A former athlete. A man who spent twelve years in chronic pain finding his soul in the soil. A husband, father, and believer writing honestly about faith, mental health, and what it means to tend a life the way you'd tend a garden you loved.
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About Kendall
From the track to the soil
I was an elite runner before chronic pain took that away for twelve years. In the process of losing my athletic identity I found something more durable — a faith stripped of its performance layer, a love for growing things slowly, and a deep conviction that meaning is available almost anywhere if you're willing to pay attention.
I live in Utah with my wife and daughter. I grow perennials, vegetables, fruit, and flowers. I write about what the garden teaches me about everything else.
The Community
Welcome to The Garden
A philosophy of growth through every season of life. Not a list of values — a living framework. Five stages. One continuous lifecycle. A community of people committed to tending what matters.
Stage One
The Seed
Every meaningful life begins impossibly small. A single decision. A moment of faith before anything is visible.
Stage Two
The Roots
The most important growth is the kind nobody sees. The difficult middle. Strength built in the dark.
Stage Three
The Bloom
The visible evidence of becoming. Purpose finding form. The fruit of patient, invisible work.
Stage Four
The Perennial
Dormant is not dead. The roots keep working. Every spring the bloom returns stronger because of the winter.
Stage Five
The Annual
Some seasons complete their purpose. But healthy annuals always leave seeds. Growth continues through legacy.
About Kendall Thompson
I used to be a runner. Now I grow things.
The story of how twelve years of chronic pain, an identity crisis, and a patch of Utah soil made me the man I am.
My name is Kendall Thompson, and for most of my life I've been searching for meaning.
I grew up in Utah surrounded by mountains, faith, and the ordinary rhythms of life that seem insignificant until years later when you realize they shaped who you became. I was a runner — a serious one. Track and cross country. The kind of athlete who felt most like himself at mile six of a ten-mile tempo run, when everything hurt just enough and the rhythm took over and the world got very quiet and very clear.
"My body was the thing I trusted most. I knew what it could do. I knew its limits and I knew how to push past them. My identity lived there — in the pace, in the times, in the feeling of crossing a finish line having left everything on the course."
Then chronic pain arrived. Quietly at first — the way a houseguest shows up before you realize they're not leaving. I kept running because running was what I was. I ran through the early discomfort the way I'd run through every other hard thing — head down, jaw set, certain my body would cooperate if I just demanded it to.
My body had other plans.
The Decade
Ten years is a long time to be in pain. I want to say that plainly because I think we soften these things and the softening does a disservice to anyone going through something similar.
It was hard. Progressively, relentlessly hard. The kind of hard that changes your personality, your relationships, your faith, your sense of who you are and what your life is for. I watched the running go first. Then the easy movement. Then the assumption that tomorrow would feel better than today.
What I didn't expect was how thoroughly chronic pain would get into everything. Producing anxiety. Producing grief. A particular kind of loneliness that comes from suffering that is invisible and hard to explain. And the loss of my athletic identity left me with a question I wasn't equipped to answer: Who are you when the thing that defined you is gone?
Those questions became more than philosophy. They became survival. I searched everywhere — in faith, science, theology, philosophy, psychology, in books read at 2am, in prayers that felt like shouting into a room I wasn't sure had anyone in it.
Finding the Soil
I found the garden when I couldn't find anything else. Not through a dramatic decision — I just needed something my body could manage. Something that required presence without requiring performance. Something that gave back without demanding more than I had.
The soil asked nothing of me that I couldn't give. It didn't care how fast I used to run. It just needed attention, consistency, a willingness to show up even when nothing visible was happening yet.
"The garden became the first place in years where I felt like myself. Not my old self. Something newer. Something that had grown in the hard years without my realizing it."
I grow perennials mostly — things that come back. Vegetables because there's something quietly sacred about eating what you grew. Fruit because patience has a flavor. Flowers because beauty is not a luxury.
The Miracle
After roughly twelve years the pain began lifting. Slowly. Without a clear medical explanation. After years of searching, treating, praying, and enduring — one day it started getting better. I don't fully know why. I can only call it grace.
I prayed about this for twelve years — not always faithfully or eloquently, sometimes the way you talk to someone in a room when you're not sure they're listening. I kept talking. And then something changed. Maybe that's what a miracle looks like. Not lightning. Just the ground thawing when you had started to accept the cold.
Who This Is For
I write and build this page for a specific person. You'll know if it's you.
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You're in a hard season and need someone to tell you dormant is not dead.
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You love your faith and have real questions you don't know how to ask out loud.
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You're managing ADHD, anxiety, or chronic pain inside a high-expectation life.
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You love the idea of a garden and want to think about it more deeply than tips.
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You lost the thing that defined you and are figuring out who you are now.
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You want honest faith and mental health conversation — not performance, not platitudes.
Essays
The Blog
One essay published each week — the expanded, deeper version of what began on Instagram. Faith, gardening, mental health, and the examined life.
