Recently, Dave Godin reminded me about PostSecret, which identifies itself as a digital museum of “secrets, stories, videos and more” shared by people from all seven continents.
Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret, came up with the idea in 2004 while working on a suicide prevention hotline.
He believed people needed a safe, anonymous place to share their secrets.
So, Warren printed 3,000 postcards with simple instructions on how to share a secret. He carried the cards with him, randomly approached people, said, “Hi, I’m Frank, and I collect people’s secrets,” and handed them a postcard.
Warren believes “when we are keeping a secret, that secret is keeping us.” I believe it. In recovery, we hear all the time, your secrets keep you sick.
Over the past twenty years, Warren has received more than one million secrets people sent him, most on homemade postcards. Each Sunday, he scans some of the postcards that showed up in his mailbox and displays them on his blog, PostSecret.com. Some are hysterically funny, others profoundly heartbreaking. He’s combined these secrets to create books, art exhibitions, live events, and more. He calls each collection “an archive of our hidden selves.”
Warren’s current exhibition is called Parents’ White Lies, and I think it would be fun for us to write to that topic. Think about white lies your parents told you or white lies you told your children or grandchildren.
The word count limit is thirty (30) words. Yes, thirty words, no more than what would fit on a postcard.
Write your secret, and if you care to, dress it up in a photo, collage, drawing, etc., and then post your text or postcard on this week’s micro-memoir page.
If you care to share your or your parents’ white lies digitally with Frank Warren, email him at frank@postsecret.com or mail it to him at PostSecret, 28241 Crown Valley Pkwy #F224, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677.
Take a look at some of the exhibitions or Sunday Secrets, but fair warning, they are addictive. I suggest you read some of the secrets posted, but do it after you’ve written your own white lie.
A goal I have for you this session is to submit one or more stories for publication in magazines and journals that publish micro-memoir. Here’s an opportunity to do just that. Yours might be selected.
(Thirty words exactly.)
At six, the eye doctor discovered a problem with my left eye. Mama said, “She doesn’t know the alphabet.” At sixteen, the same doctor diagnosed me with a lazy eye.
This little white lie started me on my journey in Genealogy and writing family history stories—my search for the truth.
First, I had trouble finding a topic. Then, when I did and wrote it, it wouldn’t post. So, hopefully, here it is, better late than never.
Here is version two of my story after my son’s edit.
The story is in the List Structure format.
Here is my story in List Structure.
To Soothe Near-Constant Childhood Earaches
Dad blew cigarette smoke into my ears, telling me to hold my other ear shut so the smoke wouldn’t escape. In my teens, I figured out why he always laughed.
My parents, knowing I’d been admitted, feigned ignorance when I shared my anxiety about the National Honor Society. Inductee parents were sworn to secrecy; most parents told anyway. Mine didn’t.
As a footnote to the above, I couldn’t think of any little white lies my parents ever told me, other than the benign conspiracies of Santa and the Easter Bunny, as you pointed out below, Patricia. It wasn’t until I thought about secrets that I found my story. This was a secret revealed at the right time, though it was stressful when all my friends knew they were in and I was still wondering (oh, the cares of high school!).
28 words. hard to keep the word count down. It almost becomes a poem.
Your Percy reminded me of my Bambi.
Oh, Percy, what shame to bring on the feline race. I loved your backdrop, David!
David, you and your hat pulled it off. Great. For the past couple months, my twenty-year-old grandson has been staying with Darby, my daughter and I. Seems he is allergic to the seven “Percy’s” that live and act like your Percy, in their house, and his parents won’t send the cats elsewhere. He and his younger brother are in college and needs to stay at home, complicated!!!!!
30 Words on White little lies.
Oh, Thierry. Your grandma was vicious.
Thierry, from one mother to another, am sure your mother was trying to protect you.
remarkably cruel thing to do to a child. It’s a well-executed story. A lot of emotion in those 30 words.
That must have been tough on you as a kid.
The secret of Santa remained even after Mom sewed in the bedroom with the door closed. I glimpsed the red fabric and questioned what she was sewing. She replied, “A new suit for Santa.”
Cute story.
ha. my parents were Santa’s helpers. that’s why there were packages in the closet.
When I was a kid, before hair dryers, I would brush my hair to dry outside in the sun. I would pull the hair out of the brush and let it fly away. Mom told me if a bird picks up that hair and makes a nest, I would go bald.
Ha ha. That was mean. I let the picked from the comb hair fly in the wind so the bird could find it and build a nest.
and drinking coffee will stunt your growth.
I never believed my grandparents told me white lies and I never participated in telling them. What’s the value in sharing secrets if it’s a secret? I consider such things sacred if a treasured friend shares their secret with me. It stays with me!
I too, am the keeper of my friends’ secrets. If something is shared with me confidentially, it will stay with me until I die.
Sometimes the secret value of a secret expires. The D-day invasion date was a secret, now we all know it was 6 June 44. But I also agree that some secrets must remain a secret forever, and keeping those secrets is a sacred trust.
Thank you for that thought. Point well made and taken.
Your grandparents didn’t get you to believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny?
No way. Guess I was older than my years. I knew it was impossible for one man and a sleigh to travel the world over in one night. I enjoyed the Easter egg hunts and any coins left by the tooth fairy. I played along with the game.