Installment #1: Postcard Secrets

Here are the first 10 postcards from "Wild Confessions: Postcards From the Interior."

IN OCTOBER I opened a small doorway called Wild Confessions—a place for truths we carry in silence—similar to the famous PostSecret project.

I asked for secrets written on postcards to be mailed to me without return address, name, or any identifying evidence. The secret could be a sentence, a drawing, a fragment, a confession whispered to the trees. If it concerned nature, great. But that was not necessary.

The first postcard to arrive was postmarked Oct. 20. I knew with the first one that the project was going to be powerful.

Here is a gallery of the first ten postcards. The side with the message is first, followed by the picture. I have typed the handwritten messages.

I hope you take a moment to hover over the postcard, as if you—like I—have just pulled it from the mailbox. Sit with each a minute. The dirt road is empty. Leaves have fallen from the trees. The goldenrod and the life-a-lasting are dry stalks filled with seeds.

(1)

I offer up to nature’s healing power my friend’s cancer diagnosis.

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(2)

I save

My shower water in a five-gallon bucket

Put a lid on it so the dog won’t drink and

The cat won’t drown—the latter highly

Unlikely

Use that water to flush. They say

Lifting weight is good to keep old bones

strong and I

Recently qualified for the senior rate

on the Rail Runner from Albuquerque to

Santa Fe

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(3)

My husband died in January. I don’t think there is a place for me in a world in which he is absent. Every day I think about leaving. I tell myself, “Give it one more day; you can always leave tomorrow.” The days are so long now.

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(4)

Every night before I go to bed I still step out into the cool darkness of the porch and whisper, Goodnight, Josie. Goodnight, Red. I love you.

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(5)

They are the Willow Folk. I walk amongst their almost-grey leaves that whisper against my skin. Narrow sabres on thin, bendy branches pierce my own flexible bark covering with their willow scent. How do I describe the smell they send toward me some days and not others? Piquant, the barest spiced sage, with a hint of jade air and willow sap. The blood of Willow Folk offered, accepted with grace and honor. Sacred silence held within my own blood.

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(6)

I long to disappear into the mysterium…to drop my persona at the edge of the swamp and melt into the forest with the owls, woodpeckers, snakes, salamanders, frogs, and lizards. No one believes this deep connection I have to the spirit world and my ancestors. They tell me I need medication, therapy—currently I am partaking of both—but I still feel their energy surrounding me, hear them whispering on the soft breezes that tickle the wind chimes and make the leaves on the hickory tree wave at me. I know there is so much more to this world and life, if only we would open ourselves to it.

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(7)

Someday this beautiful river will carry my ashes past this grand oak tree!!

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(8)

I don’t like our world & am powerless to change it. I’ve been trying. I am overloaded by our current society. noise. flock. cars. lights. sirens. technology. power. plastic. satellites. money. I always feel out of place. (incongruent) I am afraid my kids will, too. and it’s a miserable existence.

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(9)

I want to stand in Newgrange, Ireland as the Winter Solstice sunrise slices through the passage tomb and strikes the back wall. On the way home, I’d dance in County Leitrim on the two famous fairy hills.

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(10)

I joined Jane Pike’s creative community. I paid for it out of my own money. And I didn’t tell my husband. It’s my little creative secret. My artistic rebellion.

Thank You

That’s all I’ll post this month. Thanks to everyone who has mailed a postcard so far. I will continue to post them in batches of ten or so.

Send Me Your Wild Confession

Let your postcard travel through snow and sleet until it lands in my hands, testimony to the mysterious, untamed wilderness inside us.

Send to:

Janisse Ray

895 Catherine T. Sanders Road

Reidsville, GA 30453

If you create your own postcard, the standard size is 4 inches x 6 inches, on paper that is cardstock or thicker. That size will require a postcard stamp, which costs $.53. However, a postcard can be any size. Those larger than 5 inches x 7 inches will require a letter stamp of $.73.

Deadline for the second installment of Wild Confessions is January 1.

🦬 As Ever

Thank you for being here. Until next Wednesday, be well, be wild, be of good service. And be kind. You never know what secrets the other person is carrying.