Confession has a purpose. At least, that's what Frank Warren, creator of PostSecret.com, has come to find. Every week he receives secrets in the form of postcards from around the world. PostSecret originated as a project for an art exhibit in November of 2004, and as of June 2005 he had already acquired 2,000 postcards.

Most of the postcards Warren receives express politically or socially incorrect ideas, detail abuses both past and present, or articulate body image issues that people have never told others. As evidenced by the comments posted at the bottom of the page, many visitors to the site have found a sense of camaraderie as they read secrets that they themselves have. For most of them, shame and guilt kept them from talking about their own secrets. PostSecret.com provides an anonymous arena for disclosure, and both the contributors and visitors are finding that these confessions remove their sense of shame and isolation.

Surprisingly vulnerable, the confessions on these cards display and evoke a wide range of emotion. For example, one postcard states, "I don't care about recycling (but i pretend i do)," while the card beneath it reads, "His temper is so scary that I've lost all of my options," and another says, simply, "I miss feeling close to God."

The submitters say they find a sense of release and freedom when they finally drop their card into the mailbox. As he found when he confessed his own secret, Warren says, "Sometimes, we believe we are keeping a secret, but it can be just as true that the secret is keeping us."