Dear prospective surrogate, 

We are V (she/her), and N(he/him). We live in Massachusetts, a vibrant city filled with people from all walks of life and many universities. Both of us work full time – V as a cancer genomics researcher and N as a software engineer. We both grew up in India in different cities and cultural backgrounds and moved to the US in 2012 for grad school, just a few months after we had started dating. Our relationship is the most important foundation of our lives that allows us to grow and challenge ourselves while also truly feeling at home. Several trying circumstances over the years have taught us to deeply love and appreciate each other and also offer that love to our friends, chosen family, and community. We live with our recently adopted kitty cat (his name is Mrs. Pretty) who has already been giving us a small taste of parenting with his exuberant personality. Caring for him has brought us closer together in new ways and we are eagerly awaiting more love in our lives that will come when we welcome our child into this world.

We are writing to you together as well as individually in the hope that this will help you understand our vulnerable and sensitive sides and help you feel comfortable and motivated to choose us in this journey.

Our Journey

Both of us are only-children to our respective parents, who still live in India. Even though we grew up in very different cities, family-values, and cultures (we didn’t even speak the same language at home!), we met during college and became instant friends. N was drawn to V’s genuineness and curiosity while V instantly recognized N’s softness and playfulness. However, what truly connects us is how much we have helped lift each other up, while still holding on to the qualities that drew us together. Owing to differences and culture and caste, there was significant opposition to us getting married that we had to overcome while protecting our relationship. We have seen many relationships fall apart under such pressure so feel extremely grateful for making it through and do not take for granted what we have. 

When we first started dating (young adults just about to graduate college), we didn’t really know what a long term relationship looked like. In our cultures, dating was frowned upon so we had to figure out a path for ourselves. Moving to the US was a blessing because we would get space to understand each other, but the journey was far from easy. About a month into moving to the US, N had an emergency surgery which he recovered from with V’s care. Only 3 weeks later, V had a life-threatening bike accident that left her with a severe concussion and several big questions about her health. N stepped up to care for her and find answers. This largely defined our first few months after moving to the other side of the world with no family and a stressful first semester of grad school. This start would be testing for any relationship and surely was for ours too, but we persevered and learned to trust each other in new ways. Over the next few years, we would tackle several other distressing health challenges (for both Nt and V) where we didn’t have answers, we were in pain, often disabled, and certainly short on support. We persevered through that too and made room for joy and lightness while also doing our best to grow in our careers and pursue our passions. V is a dancer and an experienced performer while N is an active member of his workplace union and a fierce advocate for workers’ rights and social justice. 

Our hardest challenges were yet to come though. The pandemic turned our lives upside down making us very isolated. We were simultaneously dealing with a debilitating endometriosis and adenomyosis flareup for V. After months of advocacy to seek the right diagnosis and then find the right doctor, V was finally able to get a life-changing surgery (including a hysterectomy) in 2022 that for the first time in her life freed her from pain. This allowed both of us to dream and want more from life. It also encouraged V to change careers and both of us to move across the country to Massachusetts. Life finally seemed sorted, until misfortune struck in the form of an early stage breast cancer diagnosis for V that upended our lives once again. However, going through the cancer scare also made us realize that we had a deep desire to channel our love into a child. Our difficult childhoods and health challenges had perhaps kept us from acknowledging this desire all these years even though we both adore children and have received so much love from our friends’ kids. Every challenge we have faced has made us fall in love in new ways and given us much confidence that we can not only raise a child but also do so with love and compassion.

Values

The saying goes “it takes a village” – we are deeply aware of how our lives are not lived in isolation but are deeply impacted by our community, and in return we impact our community. Both of us identify as queer, even though we present as a heterosexual couple. Our growth as individuals and as a couple has been intimately supported by our chosen family, many of whom have their own experiences with marginalization and challenges navigating through a difficult world. As immigrants to the US, it has been an ongoing journey to lay down roots in an increasingly volatile political climate. What this means for us is that we put out a lot of care and support for our loved ones. Our relationships aren’t superficial but built around shared struggles. We know that nobody is perfect and we believe in offering grace to people who are honestly trying to do better. We also feel most comfortable when people are kind with us and allow us the space to be our imperfect selves. We are not afraid of difficult conversations and do put in effort to have them with our friends, co-workers, and most importantly with each other. 

V puts in a great deal of effort to check in on the people she cares about and help them directly to the best of her ability. She is a really good listener and remembers small details that matter. N is constantly thinking about how to create spaces that allow people to express themselves freely and safely. He is creative and has the ability to help people see their struggles more clearly. Together, our complementary skills and interests have helped us form deep bonds with people and also introduce our loved ones to each other. Nothing gives us more joy than seeing our loved ones thrive, and it is exactly what helps us thrive in return.

On Parenting

For us, having a child is meant to really expand our world and challenge us to grow in ways we don’t even know of yet. As parents, we believe that our role is to create a loving, nourishing, and safe environment that allows our child to fully express themselves and find their own happiness. We want to pass on softness, compassion, and resilience to our child. We know that we can’t protect them from everything, but we can surely equip them so they never have to suppress parts of themselves to survive in the same way that we had to do growing up.

This environment necessarily includes all the trusted adults in our life who will be key to our own support system as well as be there for our child. The other day, we had an emotional conversation about creating our will because the agency required it, and it was very relieving and heartening to realize that there are multiple people we would readily trust as guardians were something to happen to us. In this way, the surrogacy journey is really forcing us to re-evaluate our lives, priorities, and who and what makes our lives beautiful. Just like we fight for our relationship and our community, we will fight for our child in every way possible. This includes doing our best to create a world that we would want not only our child but all children to inherit.

