with simple instructions. It was blank on one side, and on the other instructions telling them to write an anonymous secret and mail it to him. He passed the postcards out randomly. It took off. People began to buy the postcards — they began to make their own. Secrets began arriving with postmarks from all over the nation, then the world.

His crazy idea didn’t seem so crazy. PostSecret is now the most visited advertisement-free blog in the world, and there are many, many secrets. He shows a photo of his wife, stacking bricks of postcards on a pyramid of over a half a million.

Then, he shares some secrets.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

“I give decaf to customers who are rude to me.” This one, says Warren, shows the creativity of secrets. It was mailed in on a Starbucks coffee cup that someone had cut apart and addressed to him.

“Dear birthmother – I have great parents. I’ve found love. I’m happy.” 

“Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead.” (There is a profound silence in the room.) Says Warren: “Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, playing out silently in the lives of people all around us.”

They can even be personal to him, as audience members at a different talk sent him, “Your mic wasn’t off during sound-check. We all heard you pee.”

“Inside this envelope is the ripped up remains of a suicidde note I didn’t use. I feel like the happiest person on Earth now.”

“That Saturday when you wondered where I was, well, I was getting your ring. It’s in my pocket right now.” That one was a proposal from a man who read PostSecret every Sunday with his girlfriend. They later sent Warren a postcard showing her answer: “Yes.”

“One of these men is the father of my son. He pays me a a lot to keep it a secret.”

Secrets inspire others. “I found your camera at lollapolooza this summer. I finally got the pictures, and wanted to give your camera back to you.” The camera never made it back, but it inspired something else: I Found Your Camera, a simple website by Mathew Preprost, where people are reunited with their pictures. Warren read a letter from a woman whose camera was returned after four years — including photos of her son’s birth, and of her then-ailing grandmother.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

“When people I love leave voicemails on my phone I always save them in case they die tomorrow and I have no other way of hearing their voice ever again.” When he posted this secret, dozens of people sent voicemails from their phones, some that they’d been keeping for years. (Sniffles in the audience, from all around.)

Warren repeats a phrase from earlier in his talk, “Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking, silly, and soulful. They can connect us with our deepest humanity, or with people we’ll never meet again.”

And he finishes by playing a voicemail, a message from a grandmother to a young girl, the last time the girl heard her voice. In the message, she sang a happy birthday song. (The audience was in tears, as was the host, June Cohen, and this author.)