Your Life Is Worth Living: Lee’s Summit man turns friend's suicide into prevention movement

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Editor's Note: This story talks about suicide and may be triggering for some readers. September is National Suicide Prevention Month. If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, call or text the national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.

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Foster Huggins launched the Your Life Is Worth Living movement after losing his best friend to suicide nine and a half years ago. Now, he is sharing that message with visitors at SantaCaliGon Days in Independence.

Searching for a salve to his grief, Huggins launched his suicide prevention efforts in his garage with a borrowed microphone. He recorded the first episode of his podcast, uploaded it to Spotify and called it "The Underwater FlyZone" — a name rooted in the depths people hide from the world.

"When you look at a pond or a lake, you see the surface of the water, but you don't see everything that's underneath, and there's so much going on underneath the surface,” he said. “That's how we are as people too.”

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It is a lesson Huggins learned April 24, 2017.

“I was sitting in class, just finished a test, had my head down,” Huggins recalled. “I was chilling. Good vibes in the air, summer was coming up, and then we got a knock on the classroom door.”

It was the school secretary, who happens to be Huggins’ aunt. She said he was leaving for the day and took him to meet his mom, dad and brother waiting for him outside the school.

"What they told me changed my life,” Huggins said. “They told me that my best friend had taken his own life the night before.”

Huggins had seen his friend — who he asked we not name out of respect for his family — one night earlier, but he “never even knew he was struggling, never knew he was going through anything."

"So, like the ‘Underwater FlyZone’ name, that's where it stems from," Huggins added. "I looked at my best friend and saw the surface, but I didn't know what was going on underneath the surface.”

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The podcast, which Huggins started in 2021 and likens to weekly therapy, evolved into Your Life Is Worth Living streetwear and a speaking tour, which he expects will impact 15,000 students this fall alone.

He has a booth selling T-shirts on the northeast corner of Historic Independence Square for SantaCaliGon Days, near North Main Street and East Maple Avenue.

"This movement, for me, has evolved in ways that I never knew was possible,” Huggins said. “When I started that podcast, I never would have dreamed that I'd be set up with a clothing brand at SantaCaliGon for four days in a weekend.”

He remembers sleeping in his college dorm room surrounded by towers of hoodies and shirts, barely able to walk to his bed, and never imagining the movement would grow beyond what he could manage on his own.

"It's something that's bigger than me, and that's why I love it,” Huggins said. “People always ask me — I told you I was in Omaha this week, (the University of Central Missouri) last night, here this weekend, really have no days off this whole month — ‘How do you not get burnt out?’ How could I get burnt out, man? This message needs to be seen by everybody.”

He has been to nursing homes, elementary schools and “everywhere in between.”

It is personal even beyond his friend’s death, after which he said he found himself in a dark place of his own.

"I was experiencing some of my own suicidal thoughts,” Huggins said. “I was real down bad back then, and I didn't want to tell anybody about it, I just kept it in. But once I started sharing it and opening up with people, I was able to heal.”

He said there are two quotes he returns to when speaking at schools.

"Feeling is healing,” Huggins said. “In order to heal, you have to feel your emotions. Pain is progress. When you go through pain in your life, you're actually progressing and growing stronger.”

That is why it feels more like a purpose.

"I do this for the 17-year-old version of myself that was at my lowest,” Huggins said. “That same situation that brought me to my lowest is the same reason I'm here at SantaCaliGon pushing this message today. Life is 1% about what happens to you, 99% how you respond to it.”

Every T-shirt Huggins sells is another opportunity to put that message in front of someone who may need it.

"People that come in this tent — I’ll probably see 80,000 people this weekend — a lot of them I'll have no clue that they're struggling, I'll just see the surface," Huggins said. "So, it's just so important to treat people with kindness, spread love and spread this message.”

Your life is worth living.

"I just hope people hear this message, because this is something I wish my friend would have heard, you know?" Huggins said. “There's so much darkness in the world. There's so much negativity out there. Make it your point to control what you can control, and be the light — shine your light.”

Madison Marsh, a supporter of the movement who has lost friends and family to suicide, said Huggins’ message resonates because it opens a conversation many people avoid.

"It's something that can be, you know, so touchy and such a sensitive subject to talk about,” she said. “But I think the more you talk about it, the more awareness and the more strength can be built upon having a conversation over it.”

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She hopes plenty of people stop by the booth this weekend and are impacted by Huggins’ mission.

“The heart of the message, to me, is that no one’s going to have that perfect life, no one’s going to have their best days every day — I mean, Foster included,” Marsh said. “He's a walking testimony that you go through hardship and challenges, and you have to face those things in life in order to get to the good stuff, in order to overcome things.”

Marsh said her connection with Your Life Is Worth Living has even impacted her professionally. She is working on a master's degree in sports psychology.

“It's affected me on how I want to live my life and what I want to go into professionally,” Marsh said. “Just the fact that I'm able to work with Foster is truly just everything to me.”

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

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