Dear Frank,

This email is something that I dreamt of writing to you for 14 years. And today I get to do it.

I’ve been following postsecret since 2004. From the very beginning I knew what secret I would write. But it wasn’t until 2006 that I had the nerve to do it. I cut out a photo of a newborn baby from a magazine, glued it to a postcard and accompanied it with the things I would tell my birth mother if I knew who she was.

It wasn’t necessarily a secret, but words I couldn’t tell the one person I felt needed to hear them the most.

When I was 7, my parents sat me down and told me I was adopted. I was thrilled. I thought it was the coolest thing and even used it as show and tell at school. The only thing that struck me was knowing that there was a woman out there that sacrificed her body for 9 months and then made what must have been the most difficult decision of her life, to give up a piece of her. I just wanted to tell her thank you. 

I checked the PostSecret Sunday Secrets every week but never saw my card. I’m sure you get hundreds a day. 

Then there was an announcement about you putting out the book “A Lifetime of Secrets.” I watched you plug it on The Today Show. When you were showing a few samples from the book, I saw mine! I couldn’t contain my joy to know that somehow my secret would ease the hearts of birth mothers everywhere. You also used my secret in your TED talk. You have no idea what that meant to me. I rushed to the bookstore the day the book came out and vowed that if I ever met my birth mother, I would give her that copy.

In 2019 my mother gave me a special gift of a 23andme kit for Christmas. I spit in the tube and put it in the mail the very next day. When my results came in, there were no maternal matches. I had a ton of second and third cousins, but was fearful to reach out to them as I didn’t want to possibly unveil a hidden secret. So I tabled my search. 

It wasn’t until Jan 2021 that a friend of mine introduced me to a “search angel” who had just helped him find his birth mother. I gave the search angel my info and within days of combing through my family tree, he gave me a name and address of the woman who brought me into this world. 

A few days later I dropped a letter into the mail along with a few photos. And a few days later I received a call that changed my world. My birth mother lived 45 minutes from my house and has never stopped thinking about me. And it was an honor to tell her thank you. 

We made a plan to meet up yesterday. And when I arrived I had your book in my hand. The day was such a dream come true and I feel God has blessed me overly and more abundantly than I could ever ask or imagine. 

I want to thank you for being a part of my story and let you know that my secret isn’t a secret any longer. 

So excited to be able to send you this picture! From left to right: my mom, myself and my birth mother. It was an incredible day and I will never forget seeing my mom and my birth mother hug as they met for the first time. I could feel parts inside my heart come together and it was so special. 

Dear Candace,

What a beautiful and soulful story!

Thanks for your secret and for courageously showing us all the magic that can happen when we reveal our true selves.

You are the best part of PostSecret.

For years I have been sharing your anonymous message on the web, at live events, and as you know, in one of the books. I tell people that I don’t have favorite secrets, but my secret is- yours is one of my favorites. 

(From more than a million, I knew right where to find it.) 

I know your postcard has brought so much peace and inspiration to people around the globe. Family secrets go to the heart of who we are and who we choose to become. 

So many heroic stories must have played out in the pages of the PostSecret books, but I would be surprised if there are any more soulful and heartening than yours. 

I have sent you a personalized book, to replace the one you gifted to your birth mother. Here’s a picture of the inscription. 

~~~

When I first brought your one book I saw the attached secret. I knew that it wasn’t from my child but it made me feel good. Dec 2nd 2013 I made the same decision as the secret holders mother. It was the toughest decision I ever made. And even though I knew my baby was too little to send you this secret it made me smile and cry. I knew from this secret alone that my son was loved and he was fine. I just hope when the time comes I get a letter from him and we can reunite. Thank you for always giving us not ready to share their story a place to go and feel safe and calm.

-C

 

Thank You, to everyone in the PostSecret community who has donated their money or time to suicide prevention. As someone who has answered those phones on the overnight shift, I can tell you, There Is Hope And There Is Help.

In the early aughts, Frank Warren ran a medical document delivery business in Germantown, Maryland. It was a monotonous job, involving daily trips to government offices to copy thousands of pages of journal articles for pharmaceutical companies, law firms, and non-profits. By his early forties, he had a house in a nice subdivision, a wife, a young daughter, and a dog. His family fostered children for a few weeks or months, and he felt a sense of purpose in helping kids who were suffering acute crises in their own homes. From the outside, things appeared to be going better than well. But inside, something was missing: A sense of adventure, or at least a little fun. An outlet to explore the weirder, darker, and more imaginative parts of his interior world. He’d never been one for small talk, preferring instead to launch into deep discussions, even with people he barely knew. He wondered if he could create a place like that outside of everyday conversation, a place full of awe, anguish, and urgency.

In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, he’d drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops, he’d approach strangers. “Hi,” he’d say. “I’m Frank. And I collect secrets.” Some people shrugged him off, or told him they didn’t have any secrets. Surely, Frank thought, those people had the best ones. Others were amused, or intrigued. They took cards and, following instructions he’d left next to the address, decorated them, wrote down secrets they’d never told anyone before, and mailed them back to Frank. All the secrets were anonymous.

Initially, Frank received about one hundred postcards back. They told stories of infidelity, longing, abuse. Some were erotic. Some were funny. He displayed them at a local art exhibition and included an anonymous secret of his own. After the exhibition ended, though, the postcards kept coming. By 2024, Frank would have more than a million.

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