On a Lighter Note

All the seriousness aside, we also really love to have fun. Our philosophy is simple – fun can never be forced, and fun should feel nourishing (as opposed to draining). For us, that includes doing art together, settling down after all chores and having a deep conversation, hosting a friend at home and cooking for them, going to a movie at the theater, trying new foods outdoors, reading, and more. Lately, we have been trying new ways to do fun things with our friends, which has been helping us build community in a new place in a sustainable way. Several of our friends have children – from newborns to teenagers – and we get so much joy from connecting with these kids and seeing the world through their eyes. Some months ago we stayed with our dear friends in California for over a week and deeply bonded with their 2 year old – it feels extremely special to know that she still remembers us even after leaving – just like we remember every little moment of joy she gave us. We can’t wait to have that in our life too and learn all the new ways our child will teach us to find more joy, play, meaning, and purpose in our life.

We mentioned our cat earlier – we’re still getting used to him as he is to us, but we’re also having a lot of fun figuring out his needs and cooking up games to play with him. Our love for cats goes all the way back to the early days of our relationship when we bonded over the love we had for cats we met on the streets of Berkeley. Since then, we’ve loved countless cats and thought of a dozen names for the cat we finally adopted (Mrs. Pretty was not on the list). Bringing a cat into our life has truly unlocked new dimensions of our personalities. While we wish we could have done it sooner, we really needed to heal from numerous health challenges and make space in our life to get to this point.

Vision for the Future

We hope that our letter to you has painted a picture of the kind of energy we bring. We would like nothing more than to share this with you and for you to enrich us with yours and your loved ones’ energy. We know that surrogacy is not an easy journey and we’re just getting started. We know that there will be challenges, difficult conversations, and a period of time where we will slowly get to know you better as a person. We know that trust takes time to build and it cannot be forced. Our approach would be to always take discomfort (yours and our own) seriously, talk about it, and keep moving forward. We are not afraid of expressing our feelings and making space for your feelings. We would like to learn about your life – your aspirations, fears, what you like, dislike, find annoying, etc. and hope you feel the same way towards us. If we are located close to you, we would be more than happy to be part of your support system through this journey. Even if we are located further away, we would make ourselves very available to help you navigate any challenges that come up in a kind and respectful way. If this matches up with your expectations and preferences, we hope you will choose to work with us.

V’s Words

Hello! Thank you so much for considering us. I am so honored and touched. I am very excited and nervous about this journey and I wanted to share with you some words from my heart. When I had my hysterectomy in Jan 2022, I could not even imagine that there would be a time in the near future where I actually felt better and would want to love more. Life was really difficult leading up to the surgery. When the surgeon said that having a hysterectomy would rid me of 98% of my symptoms, I was stunned. It forced me to think if I really wanted to let go of the possibility of having a child in the future. I was struggling with the decision but it was N’s words that convinced me to go through the hysterectomy. He wanted to see me live again and he wanted his wife back from the clutches of these twin diseases. While going into the surgery I feared that I was going to regret it when I woke up. But I did not. And that continued for sometime. But as life started getting better, I felt the desire to raise a child with N for the first time. That was when I started to experience a lot of grief and yearning. Still, life seemed much better than before and I didn’t think much about it. And then in 2024, I got the news of the pre-malignant breast tumors. On the one hand, I was confronted with my mortality but on the other, I could no longer deny my desire to love a child with Nishant. We had mostly decided that having a child was not on the cards for us, so when I first told N, he was touched and moved but also shocked. It took us a while to move through our emotions about it while also figuring out the complicated details of IVF and surrogacy. We are both now feeling empowered and ready to grow our family together. Our cat is definitely teaching us a lot about parenting but I won’t say that we know what it is to be parents to a human child. What I do know is that we will give it our best – to the child and to you. We will be with you every step of the way. I hope I can hold your hand as you give us the greatest gift. 

Lots of love, 

V

N’s Words

Hi! Thank you so much for reading about our journey and considering us. For much of my life, I did not think I would be a parent. It just didn’t seem to be for me. I was too afraid to be a bad parent. Given all the challenges V and I had been facing together, having a child also seemed quite impractical. It is a testament to our personal growth and the growth of our relationship that we find ourselves not only wanting to be parents, but also going through the surrogacy journey. I remember my shock from the moment V first told me she wanted to have a child. I remember feeling a rush of love for her, but also feeling terrified. On the one hand, I really wanted us to prioritize our immediate health needs, but on the other hand I could see how deep V’s yearning was to give our love to a child. I felt torn and it took me many months to begin accepting that we could do this. Those were some difficult months as we figured out cancer treatment and IVF cycles, while also navigating a difficult situation with my job. We were extremely fortunate to not need more than two cycles, but going ahead with the surrogacy journey still felt daunting – emotionally, financially, logistically. Even though we had learned a lot more over the past year and knew how to go about the process, I found myself questioning whether this was for us. Today I’m in a very different place. I’m still very terrified but I also have a lot of faith in myself and in us. Looking back, we have built a life that is so full of love, care, and nourishment that I feel excited to think about how much we can do for our child and help them thrive. Having played with our friends’ children over the past few months has strengthened that conviction. I used to think I didn’t understand children, but I’ve been able to recognize all the intuitive ways in which I actually can, and very importantly, how much I want to do it. While there is still a lot to learn, one truth I know is that this journey is only possible and makes sense because it is with V and coming from a place of love. Even parenting our cat together has only strengthened that conviction. V once told me that babies are a “force of nature” and they will force you to change. I believe in that. For you to be part of this journey with us means a lot and we will do our best to support you through every step of the way. 

Lots of love, 

N

Thank you for taking the time to learn about us 

With love, 

V + N