Every 40 seconds someone in the world dies by suicide, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports rates have soared by more than 35% in the last two decades, hitting young people especially hard. Heather Palacios knows this battle firsthand. Having fought suicidal thoughts since early childhood and survived an almost fatal attempt as a young pastor’s wife, she is now on a mission to keep others alive. 

Through the nonprofit she founded, Wondherful Inc., she and her dedicated team have distributed more than 19,500 LifeBoxes filled with tools for hope and healing, encouraging people struggling thru mental crisis to seek help and choose life. She speaks at colleges, churches and businesses throughout the United States to reach the nearly 1.8 million people who attempt suicide each year, according to Wondherful Inc. Her message is simple but urgent: one more suicide is one too many; no one should fight this battle alone.

An enthusiastic encourager, Palacios lights up a room when she enters, filling it with joy and gratitude for those around her. She brings that energy with her wherever she is called, often speaking life-giving words in the wake of tragedy. After the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, took the lives of 19 children and two adults on May 24, 2022, Heather partnered with a local church and distributed 600 LifeBoxes to survivors at a local civic center. She has spoken to students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, recently providing life boxes for members of their swim team after the loss of their 16-year-old teammate to suicide in December 2024. She was also invited to speak at school assemblies in Jamaica due to the high suicide rate there, providing an open forum where students could freely ask questions and receive direct, honest responses from someone who truly relates to their struggles.

A retired peer counseling coordinator and current soccer coach at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Laura Rountree said Heather has spoken to students in their HOPE Club, which stands for Helping Overcome Problems Effectively, as part of the Florida Initiative for Suicide Prevention. 

The students “love her transparency, her energy, enthusiasm and realness. She’s a giver who’s willing to help anybody she can — to encourage them, let them know that God has a purpose for them, that he created them uniquely; they’re special and to hold on and hang on. They just respond tremendously to her every time she shares.”

What Heather shares is her personal struggle with suicide and the techniques and protocols she’s discovered that help keep her alive.

 

How it began

It all started in 1981 when Heather was 8 years old. “I was being bullied pretty severely,” she said. “I had gone to elementary school that day in Bowling Green, Ohio, and when I walked into the classroom, my desk was missing. I started to look around. All the kids were there huddled up and laughing. I spotted my desk. They had moved it to the corner of the classroom facing the wall.

“So I went over there with my moon boots, winter coat and backpack to get my desk and put it back into the center of the classroom where it belonged. Then I noticed a piece of notebook paper on top of it. The title said, ‘Why We Hate Heather Funk.’ All the kiddos had signed different reasons, and I think that was the last straw for me that day. I just didn’t want to live anymore.”

Palacios went home and wrote a letter with her intent to her grandparents, who turned it over to her parents, who called the local church.

After accepting Jesus in her heart at the age of four, Heather grew up in the church and recommitted her life to the Lord while attending Judson University after a few years as “a prodigal kid in middle school and high school.” She married Raul Palacios, now executive pastor of Church by the Glades and First Baptist Fort Lauderdale, in 1999, but a year later she “just couldn’t reconcile being a Baptist pastor’s wife and having this temptation to take my life.” 

She said, “It was hard. I knew divorce was not an option and the only M.O. I knew when things were taking a drastic turn in my mind was take yourself out. So, very calculated, I went to a liquor store so I wouldn’t feel anything, went to the back of a parking lot on State Road 84 and began taking my life.” 

Since she hadn’t left a note and didn’t want her husband to think it was his fault, she called him. He was able to get to the scene, but because she was so frantic, he was unable to stop her and called 911. First responders were forced to sedate her, “Baker Acted” her, and she awoke in a mental health facility — a measure she now acknowledges she needed at the time.

