The Map is Not Yet Complete: A Personal Introduction | by Reed @ Where Maps End dot com | Jul, 2025
I was born in the last year of the Baby Boom into an essentially all-white, all-Mormon community in Southern Utah. Six decades later, I am no longer Mormon, no longer white, and finally ready to share my story.
The elemental me was shaped by contradiction. In one telling, my childhood was idyllic — anchored by loving family and the freedom to roam a town where everyone knew whose boy I was. It culminated with achieving the small-town dream of being on a State Championship Basketball Team.
In another telling, I am a survivor of childhood trauma and descendant of families with secrets and dysfunction. My father joked that our ancestors were so ornery that Brigham Young sent them all to settle the same town because nobody wanted to live near them.
Both tellings are true. One does not negate the other.
Professionally, I’ve never found my niche. Despite a deep love for quantum physics, I switched to English literature after struggling to balance collegiate basketball with science coursework. After Georgetown Law Center — where my eyes first opened to worlds beyond Mormon hegemony — I practiced criminal defense in Maryland, witnessing systemic police brutality condoned by courts.
My work with the House Ethics Committee opened paths to international development in Africa, promoting democracy and human rights until recurring malaria forced my return. Since 2017, I’ve worked in logistics — first as a driver, then safety manager, now driving again. The solitude of trucking has been invaluable, offering time to work through personal, spiritual, and relational deficiencies.
My personal life carries more angst than my professional wanderings. I married young, was blessed with four children, then divorced. I remarried and was blessed with two more. The children always suffer most from divorce, regardless of whether the marriage was sustainable or healthy.
I remain deeply spiritual while having left behind Mormonism, Christianity, and organized religion entirely. Deconstructing theology ingrained from before my earliest memories consumed decades of energy. In the end, I trusted science and experience over dogma and tradition. It has been liberating, enlightening, and grounding — precisely the opposite outcomes the indoctrination promised.
I have no objection to others finding peace in faith, provided it’s freely adopted based on fully disclosed doctrine and doesn’t harm those who haven’t chosen it.
Why share this now? As I reach an age where the final event horizon doesn’t seem distant, it feels “now or never.” If my older children are ever to know me meaningfully, it will be through my writing. My deepest desire is that they might seek reconnection before time runs out.
The map is not yet complete, and new pathways beckon. Shall we see where they lead?
Read my full story: https://wheremapsend.com/pages/about/
