PostSecret: Do You Have a Secret?

The recent impromptu outpouring of support on Facebook for an illegal immigrant who confessed via a postcard mailed to PostSecret that s/he planned to jump off the Golden Gate bridge prompted me to write the following homage to PostSecret.

The woman on the other end of the line confessed that she used to love the way her husband smelled, but since he had returned from his second tour in Iraq–angry, violent and traumatized–she couldn’t stand the scent of his skin. “He smells like rage,” she confided.

As an advocate on a domestic violence hotline, I was privy to thousands of such secrets; I was like an invisible and anonymous receiver of confessions. In the process of sharing their stories and discussing their options with me, the callers to the hotline told me things they didn’t tell anyone. Their stories were usually full of heartbreak and terror, but there was often great dignity and humor in the telling. And I celebrated with the callers their small joys and triumphs.

Cynthia’s abusive husband wouldn’t let her work, only gave her a little money for groceries and then checked the receipts to make sure she’d given him the correct change. But after shopping, Cynthia would secretly return some of the canned goods to the store and then stash the few dollars away to help her make her great escape. When she told me about the hidden envelope stuffed with bills she was saving for her bus ticket, I could hear in her voice her daring and an awareness of the risk she was taking by trying to flee.

Sometimes there was terrible Old Testament-style justice. A caller named Tina told me she had found out she’d contracted HIV while a prostitute. When Tina’s doctor gave her the news, he advised Tina not to tell her violent, HIV-negative boyfriend. The doctor feared Tina’s boyfriend would use the information to further abuse Tina, and to try to take her daughter. Instead, Tina continued to always make sure her boyfriend used a condom when they had sex.

But then her boyfriend raped her.

Without a condom.

While she was having her period.

more PostSecret at the jump…

Then there was the sweet, heartbroken man named Ted who called and said his sister’s car gone off the road and into the lake. Ted’s sister had been in an abusive relationship and he suspected her abuser had purposefully run her off the road.  The police had pulled the car–Ted’s sister’s body inside–out of the lake. They had dried out her personal belongings and returned them to Ted. Inside his sister’s handbag, Ted found a water damaged slip of paper with the number to our domestic violence hotline written in his sister’s hand.

And I had to live with the knowledge that if Ted’s sister had called us, the safety planning we had done with her had not been enough.

There were the unlikely and painful confessions that revealed the complicated nature of human emotion and hurt. Like the woman whose ex had five of his friends gang rape her. But the hurt in her voice when she spoke of that terrible experience didn’t come close to the pain I heard when she described how he also caused her to lose her job at TJ Max by stalking her when she was at work. “I loved that job,” she mourned.

Often the callers were hilarious and smart. Their stories sad. And exhilarating and terrible. And I didn’t have a really good way to process them.

I spoke to women of all ages and races. I spoke to homeless women and women who worked at the World Bank. I spoke to women in English and Spanish and through translators in Russian, Tagolog, Mandarin and Creole. It was an honor to listen to their stories. Along with the other hotline advocates (aka hotline divas) I did my best to help callers safety plan. I connected them to resources, gave them encouragement and understanding, helped them figure out how to flee without being killed in the process. But mostly I listened–a political act, an act of support. And of healing.

But hearing tales of such suffering (and knowing of the shortage of resources available to support women trying to escape abuse) took a profound toll on me. So I was thrilled when another hotline diva showed me Post Secret, “an online community art project where people send in their secrets on one side of a postcard.” In the 90 seconds of wrap time between calls, I would often read through the postcards.

The anonymous and revealing pieces of art acted as a reflection of many calls I received, often mirroring themes of love, betrayal, dark humor, and terror.

And as the other hotline advocates and I tried to help women from all over the country explore options for safety and heal from what they had suffered, PostSecret helped me heal from the profound secondary trauma I experienced.

The poscards are people’s secrets and pain turned into art and sent out anonymously into the world–to provide their authors with some release, sure–but also to allow the people who read them to feel less alone, less crushed by the heartbreaks, longings, and wily joys they don’t dare share with anyone.

The PostSecrets do what the best art does–they remind us we are part of a suffering, passionate humanity. And it’s a populist art form. Anyone with a secret (and we all have secrets) can make a postcard and drop it in the mail.

And sometimes reading the secrets gave me the compassion and the strength to take yet another hotline call.

At the end of a long shift on the hotline, I would walk out of the building with my coworkers; beautiful women with backgrounds and ethnicities as diverse as those of our callers. And together, as we strode out the door of our little lighthouse which beamed hope across the country, we walked tall, like Charlie’s Angels, like superheros. Ready to lay down the secrets and weight of the world and enjoy the sweetness of the night.

If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, you can call The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE for information, safety planning, and crisis intervention.

PostSecret also has a link to the National Hopeline Network. 1-800-SUICIDE.

NOTE: Of the 25,000 or so calls I answered on the hotline, at least 90% of the identified victims of domestic violence were female and 90% of the perpetrators male. Because of this, when I write about domestic violence, I speak of the victims/survivors as “women.”

There are also men who work on the hotline as advocates.

All names and identifying information have been changed.

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