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.
What We Believe
Our Brand Tenets
The convictions that shape everything written, grown, and built here. Nine principles rooted in faith, stewardship, and the examined life.
01
Rooted in What Matters
The best life is the pursuit of meaning, beauty, and purpose — not the pursuit of happiness.
02
Growth Takes Time
Strong roots, healthy relationships, and lasting growth are cultivated slowly with consistency.
03
Stewardship
We strive to care well for what we've been given: our bodies, minds, homes, land, and communities.
04
Health & Wholeness
True wellness is more than physical fitness. We believe in caring for body, mind, and spirit.
05
Craftsmanship
Anything worth building is worth building well. We value patience, intentionality, and detail.
06
Beauty in the Everyday
A meaningful life is found in ordinary moments: a garden in bloom, a family dinner, a quiet walk.
07
Community & Belonging
Life is richer when shared. Strong families and communities create a foundation for lasting impact.
08
Leave Things Better
Whether land, a home, or a relationship — we strive to leave every place better than we found it.
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Resilience
Like a plant that must be pruned to grow, hardship can help us develop deeper roots.
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.
What We Stand For
Our Brand Tenets
We believe a meaningful life is built slowly, intentionally, and in alignment with what actually matters. These nine tenets are not aspirations. They are the convictions we live by — in the garden, in the home, in the work we create, and in the relationships we keep. They are the foundation of everything built under the Rooted in Utah name.
01
Foundation
Rooted in What Matters
The best life is the pursuit of meaning, beauty, and purpose — not the pursuit of happiness. We build around what endures.
Happiness is a byproduct. It comes and goes with circumstance, with health, with luck. Meaning is different. Meaning can be found in a hard season, in a loss, in the long years when almost nothing goes the way you planned. I learned this the way most people learn it — not by reading about it, but by being stripped of the things I thought would make me happy and discovering that what remained was more solid than anything I had chased. The garden is a daily reminder of this. Nothing in a garden is optimized for pleasure. It requires patience, labor, and a willingness to tend something long before it produces anything. But the man who grows a garden year after year is building something that matters — even when the harvest is small. We choose to root our lives in what actually lasts.
02
Growth
Growth Takes Time
Strong roots, healthy relationships, physical wellness, and personal growth are cultivated slowly with consistency. Lasting change rarely happens overnight.
I plant perennials because I believe in things that come back. A perennial doesn't produce much in its first year. It spends most of that time underground, developing the root system that will make everything above ground possible later. Most people give up on themselves, their relationships, and their work during the underground season — when nothing visible is happening yet. I spent twelve years in chronic pain building depth I didn't ask for. My faith got stripped of its performance layer and became something quieter and more real. My capacity for empathy was built by suffering in ways comfort never could have built it. None of that was fast. None of it was efficient. All of it was necessary. We are committed to the slow work because we have seen what it produces.
03
Responsibility
Stewardship
We strive to care well for what we've been given: our bodies, minds, homes, land, relationships, and communities.
Stewardship is the word I keep returning to. Not ownership. Not optimization. Stewardship — the care of what has been entrusted to you, knowing it was never fully yours to begin with. The land I garden was here before me and will be here after me. The body I live in was given, not earned. The family I am building is the most sacred stewardship I have. I have learned that the quality of a life is measured not by what it accumulates but by how well it tends what it has been given. This applies to a plot of soil in Utah. It applies to a marriage. It applies to a community. We are stewards first.
04
Wellness
Health & Wholeness
True wellness is more than physical fitness. We believe in caring for the body, mind, and spirit while pursuing growth, resilience, and balance.
For most of my life, health meant performance. It meant what my body could produce — the pace, the distance, the result. Chronic pain dismantled that framework completely. When my body became the source of suffering rather than the source of identity, I had to learn what health actually meant when it had nothing to do with achievement. What I found was this: the body, the mind, and the soul are not separate systems. They are one system, and neglecting any one of them affects all the others. A dysregulated nervous system affects your capacity for faith. A sleep-deprived body affects your capacity for love. A soul that has never been honestly examined affects the quality of every relationship you have. Wholeness is the goal — not peak performance, not aesthetic appearance, but the full integration of body, mind, and spirit in genuine, sustainable health.
05
Excellence
Craftsmanship
Anything worth building is worth building well. We value patience, intentionality, and attention to detail in the things we create and the lives we live.
