Gaelen is an only child, who grew up in the American Southeast. He was always a highly imaginative boy. His dad was a local law enforcement officer, who said that there were only two kinds of males in the Morgan line, lawmen and criminals. Gaelen was lucky enough to have a lawman as his role-model. He internalized honor, discipline and respect for others at a very early age. He and his father would pretend to be big game hunters on distant words, and would stalk along local river beds, making up stories as they went. His mother was an artist, who specialized in charcoal sketches of musical performers. It made her happy, and her sensitivity to the little things, details, movements, taught Gaelen to appreciate being still, listening and watching. He was a good kid, and smart. But he did poorly in school,Mainly because he was board there, and didn’t feel challenged. He read extensively on his own, and found that like his father, he had a gift for musical performance. Not professional, but enough to pass the hours away with a banjo or 12 string guitar.He would have been content to have a normal life as father and husband, if it were not for his mother’s untimely death. He never talks about it, but she took her own life when he was still in high school. She had never been happy in life, and always looked to the life beyond for her fulfillment. He respected her decision, but it hit him hard. Instead of making him doubt life, it made him want to celebrate it. He turned his time in school around, focusing on biology, psychology, and cognitive science formally in college. Informally, he started going to church at a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and considered ordination. He decided to put it off until he finished med school. He finished college at 20 from Sewanee in Memphis, and med school including his surgery residency at 26 from Georgetown. He was badly burnt out by that point, and took three years off and got his DMin from Harvard Div, in UU polity. Before he could accept a position at his old congregation in Birmingham, the Fleet very unexpectedly accepted the half-hearted application he had turned in the year before. He wrestled with which way to go for a week. Finally, he felt consolation at the idea of being out among the stars. And the Fleet was a place where he could really test himself, and could help some really good people follow their reams as well.

The first time he left the Earth's gravity well, he fell in love with serving in Star Fleet, and is very happy with his career and his life.

Starfleet Service: 7 years of helping people remember what it means to be really human, souls to bones