Twenty-five years ago, two people I loved more than almost anyone else sat across from me at my kitchen table and asked for something that would quietly redefine all of our lives.

They had tried everything. Specialists. Procedures. Hormone treatments. Months of cautious hope followed by crushing silence. Each failed attempt carved something out of them. By the time they came to me, their voices carried the exhaustion of people who had run out of options but not out of longing.

They asked if I would help them become parents.

It wasn’t a simple favor. It wasn’t a casual decision.

They wanted me to carry their child — to use my egg and her husband’s genetic material — because her body could not sustain a pregnancy. They told me I was their last possibility.

I went home that night and lay awake until dawn.

I thought about what it meant to carry a life and not keep it. I thought about boundaries, about attachment, about the invisible lines between generosity and permanence. And beneath all that, I thought about how deeply I loved them.

In the end, love outweighed fear.

I said yes.