Installment #2: Postcard Secrets

Here is the second clutch of postcards from "Wild Confessions: Postcards From the Interior."

Jan 14, 2026

LAST 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.

A gallery of the first installment can be found here.

Below you’ll find a gallery of the second ten postcards. The side with the message is first, followed by the postcard image. I have typed the handwritten messages.

(1)

I am so thankful that my husband moved out. I was so tired of being ignored and put down. Over the years I became married to a man with the emotional capacity of a rock. In limbo but grateful.

(2)

I married my first cousin. I was in my late teens, he was in his early 20s. He was, and will always be, the greatest love of my life. We were soulmates. I’m in my 70s now. He’s been gone over 10 years.

True Love Never Dies

P.S. Read Theo of Golden!!! Beautiful story by self-published middle GA author.

(3)

I sit in my garden and listen to the wind. I do not always understand what it says, but I feel its sorrow.

(4)

I yearn to be free.

To be at the sea.

Walking to meet him,

that him of my Dream

who tells me he has

waited, waited

all these years

for Me.

“And here you are,” he will say.

“Here I am,” I will say.

And he will take my hand.

And we will turn to look at the sea.

(5)

I moved away from the community where my family has lived since 1820. I didn’t realize until I left how deeply my ancestors haunted me.

(6)

My place is still Anderson, SC, Though I live in Central FL, my journey will lead me home again. I miss the way the seasons once announced themselves—how autumn sharpened the air, how winter gathered my family close around the fireplace’s glow.

For now, I return to those memories by sleeping on our screened porch through the FL winter. At night I listen to the gentle decrescendo as tree crickets and frogs loosen their hold on song, and at dawn I wake to the bright chorus of titmice, chickadees, cardinals, and wrens lifting their morning praises at the feeder in our backyard.

(7)

I will never be enough.

I will never do enough.

Mama said we “were less than.” I strive to erase that tape that plays on a loop. I am old. I don’t have much time. I have to remind myself that I have now, this moment.

(8)

Absorbing the weight of my heartaches,

its stitched smile holds despite my fears.

In its quietness, I feel safe.

There I find refuge.

It asks for nothing, while I

yearn

for a

heartbeat.

I miss my lover.

For now my stuffed turtle

will do.

His name is Thomas.

(9)

I’ve fallen in love with a tiny piece of land (.6 acres) in the Piedmont area of NC. Although it sits in a small housing dev of less than 90 homes, it’s about average for the lot sizes.

I have woods behind me where birds and deer and other critters roam. The cows whose pasture this once was look up at me through their spirits left behind. The ancestors of this land beckon me in the stillness of dawn.

My spouse wants to return to the tourist-laden seashore from whence we came. My soul cannot bear it! I cry in my sleep.

(10)

I have been in a slow motion nervous breakdown since 2016 when my father died. Then a year later my beloved brouther died suddenly, violently. And again four years later at 91 my mother stopped eating and we all watched as her body slowly wasted away. The body that brought me and my three brothers into the world.

I dream of storms and fires now, of great undulating murmurations of blackbirds that call from the sky. Their black, fragile bodies decaying into the earth. Brittle bones snapping under my feet, feathers loose on the wind, like ash. When will the dreams stop…

December 2025

🦬 Send Me Your Wild Confession

Let your postcard travel through snow or sleet or rain until it lands in my hands, testament to the mysterious wilderness inside us. Thanks to everyone who has mailed a postcard so far. I will continue to post them in batches of ten or so.

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, currently $.53.

However, a postcard can be any size. Those larger than 5 inches x 7 inches will require a letter stamp of $.73.