Since then Heather has developed her own personal protocol for survival that she leans on daily along with her deep abiding faith in God. It includes:

• Christian counseling
• Medication
• Regular church attendance
• Journaling
• Outdoor activity
• Maintaining boundaries
• Knowing her worth

“I’ve been doing this for 24 years now, and I’m a tactile person, so it’s good that it’s in my journal so I can see if I’m not giving myself outside activity (for example). When I can’t see the goodness of God in my mind, I need to see it in the earth. I need to see the flower bloom. I need to see the sun rise. It’s really important for me because my mind will go black, so I have to be intentional to go outside and see the goodness of God somewhere.” 

She often tells herself, “If I wake up breathing, that’s my proof to keep going.”

 

Sending Life in a Box

Heather is just as intentional about every LifeBox she curates. “I recognize a LifeBox can’t save someone. But the contents inside include all the things I’ve needed to not die by suicide and keep going,” she said, adding that every box is also bathed in prayer for its recipient. 

Most LifeBoxes are sent in response to individual requests made through their website, Wondherful.com, which is shared all over social media along with uplifting videos created daily by Heather.

They include items such as a Bible, a journal and pen, puzzle or coloring books, What on Earth Am I Here For devotionals, a “You Matter” card, chapstick and tissue, a handwritten note, a comfort item such as a soft plushy or tea bag and other tchotchkes or fidget items designed to help distract the mind away from negative thoughts. Each one is individually curated, often by volunteers, to meet the unique situation of the recipient and every box receives priority shipping.

Wondherful will send a LifeBox free to anyone, anywhere going through anything, and have tailored them to address the challenges of those experiencing suicide loss, grief, suicide attempt, PTSD/trauma, self-harm, addiction, bullying, anxiety, depression, loneliness, current military, veterans, terminal illness, miscarriage and sickness. Requests come from across the country and around the world. A stick pin map on their office wall indicates boxes have been sent to individuals in every U.S. state and many other nations.

“When somebody requests a LifeBox, it is an immediate turnaround for the curation and shipping because time is of the essence. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know this person. A lot of times, this person doesn’t know who we are because it was requested by someone who was concerned. So we do not waste time. We incur a huge cost for priority shipping, but I think it’s a cost the Lord will continue to help us with.”

 

Turning pain into purpose

Julie Russell, VP of Operations for Wondherful Inc., credits Heather for intervening to save her own daughter’s life after a suicide attempt in 2018. Russell recalls that she was relaxing in the pool when police suddenly burst through their front door, asking her husband to see their daughter, Bailey, who was 16 at the time. 

Alone in her room, Bailey had announced on social media that she was taking her life. A friend saw it and called their youth pastor, who immediately consulted with Heather. Heather instantly called 911. Bailey had taken an entire bottle of pills moments before but had not yet reacted to them.

Because Bailey had threatened suicide but not acted on it before, Julie assumed this was just another attention-getting stunt. She decided to go to her son’s football game while paramedics took her daughter to the hospital. As Julie pulled into the parking lot, she received a call from the hospital. This was no stunt. Bailey was having seizures and ended up in the ICU. 

Through it all, Heather stood by Julie and her daughter’s side. “She brought things for me at the hospital to keep my mind busy because there was nothing I could do, and she supported Bailey because she could really understand her.”

Wondherful Inc. was started in November 2020 as a direct result of COVID-19. Julie said, “When COVID hit, Heather couldn’t go see people in the hospital. She couldn’t go to the psych ward, and she was doing more Zoom funerals for suicides and overdoses than she personally knew of COVID deaths.”

Heather recalled, “We were inundated with the medical emergency of COVID, but nobody was speaking to the mental emergency, and I was hearing of it on a day-to-day basis. I have kept a list of the people that reached out to me, and the agonizing messages and emails I was getting.

“I had a pastor’s wife Facebook message me in the middle of the night during COVID. She had made a noose out of her husband’s tie and sent me the picture. And I was cut off at the hands because we’re not allowed to go anywhere. It was shelter in place. It was mandated. I felt so helpless. That’s when Julie came along and said, ‘I’ll help you make stuff to send to them.’ 

