“Hi, my name is Frank Warren and I collect secrets.”Frank Warren, who spoke in the Culp Auditorium Thursday, March 4, shared with his audience how that one sentence started him on the most important journey of his life. Warren, whose Web site now receives over 7 million visits per month, started Post Secret as an art project that only he truly understood.

“I didn’t tell my friends or neighbors what I was doing,” said Warren. “I explained it to my wife and even though she supported me, she didn’t really know what I was doing.”

What Warren was doing was collecting secrets of total strangers. He sent out blank postcards in and around his community and invited people to write their secrets on the postcards before mailing them back to him.

Warren had no idea that his little art project would turn into a global phenomenon.

“There has been so many surprises on this journey,” said Warren. “The secrets started pouring in and people were writing down these silly, sexy and personal secrets.”

Though he stopped handing out the post cards, the secrets continued showing up in his mailbox said Warren.

“I had accidentally tapped into something full of mystery and wonder that I still don’t understand to this day,” said Warren.

Warren, who now receives anywhere between 100 to 200 postcards a day, started a blog where he posts a handful of secrets every Sunday.

“It was a crazy idea, but a simple idea,” he said. “Anyone could have done it.

“My hope here tonight is that one of you will have a crazy idea. I hope it sparks a community and brings people together, changing lives and humanity.”

Doing just that, Warren’s blog has won six weblog awards, and is so popular that it now has five spin-off books that have turned Warren into a New York Times Bestselling author. Each of Warren’s books has showcased secrets with different themes.

“With each book I try and tell a story with the secrets,” said Warren.

With a successful blog and five books full of secrets from all over the world, Warren has been called the most trusted stranger in America.

“If someone wants to trust me with something that they’ve never shared before, I take that trust very seriously,” he said.

After years of reading the world’s secrets, Warren has developed a sincere appreciation for the nature of secrets and the process of sharing those secrets.

“Secrets that we feel separate us are really the parts of us that connect us and draw us together,” he said.

Warren proved this idea when he invited everyone in the audience to come up to a microphone and share a secret that they’ve never shared before. 28 audience members stood up and told the world something that they had never told anyone before. The secrets that they shared were tragic, uplifting, hilarious and deeply personal. The audience and Warren applauded those that shared their secrets.

The secrets that the audience shared were reminiscent of his own struggles, Warren said.

“I believe that the struggles you and I have gone through have allowed us to be more compassionate and understanding,” he said. “Had we not had those experiences, we wouldn’t be as connected as we now are.”

Warren has used that connectedness to reach out to those who are struggling via suicide hotlines and suicide prevention groups, he says.

“Suicide is a secret that we keep from ourselves,” said Warren. “While we’ve been sitting here, two people have been murdered but four Americans have committed suicide.”

Warren hopes the secrets on his website reaches those who are struggling with depression, he says.

“If you look at the secrets every Sunday, eventually you will come across a secret that speaks to you, resonates with your soul,” said Warren.

What Warren has learned about himself and others throughout his Post Secret experience has changes his worldview, he says.

“I have learned that the children most broken by the world become the adults most likely to change it,” he said. “I have also learned that secret sharing can be a search for grace or for self-awareness.

“It can start a person on a path or serve as a resolution.

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