I’ve been a fan of PostSecret since the beginning, excitedly checking the blog every Sunday to see which postcards received that week Frank Warren would chose to post for the world to see. He receives thousands a week and if your secret is not posted on the website, you might be lucky enough to get your postcard published in one of Frank Warren’s books. I’ve had two postcards of my own featured on the website – I won’t tell you which ones – and to see them chosen and posted for the world to see was beyond therapeutic. It gave me the message: I matter.

Last Sunday, however, my respect for Frank Warren and the whole PostSecret project significantly dropped after I listened to an audio recording posted of someone leaving a suicide note on a friend’s voicemail. She apologized in advance to her friend, saying it wasn’t his fault, it was her parents’ fault, and that her friend should go on without her.

Now, PostSecret has shared secrets around suicide for a long time and always has a link and a phone number to a crisis line at the bottom of the blog, but in my opinion, sharing an anonymous secret sent in by the secret holder is far different from posting an audio recording of a dead girl. The girl’s name wasn’t disclosed in the post but the danger of the internet is that anyone could hear her message: her parents, her siblings, her friends, and everyone that knew her. Those people are already dealing with unimaginable grief, guilt, and horror after losing someone so dear to them. In the message, she blamed her parents and I can only imagine how those parents felt to hear those words on the internet of all places.

The suicidal girl who left the message for her friend chose to call him, not thousands of strangers, to say good-bye and apologize for her actions. It was her friend that submitted the audio recording, probably doing so with very good intentions, and I hold no judgment for him. I do, however, condemn Frank Warren’s decision to post that audio clip. It triggered me enough that I refused to blog about it until the clip was taken down for this week’s new secrets because I didn’t want others to seek out the clip themselves.

Frank Warren is not a counselor or a trained mental health professional. He is a man with a good heart and a good cause, but holds a very important responsibility to not only speak for others but to protect them and their privacy. Let’s hope that nothing like this happens again.

Written by Erin