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.