Susan E. King: Online again!

Susan E. King is now the Genealogy Examiner at Examiner.com, which brings together experts writing on various topics. She's writing on general, not Jewish, genealogy.

Her new website is billed as "where genealogy and spirit connect."

Here's the story of her life-changing trip to Galveston in 1986.

Susan was the founder of JewishGen, one of the early and most successful social networking organizations in the genealogy community. Her new site states, "As genealogy emerges into a more than $2 billion industry, our discussions will focus on 'why' so many people are now engaged in genealogy."

Susan writes:

I've often wondered, as perhaps some of you have, why so millions of us have gotten so fixated on doing family research. The motivating factor certainly can't be the collection of names, places and dates. There must be something more deeply rooted, much more powerful that brings us all to this place.

During the 27 year journey of doing my own family research, I remember vividly the moment where the fireworks went off and the instant I made it a mission to learn more about my family. The more and more I traveled, the more and more I developed a better understanding of myself; my motivations and the spirit that drives me. There is no doubt that the lives of those that came before me, my ancestors, played a dramatic role in this development. Some good, some not so good!

She's decided to follow her passion and to look at genealogy through a different set of lenses. Her new path follows the thought that genealogy should begin to take on another dimension, one which fosters better understanding amongst each other and the different cultures of the world.

We live in both very exciting times and very troubling times. But we live in a time where we really do have an opportunity to change; change how we think and feel about ourselves; change how we think and feel about others. We have an opportunity to teach the next generations the importance of preservation, the importance of respect, and the importance of tolerance. I can think of no better modality than through the study and sharing of our genealogies, our research and through our feelings.

Writes Susan, "We each share a journey, different paths perhaps, some similar and some remarkably different. Our parents and their parents did as well."

Welcome back, Susan!