Secrets

I wonder how many of you have seen PostSecret?

It's ingenious, fabulous and heartbreaking - all at the same time. Every Sunday, a new set of postcards is shared - each revealing someone's deepest secret.

Most of them this week have to do with mothers. The postcard that caught my eye today was the one above. As a fiction writer, my mind always imagines what brought that person to that point in their lives. I wonder who will hear them.

I actually met with a young woman last year for a while who felt very much like the person who wrote that postcard. She saw her parents as hypocritical, old-fashioned and irrelevant in today's world. And as a result, felt that way about God.

There's another postcard that has a picture of a mom pushing a little girl on the swing with the words, "Stop pushing me away" scrawled across the picture.

I never cease to be amazed at the depth of the private pain in this world. The sorrow that is hidden behind smiles and minivans. A poet I liked in high school wrote a line that is fitting - "The roles we people play would win more Acadamy Awards than the screen ever knew."

After reading these secrets, I think, perhaps, he was right.