Dear Frank,

The other day I was using a search engine to try to find an old secret that I had found very moving. While looking through the images I found a link to a blog containing my secret that I had sent in a little over year ago. My secret was: “being able to survive it doesn’t mean it was ever ok…”

The person wrote the following in reaction to my secret: “This quote, part of a PostSecret postcard this week, has been resonating within me since I read it. It makes me want to cry. And scream. And laugh. And it makes me angry. And it comforts me that somewhere out there someone feels the same way.”

The meaning has changed since I originally wrote it. At the time I was angry because people seemed to think that surviving meant beating it; they didn’t recognize that it was a struggle I was still enduring. Those who knew what I was going through praised me for surviving it or said they were sorry for what I went through. I didn’t want praise or pity, I needed support because it was a battle I was still fighting.

When I originally saw my secret posted on your Web site I suppose I thought I was going to find closure. Yet the real closure came a year later in this response. I had the support I needed all along in the heart of a stranger.

Thank you,
Heather