“At least if I can send them something through the mail, I will buy them some time because they are anticipating a gift from Heather. And then, when they open it, these gifts will give life. So we started out in my dining room making LifeBoxes on my husband’s credit card. And that pastor’s wife went on to have twins with her husband two years ago.”

To date, Wondherful has sent 19,500 LifeBoxes to those in crisis. Now supported through donations and a few small grants, Wondherful operated from a budget of $227,046 in 2024 with a staff of three and a team of volunteers. Each LifeBox costs about $25 plus shipping and LifeBox Minis are available for large groups for about $15 each that contain all of the same essential items in a smaller form.

The name Wondherful comes from a Bible verse. Heather explained, “Thirteen years ago, after reading Psalm 139:14, I added the “h” to personalize it to me, (h)eather. ‘I am fearfully and wondherfully made and His works are wondherful.’”

 

Shining light in the darkness

Dr. Susan Hagen, Psy.D., a psychologist and the wife of Andy Hagen, pastor of Advent Church in Boca Raton, said, “It is so powerful to have someone witness to the experience of suicidal ideation, to say this burdens me as well. It breaks down the isolation because somebody in that situation says, ‘I must be crazy. I’m the only one who struggles with this.’ 

“And Heather says, ‘Are you kidding me?! I’ve struggled with this for over 40 years and here’s what I do…’ It has also empowered a group of people who work with her to feel like they’re doing something meaningful because some of them have lost a relative, a husband, a child — someone in their family. That just feels desperate, but when you know you’re reaching out to people who have been struggling, and you can send them something to say, ‘we’re praying for you, and we’re connected to you.’ That’s impactful.”

Hagen said Heather’s work is also helping to destigmatize mental illness within the faith community. “Not only is she saying this does not need to be kept a secret like it’s some deep, dark sin, but if we bring it into the light, it helps. She’s helped whole faith communities to embrace the struggle that people have — to get people out of the darkness so they are not isolated, which is their danger spot.”

For those who are struggling, Hagen advises them to see a professional psychologist or psychiatrist who can help them because suicidal ideation is a sign of an underlying depression that needs to be treated like any other illness. She said statistics on depression show that it tends to run a course from somewhere between six months and two years, so it’s not usually a forever thing even though it feels like it will never go away.

Though Heather has struggled with it most of her life, she said the desire to end one’s life “can be chemical, circumstantial or both. Mine is both.” 

Her biggest challenge came two years ago when her brother, Chris, lost his life after years battling addiction and suicidal thoughts. Having supported each other, Heather said through teary eyes, “it’s been a lonely struggle, and for years I found solace in knowing that Chris gets it, but it’s an individual race now.” 

The heartbreaking experience has been painful, but Heather said, “Now I know what it’s like to lose someone to this, and I am able to have a 360-degree perspective of this environment I’m in.” 

Chris is now listed on a memorial wall at Wondherful.com dedicated to those “we will never forget” —people who struggled so hard to overcome their challenges, who were prayed for and who were sent a LifeBox in the hope that they would find Jesus and choose life. 

Sometimes the need is so great, Heather said she feels like she’s barely keeping her head above the waves. But the biggest wins come when they hear back from a LifeBox recipient. “We treasure that because they are alive to reach out and let us know they got the box, so that’s a win,” said Heather.

A large bulletin board wall filled with cards and letters graces their office at Wondherful.

One response reads: “I received your gift box today and I cannot thank you enough. It is something I will treasure for a long time — to remind me of the fact that someone stood up and loved and cared for me when I was in a long and dark wilderness. I am so grateful for you and, as soon as I am able, hope to pay it forward and donate to your ministry. Thank you for your sincere gesture of Christ’s love.”

 

How can you help?

• Send a LifeBox to someone you know in crisis.
• Invite Heather to speak at your church, school or business.
• Support Wondherful Inc. financially
• Volunteer
• Follow @wondherful on social media

Visit their website at wondherful.com for more information and additional resources.

For more Good News, read the GOOD NEWS March 2025 Issue at: https://digital.goodnewsfl.org/2025/march/#1