The gardener who amends the soil before planting, who chooses varieties intentionally, who prunes with knowledge and care rather than impulse — that gardener gets a different result than the one who scatters seed and hopes. I have tried both approaches in the garden and in my life. The difference is not talent. It is intention. Craftsmanship is the practice of caring enough about something to do it properly. It is the opposite of cutting corners, of publishing before the work is ready, of building quickly at the expense of building well. Everything under the Rooted in Utah name — the writing, the partnerships, the products, the page itself — is held to this standard. Not perfection. Craftsmanship. The deliberate, patient pursuit of doing the work as well as it can be done.
06
Presence
Beauty in the Everyday
A meaningful life is often found in ordinary moments: a garden in bloom, a family dinner, a quiet walk, a sunrise over the mountains.
One of the things the garden does for me that almost nothing else does is force me into the present tense. You cannot be somewhere else when your hands are in the soil. The beetle near the basil demands your attention. The way the morning light hits the tomatoes at 7am on a July Tuesday is something you either see or you miss — and once it is gone it does not come back exactly that way again. I spent years missing things. Not because I was a bad person but because my mind was always three steps ahead of wherever I was. The garden slowed me down. So did chronic pain, in its own brutal way. What I have learned is that beauty is not rare. It is constant and ordinary and available to anyone who is paying attention. We are committed to paying attention.
07
Together
Community & Belonging
Life is richer when shared. Strong families, strong neighborhoods, and strong communities create a foundation for lasting impact.
I am an LDS man. Community is not a peripheral feature of my faith — it is structural. The ward, the covenant, the shared table, the showing up for each other in hard seasons — these are not optional additions to a spiritual life. They are the spiritual life. But I have also seen what happens when community becomes performance, when belonging is conditional, when the pressure to appear okay prevents honest conversation. The community worth building is the kind where a man can say he is struggling and be met with presence rather than platitude. Where a garden can be shared, not just admired. Where people are known, not just recognized. That is the community we are trying to cultivate — here, in Utah, and in the broader conversation this page is part of.
08
Legacy
Leave Things Better
Whether it's a piece of land, a home, a relationship, or a community — we strive to leave every place better than we found it.
When we moved into our new home, the previous owners had left behind fruit trees, perennials along the fence line, garden beds with good bones. Years of their labor already in the ground. I walked the yard the first week and kept finding things — a tree in a corner I hadn't noticed, bulbs coming up along the south wall. I didn't start from nothing. I inherited someone else's faithfulness. That experience changed how I think about legacy. We are always building on work that came before us. The question is not whether we will leave something behind — we will. The question is whether what we leave will be worth inheriting. In the garden, in the home, in the relationships we tend, in the work we create — we are always leaving something. We choose to leave things worth finding.
09
Strength
Resilience
Like a plant that must be pruned to grow, hardship can help us develop deeper roots. We believe challenges, setbacks, and adversity can shape us into stronger, wiser, and more resilient people.
I was an elite runner. My body was fast and strong and I trusted it completely. Then chronic pain arrived and spent the next twelve years taking that away — slowly, progressively, relentlessly. The identity I had built on athletic performance collapsed. What I did not expect, and could not have predicted, was what grew in its place. The man I am today — the depth of my faith, the quality of my empathy, the seriousness with which I take meaning and suffering and the examined life — none of that existed in the athlete. All of it grew in the hard years. The garden keeps teaching me this. You do not prune a plant to punish it. You prune it to redirect its energy toward what matters. The cuts that seem like loss are often the condition for the growth that follows. We do not seek suffering. But we do not waste it either.
Work With Us
Brand Partnerships
These tenets are not just personal convictions — they are the standard by which every collaboration, partnership, and business relationship under the Rooted in Utah name is evaluated. If your brand is built around the same values, we'd like to meet you.
We Partner With
Wellness & Health Brands
Supplements, nutrition, mental health tools, and physical wellness products that align with whole-person health — evidence-informed and integrity-driven.
We Partner With
Faith-Based Businesses
LDS publishers, faith-adjacent brands, and businesses serving the Latter-day Saint community with products and services of genuine quality.
We Partner With
Home, Garden & Land
Gardening, homesteading, real estate, and home products that reflect the values of stewardship, craftsmanship, and intentional living.
We Partner With
Family & Community
Brands serving families, fathers, and communities with products and services that strengthen the relationships and places that matter most.
We Partner With
Books & Education
Publishers, educators, and learning platforms committed to serious, meaningful content that helps people think more clearly and live more intentionally.
We Don't Partner With
Anything Misaligned
If a brand's values, products, or practices conflict with our nine tenets, we decline — regardless of the financial offer. Our audience trusts us. That trust is not for sale.
Get in Touch
Interested in working together?
Tell us about your brand and what you have in mind. We read every message personally and respond to every serious inquiry.
Kendall Thompson
Work With Me
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 nine tenets, 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 our nine tenets. 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 on our Tenets page 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.