This Week's Essay
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First essay coming soon
Each week I publish one full essay here — the expanded version of what began on Instagram. Faith, gardening, mental health, and the slow work of becoming.
New essays every Friday · The Instagram post comes first · The full essay follows here
All Essays
0 essays published
Essays will appear here as they are published · New essay every Friday
Books
Writing for the Long Game
Books take time. These are worth taking time on. Three works in development — theology, meaning, and legacy.
The Relentless Way
Faith · Love · Practice
The Relentless Way
A Reckless Experiment in Christlike Love
What happens when you take the commandment to love as Christ loved seriously — not as a spiritual aspiration but as a daily, costly, sometimes inconvenient practice? An honest exploration of what Christlike love demands, what it costs, and what it produces in the people who actually try it.
In DevelopmentComing Soon
God and the Architecture of Reality
Theology · Philosophy · Creation
God and the Architecture of Reality
Rethinking Divine Power, Law, and Creation
A serious theological and philosophical inquiry into the nature of God's power, the structure of reality, and what Latter-day Saint theology uniquely contributes to the oldest questions in philosophy of religion. Written for thinkers who take both faith and reason seriously.
In DevelopmentComing Soon
Outrunning Tragedy
Memoir · Meaning · Legacy
Outrunning Tragedy
A Journey of Legacy, Meaning, and the Crucible of Life
A memoir exploring what it means to build a life of meaning when suffering takes away the identity you built everything on. From the track to chronic pain to the garden — the story of what the hard seasons produce in a man who refuses to let them be wasted.
In DevelopmentComing Soon
Stay Informed
Be the first to know when a book is ready
No spam. Just a note when something is finished and worth your time.
Rooted in Utah
Welcome to The Garden
A place for growth, becoming, and staying rooted in what matters.
The Garden is the community heart of Rooted in Utah. It is not a content feed or a list of values. It is an invitation — into a philosophy of growth that moves through every season of life, and a community of people committed to tending what matters most.
Scroll to explore
Stage One
The Seed
Every meaningful life begins impossibly small. A single decision. A quiet hope. A moment of faith before anything is visible.
FaithHopeCuriosityBeginningCourage
A seed carries everything it will ever become inside something too small to see. The oak is already in the acorn. The garden is already in the packet. The life is already in the decision — even when the decision feels fragile and uncertain and not quite like enough.
The beginning is always the hardest part — not because the work is heaviest there, but because the evidence hasn't arrived yet. You are asked to act before you can see. That is what faith actually is.
In The Garden, we honor beginnings. We make space for people who are just starting — a new season of faith, a first step toward health, a decision to tend something they've been neglecting. Every person here was once a seed.
Stage Two
The Roots
The most important growth is the kind nobody sees. The difficult middle. The underground season. Strength built in the dark.
I spent twelve years in the root stage without knowing that's what it was. Chronic pain. Identity loss. The long, invisible work of rebuilding something I couldn't see yet. It looked like nothing from the outside. It looked like dormancy or failure or being stuck.
The root system is doing something the surface doesn't show. It's conserving. Deepening. Waiting for conditions that don't exist yet.
The root stage is where character is built. Where faith is stripped of its performance layer and becomes something real. Where the disciplines of health — sleep, nutrition, movement, mental care — are established not for results but for survival. The roots don't look like progress. They are the condition for all progress that follows.
In The Garden, we honor the root stage. We don't rush people through it. We sit with them in it.
Stage Three
The Bloom
The visible evidence of becoming. Purpose finding form. Joy with roots. The fruit of patient, invisible work finally appearing above the soil.
The bloom is not the point of the plant. It is the evidence of the point. Everything underground — the root work, the patient tending, the seasons of nothing visible — was building toward this. Toward something that could open and be seen.
The garden doesn't bloom to be admired. It blooms because it is healthy enough to. The bloom is the symptom of good roots.
In a life, the bloom looks like this: a marriage that has weathered something and come out closer. A body that has been tended back to health. A faith that was tested and became more honest. A business that grew from genuine service. Financial freedom earned through patience and stewardship rather than luck or hustle.
The bloom is beautiful. But we never forget what made it possible.
Stage Four
The Perennial
Some seasons appear dormant. The blooms disappear. The color fades. But the roots continue growing. Every spring the plant returns stronger because of the winter it survived.
ResilienceSeasonalityCommunityKnowledgeReturning
The perennial is my favorite thing in the garden. Not because it is the most dramatic. Because it is the most honest about how growth actually works. It doesn't pretend winter didn't happen. It comes back anyway — and often comes back fuller than it was before.
Dormant is not dead. The root system is working. What looks like nothing is doing everything that matters.
The perennial stage is for people who have been here before. Who have bloomed and gone dormant and come back. Who understand now that the seasons are not obstacles to growth — they are the mechanism of it. The people in this stage become the ones who help the seeds understand what is possible.
