I typically use 1998 as the year I started researching my family history. In the summer of 1998, my parents, sister, and I joined a heritage trip to the town of my mother’s birth, Rohatyn, Ukraine. In preparation for that trip, we looked through albums of photographs from my grandfather’s collection and tried to understand the connection of those pictured to each other and to ourselves. It was during that time that I purchased a family tree software and started building our family tree. Although one might say that I became obsessed with genealogy at that moment, it’s likely I always had it in me. From a young age, I had a penchant for science and math, a desire for order and details, and a curiosity for how the world works and organisms function. I developed an interest in chemistry and performed experiments in the basement of our home. I remember reading the Old Testament and underlining names and ages to provide myself with a framework to memorize the stories. In 1977, my grandfather, Max Faust, moved from his home in Brooklyn to an apartment in our town. My memories of him in our house include playing dominoes and Rummy-Q until he fell asleep upright, hearing his hearty “Amen” at the end of shabbat prayers, and listening to his quick and quiet recitation of the Haggadah in Hebrew during Passover. It was at those meals when his relatives or friends would visit and they would start speaking about the past in Yiddish. Even though I don’t understand Yiddish, I could tell that some of the stories they told were full of tragedy and some full of happiness. The fact that I was the only child who stayed at the table during those conversations while my brothers ran off in different directions signals to me that I always had this underlying interest in the history of my family. After the trip in 1998, I began looking for documents that supported family stories and confirmed vital events. Over the following 10 years, I gathered records from archives in the United States and Poland, asked relatives questions, and continued to expand the family tree. In 2009, after meeting others researching their Jewish ancestry from Rohatyn, I created the online group and website called the Rohatyn Shtetl Research Group. As more people joined the group, I realized members including myself had ancestral connections to neighboring towns which led me to rename the group, the Rohatyn District Research Group. In addition to managing the group and website, I currently sit on the board of directors for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois and for Gesher Galicia. This journey has led me to become friends with some extraordinary and talented people, visit interesting archives and libraries, and hear fascinating family stories of survival and resilience.