“Touching.” –The New York Times For fans of Humans of New York and PostSecret, a collection of raw, urgent, and heartfelt stories, shared anonymously. Helena Dea Bala was an exhausted and isolated DC lobbyist, suffocating under the weight of her student loan debt, when she decided to split her lunch with a man who often panhandled near her office. They chatted effortlessly as they ate; there … near her office. They chatted effortlessly as they ate; there were no half-truths or white lies, and no fear of judgment. Helena felt connected and unburdened in a way she hadn’t in years.
Inspired, she posted an ad on Craigslist promising to listen, anonymously and for free, to whatever the speaker felt he or she couldn’t tell anyone else. Emails from people desperate to connect flooded her inbox, and she listened. Within months, Helena quit her job, deferred her loans, and dove into listening full time.
The forty first-person confessions in this book are vivid, intimate, and real; they range from devastating traumas, to lost loves, to reflections on hard choices. Some accounts are quotidian, like that of one increasingly estranged husband: “I want to feel that we’re not just roommates–that we’re not just waiting for the kids to grow up so that we can move on.” Others are deeply disconcerting, like that of a sex addict employed by a religious organization and several are heartening, like that of a mother who dares to hope that her daughter, born with life-threatening heart defects, will one day walk down the aisle: “Sometimes you need to have the audacity to believe that it will all be okay, that it is okay to have the same kinds of dreams as everyone else.”
In its complex portrayal of the common human experience, Craigslist Confessional challenges us to explore the depths of our vulnerability and expand the borders of our empathy.
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“[This] is a project about hearing and seeing what others don’t – about pulling back the curtain that separates our secretive inner lives from our perfectly curated outer lives. My ‘job’ is to listen when no one else will. I do it for free – and completely anonymously.”
Helena Dea Bala was a law school graduate in an unfulfilling job as a lobbyist when she had a conversation with a homeless man. Listening to his story gave her a sense of connection she was lacking in her work and inspired her to post on Craigslist offering to listen to people’s secrets anonymously, garnering an enormous response.
The 40 confessionals in this book are grouped into four themes – Love, Regret, Identity, and Family – and run the gamut from devastating and salacious to shocking and heartwarming. I read about a soldier returning from war, a college student who became a call girl, a mother with a sick daughter, and a man trying to hide his sex addiction from his wife and immigrants trying to achieve the American dream. I laughed and teared up. I got angry and was inspired. I reconsidered my views and counted my blessings. And when the book was done, I wanted more. Dea Bala reminds us of something we all know but don’t always practice – everyone has a story and there are lessons we can learn from each one.
Helena Dea Bala, a lobbyist in Washington DC was feeling unfulfilled, adrift and lonely when she decided to strike up a conversation with a homeless man she often encountered on her way home from work. This interaction transformed her life when Dea Bala realized that she could better use her honed gift for interviewing by collecting peoples’ deepest, most personal stories. Craigslist Confessional: A Collection of Secrets from Anonymous Strangers is the result of the author’s call for people to share their lives with her. The 40 stories included in the book reveal the deep need for connection with others and the compulsion people feel to unburden themselves when given a chance. The collection is broken up into five sections: Love, Regret, Loss, Identity and Family, but the themes of transformation and vulnerability run throughout all. The people who spoke with Dea Bala varied in age, class, race, gender identity and life experience. They contain tales that range from revelations of mundane sadness and dissatisfaction to actual criminal activity and horrifying tales of abuse. Some are difficult reading-gritty and deeply affecting, and the author does a fantastic job in capturing the underlying emotion within the individual storyteller’s voice. This is an especially interesting project given our current “exposure” culture: where social media is voluntarily used to display curated and minute life details while also concealing the alienation that arises when we become increasingly more self-absorbed and distant from one another. The stories in Craigslist Confessional are haunting, memorable and striking in their honesty. Dea Bala’s work also serves as an important reminder that we will always yearn for opportunities to interact and receive reassurance from others as part of our shared humanity.
Thanks to the author, Gallery Books and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
This book of true stories is short but amazing!
Helena Dea Bala, a lobbyist in DC feels unfulfilled and hates her job. She often sees a homeless guy named Joe on her way to and from work and one day they visit. He shares his story with her and she feels a spark.
She posts an ad on Craigslist offering to listen, anonymously, to strangers’ stories and confessions.
The rest you can guess and this collection is fabulous.
If you are a fan of the Post Secret books you will love this. It’s the same thing but the stories are fully fleshed out.
One strong suggestion? Listen to this if you can. I am so glad I did. It’s on Scribd.
I had the feels! Dammit!