you are not alone

Are you familiar with PostSecret?

An ongoing global community project, it draws people together in the sharing of their secrets.

It un-lonlies them - us - all.

Millions of people have sent one man their secrets anonymously on the back of homemade postcards. He publishes them in books, exhibits them, blogs them and has created an archive of them to be visited by the millions (over 485 million and climbing).

Reading people's secrets should feel voyeuristic - but it doesn't. 

It feels like relief.

Relief for those who have unburdened their heaviness, shared shame and desire and longing, shared quirks and kindness and loss, shared where they haven't before and by doing so given so much to themselves and to those who read them.

A PostSecret book weighs heavy with it's sadness and so light with it's offering: 

You Are Not Alone it sings.

You are not alone in your loneliness, in your craving, in your shame, cruelty, fear, selfishness, distrust, compassion, strangeness..... in your humanity.

And reading here shows that the secrets of a stranger can create change in the life of another.

Reading here - about the beginnings of PostSecret - I was struck by this:

'first find the value in a thoughtful question'

There is so much value isn't there? And perhaps there needs to be more learning in this - so that we are not just comforted in the community of a shared secret but by those who sit in the same room with us.

Has someone asked you a thoughtful question recently?