Community is what the perennial stage produces. Not just personal resilience, but the wisdom to tend others through their winters.
Stage Five
The Annual
Not everything returns the same way. Some seasons complete their purpose. But healthy annuals always leave seeds behind. Growth continues through legacy.
LegacyPurposeLetting GoPassing OnFaith
The annual completes. It does not return the way the perennial returns. But before it goes it releases seeds — intentionally, abundantly — into the soil where the next season will begin. The annual's purpose was never only its own bloom. It was also the seeds it would leave behind.
Sometimes environment — not potential — determines whether something thrives. The seed knows this and releases anyway, trusting the soil it lands in.
This is the stage of legacy. Of recognizing that some of what we build is not for us — it is for the people who will come after us, who will find seeds we scattered in seasons we've already forgotten. A letter written to a child who can't read it yet. A garden inherited by someone you'll never meet. A conversation that changes a life you won't know about.
The lifecycle of The Garden is not a straight line. It is a circle. The annual's seeds become next season's seed stage. The story begins again.
Ask Kendall
Dear Kendall
Every season of life brings questions that are hard to ask out loud. Faith questions. Pain questions. The kind that sit heavy and go unanswered because the right conversation never happens. This is that conversation.
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You Ask
Submit a question about any season of life — faith, pain, identity, relationships, wellness, mental health, the garden.
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Kendall Responds
Selected questions are answered honestly and personally — published on the blog and shared on Instagram.
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The Garden Grows
Every answered question becomes a resource for anyone in that same season. Your question may help someone you'll never meet.
The Garden's one rule
This is a space rooted in kindness. Questions are welcome in any season — doubt, pain, confusion, grief, anger, uncertainty. What is not welcome is cruelty. Toward yourself or anyone else. The Garden is a place where hard things can be said with care.
Submit Your Question
What's on your mind?
You can share your name or remain anonymous. Either way your question is treated with the same care.
Questions may be published anonymously in the blog · Your email is never shared · Not every question can be answered individually
You Are Welcome Here
Enter The Garden
Wherever you are in the lifecycle — planting a seed, establishing roots, blooming, returning after winter, or releasing what you've grown — there is a place for you here.
The Garden is not a destination. It is a practice. A community of people committed to tending what matters, growing through every season, and leaving things better than they found them.
Join the community
No ads · No spam · Unsubscribe anytime · No emails on Sundays
The personal brand comes first. The businesses grow from it. Here is what exists now, what is coming soon, and the larger vision being built slowly and intentionally.
What I Offer
Current & Coming Soon
Everything here is built on the same foundation — the personal brand, the trust built through honest content. Nothing is offered before it is ready to be done well.
Partnerships
Brand Partnerships
Selective partnerships with brands that align with the values of The Garden. Wellness, faith, family, home, and education. We don't partner with everything — but when we do, it is genuine and it is earned. Every partnership is evaluated against the values in The Garden before a conversation begins.
Available Now
Coaching
1:1 Coaching
For LDS men navigating chronic pain, ADHD, anxiety, identity loss, and the examined life. Rooted in twelve years of lived experience, serious faith, and the hard-won wisdom of someone who has been through the dormant seasons and come out the other side with something worth sharing. This is not therapy. It is honest conversation with someone who has been there.
Coming Soon
Wellness
Health & Wellness
Whole-person health guidance grounded in personal experience and honest research. Supplement recommendations, nervous system health, chronic pain management, and the integration of physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. Part of the larger Wellness Mall vision — offered here as the personal, consultative expression of that brand before the doors open.
Coming Soon
The Larger Vision
The Wellness Mall
A vision being planted slowly and intentionally. The personal brand comes first. The businesses grow from it. This is where it is going.
The Wellness Mall
Utah · Coming Soon
Whole-person health · Alternative wellness · Movement
Vision in Development
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Alternative Wellness Center
A restorative, spa-adjacent wellness space in Utah offering alternative therapies, contrast treatments, and whole-person health services. Designed for people who take their health as seriously as their faith.
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Physical Fitness & Training
A training and movement component grounded in the experience of rebuilding a relationship with a body that spent years in pain. Not performance-driven. Sustainability-driven.
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Ecommerce & Supplements
A separate online brand offering curated wellness products, supplements, and resources. Evidence-informed, values-aligned, and built on the trust developed through the Rooted in Utah audience.
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Faith-Aligned Wellness
Everything under the Wellness Mall name is built around the conviction that true health integrates body, mind, and spirit. The same values. A different expression.
Stay in the Loop
Be the first to know when The Wellness Mall launches
No timeline. No pressure. Just a note when something real is ready.
Get in Touch
Let's Connect
Whether you're interested in having me speak, write, partner, or simply want to start a conversation — send a message. Every serious inquiry gets a personal response.
Send a message
Tell me who you are and what you have in mind. Keep it honest and I'll keep it the same.