Telling a secret can be transformative; it can change our relationship with people we know, and even those we will never meet. More than once, I have watched strangers inspired by a shared secret self-organize into purposeful communities of kindness.

One of those stories began years ago when I pulled a postcard from my mailbox made from a photograph of smiling friends. The words taped to the photo read, “I found your camera at Lollapalooza this summer. I finally got the pictures developed, and I’d love to give them to you”.

I shared the secret on the PostSecret Blog, hoping someone would recognize one of the young people at the table and we could return all the photos to the group. Messages poured in that week from the PostSecret Community, but no one was able to identify anyone in the picture. However, one of the messages came from a Canadian student, Mathew Preprost, who was inspired to do more.

Believing that everyday people can sometimes have a worldwide impact on the web with a good idea and determination, Mathew designed and built a website that would serve as a lost-and-found for cameras. He called it, “I Found Your Camera,” and when I helped him spread the word, we were both surprised by how many lost cameras there were in the world and how many people wanted to help return them.

A 21-year-old vacationing student lost his camera at Union Station in Chicago. He thought it was long gone when a friend of his girlfriend saw the couple smiling together on the “I Found Your Camera” website. “She went crazy when she randomly stumbled upon our picture at Wrigley Field.” He said.

Dozens, then hundreds of cameras were mailed to Mathew’s Winnipeg address. When they arrived, he would post some of the photographs from each camera on his website, and millions of people would visit virtually to see if they could identify anyone in the pictures so they could be contacted. “It was exciting for me to see strangers helping strangers return lost cameras to the people who were sometimes desperately searching for them,” Mathew told me.

The owner of this camera (in yellow) left it behind in Santa Cruz (not far from the background pictured) on a long bike ride . A month later, she was surprised and relieved to find herself on “I Found Your Camera”. She contacted Mathew and in two weeks she had all the photos from her California journey.

Mathew was being interviewed by USA Today, the CBC, and other national news services.  One of the stories he liked telling was about the journey of George Metz’s camera. To get George’s Mardi Gras pictures back to him in Pennsylvania, Mathew coordinated an international effort involving good Samaritans in four cities across three countries and two continents. As the success stories spread, more and more cameras began arriving in his mailbox.

Wedding pictures, photos from family reunions, parties, and graduations all found their way back to those who had lost them – over 1,000 in all – and the thankful emails Mathew received revealed heartfelt gratitude.

“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, my son’s birth was on that camera and he turns 4 next week.”

I have traveled to Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Canada, England, Australia and throughout the US sharing the heartening story of how a single secret sparked the imagination of one student who united people around the world to help others they will never meet.

Every time I told the story, I shared the original picture of happy people sitting around a table that started it all, always hoping that one day I would be able to complete the story. Finally, it happened.

Here is a picture of the young woman from the table whose lost camera inspired so many other stories of kindness before returning home itself. She asked me to pass along her thanks to the community for her lost, then found collection of “slightly out-of-focus memories of a lifetime”.

And here is a picture of Mathew along with a quote he told a USA Today reporter.

Dear Frank,

The other day I was using a search engine to try to find an old secret that I had found very moving. While looking through the images I found a link to a blog containing my secret that I had sent in a little over year ago. My secret was: “being able to survive it doesn’t mean it was ever ok…”

The person wrote the following in reaction to my secret: “This quote, part of a PostSecret postcard this week, has been resonating within me since I read it. It makes me want to cry. And scream. And laugh. And it makes me angry. And it comforts me that somewhere out there someone feels the same way.”

The meaning has changed since I originally wrote it. At the time I was angry because people seemed to think that surviving meant beating it; they didn’t recognize that it was a struggle I was still enduring. Those who knew what I was going through praised me for surviving it or said they were sorry for what I went through. I didn’t want praise or pity, I needed support because it was a battle I was still fighting.

When I originally saw my secret posted on your Web site I suppose I thought I was going to find closure. Yet the real closure came a year later in this response. I had the support I needed all along in the heart of a stranger.

Thank you,
Heather

—–email—–

Dear Frank-
My boyfriend knew I was a PostSecret fan and a couple of days before Christmas this was in a package on my porch. It was the most thoughtful and unexpected gift. Thanks Rod and Frank!

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Dear Frank,

I am the poet who wrote the poem that begins, “Fuck the poets of the past, my friends…” (Its title is “Afterthought.”) My former student published it on Postsecret years ago and it has spread to people in distant places, unknown to me until two years ago, when a woman somehow found me and told me that the poem had help her too.

I saw it posted in Germany a few years ago. So cool. Every couple years somebody writes to me too. One woman sent me two pies once and thanked me for saving her life. Apple and blueberry, crushed in the mail, but I loved every bit.

I was trying to help a few students in one small poetry class on Long Island when I shared that poem with them and today I was notified that it is a Postsecret Classic. You cannot imagine how grateful I am that I have been able to do more good than I intended to, and that I got to find out that I did so. What a gift for the soul.