Every morning before she begins her daily routine, Kathy carefully places rubber bands around two stacks of postcards. Even though she is a mail carrier and this is her job, she is no ordinary mail carrier. She is Frank Warren’s, the creater of PostSecret, mail carrier.

And she is the famous invisible link between thousands of anonymous secrets from strangers and Warren’s Web site, www.postsecret.com.

Even though Kathy bears around 200 cards daily, only 20 secrets are released each Sunday.

Dubbed as a continuous community art project, PostSecret has taken the form of therapy, artistic expression and a connection between humans, Warren said.

PostSecret.com is merely the display for the work of anonymous individuals; each mail his or her secrets on a homemade postcard, real postcard or other mailable material, directly to Warren’s home mailbox. If selected, they will then appear exactly as they did in the mailbox, even if there is some damage from the trip, Warren said.

The project developed in 2004 when he had a dream where he envisioned himself reading a postcard that had “You will find your answers in the secrets of strangers” scrawled on the back.

“ I think it just shows that any one of us can have a wonderful life changing event later in life,” Warren said. “I sent out an invitation to the world that I was searching for more purpose, more meaning, creativity.”

The project, he said, found him. PostSecret began the next Sunday.

So far he has received more than 175,000 cards from strangers, reading and saving each he has collected.

“I like to pick secrets that surprise me or that we all share, but maybe this particular one was expressed in a creative or different way,” he said. “I always include secrets in books and on the Web that express the whole spectrum of human emotion—they are shocking, hopefully.”

The submitted content

includes the full scale of humanity: desires, habits, sex, dreams, fears, aspirations and losses.

His collective work is featured in music videos, displayed in art galleries, spoken about on college campuses and marketed for books.

The latest book, “A Lifetime of Secrets,” was released

Oct. 9 and contains hundreds of never-before-seen submissions sent in from individuals 8 to 80 years old.

“It shows the surprising ways that secrets change over time, but the fascinating ways they stay the same,” Warren said.

Through enabling the posting of e-mails from other strangers responding to secrets on the site, the messages can become even more applicable to more individuals.

Sophomore Avra Stackpole learned about the Web site a few years ago and was fascinated with the liberating feeling associated with the site.

“I feel like I’m experiencing all these things with them,” she said. “It gets people thinking about their lives and what they’ve done and what they’re doing at present.”

While she hasn’t personally sent any of her secrets in, she finds it a good way to reflect on herself.

“It’s a nice way to have a snapshot into someone else’s life and situation and take it for whatever it is — different things resonate with other people,” Stackpole said. “It’s a chance for you to translate it to your own life and take what it is.”

Through applying others’ secrets to her own life, she said she was reassured to remember that everyone struggles and isn’t perfect.

“It shows so many different peoples’ lives and aspects and helps us to realize we’re all human and make mistakes and choices, and in the end were all the same,” Stackpole said.

Warren said it’s relatable since sometimes art can be therapy, and sometimes therapy can be art. “I hope [viewers] see there’s an artist inside all of us. Each secret is a courageous act to inspire us to share more secrets and selves with each other,” he said.

While his literal dream has blossomed into four books, an award-winning Web site, a second site and lucrative other deals, his founding principles to his business are the same.

“I have a few secrets of my own,” he said. “About a ton of secrets, literally.”

The mysterious aura around PostSecret draws readers in because of the human nature of keeping secrets, he said.

“It can be beautiful and by sharing them we can learn more about others and ourselves,” Warren said. “I hope the secrets never stop coming.”

And as for Kathy, “Well, she gets a very good tip at Christmas,” Warren said.

Special Features Editor: Andie Diemer - 11/07/07