My dream of having a child with the person I love has always been deeply meaningful to me. Today, that dream carries even greater significance because of everything I have experienced, overcome, and endured to get to this point in my life. I am applying for this fertility grant not simply because I want another child, but because I hope for the opportunity to experience pregnancy, birth, and raising a child in the loving, healthy, and supportive environment I always imagined. For ten years, I was in a domestic violence relationship with my former husband. During that marriage, I experienced financial, emotional, and physical abuse. I became a mother to three children, but motherhood did not look the way I had once imagined it would. I often felt as though I was navigating pregnancy, childbirth, and raising my children on my own, even though I was married. Those years were incredibly difficult, but they also taught me resilience, strength, and what it truly means to protect and love my children. After the birth of my third child in 2019, I made the difficult decision to undergo a bilateral salpingectomy because I carry the BRCA2 gene. This decision was made with my health and my children’s future in mind. My mother passed away from ovarian cancer at only 56 years old after living for three years following her initial stage 4 diagnosis. Watching my mother battle such a devastating disease profoundly affected me and shaped many of the choices I have made regarding my own health and future. Having my fallopian tubes removed significantly changed the way I would eventually be able to conceive, and I never imagined that years later I would meet someone who would make me want to pursue that possibility again. Today, my life looks completely different. I am in the most amazing relationship with my fiancé, Justin. He is loving, supportive, compassionate, and the partner I always hoped I would one day have. Together, we have created a relationship built on trust, respect, safety, and genuine love. For the first time, I can envision having a child not out of fear or uncertainty, but out of love and excitement for the future. Justin and I would love the opportunity to have a child of our own. Because of my bilateral salpingectomy and BRCA2 status, however, conceiving naturally is not an option for us. Fertility treatment would give us a chance to pursue something that many people can experience without having to think twice about it: the chance to become pregnant and welcome a child together. For me, this is about much more than becoming a mother again. It is about experiencing pregnancy, birth, and raising a child the way I always imagined motherhood could be—with a loving partner beside me, sharing the excitement, the challenges, the milestones, and the everyday moments. I want to experience the joy of preparing for a baby with someone who is emotionally present and genuinely excited to build a family with me. I want to experience a pregnancy surrounded by love rather than fear. I want to bring a child into a home where love, security, and kindness are at the center of family life. I know that my journey to this point has been unconventional. I have faced circumstances I never expected and made difficult decisions to protect my health and my children. Yet those experiences have also made me appreciate the gift of family in a way I never could have understood otherwise. I have learned not to take love, health, or the opportunity to build a future for granted. This grant would mean the world to Justin and me. It could turn a dream that currently feels financially out of reach into a possibility. More importantly, it would give me the opportunity to create a family chapter defined not by the trauma of my past, but by the love and hope I have found in my present. I cannot change the years I spent in an abusive marriage, nor can I change the medical circumstances that make fertility treatment necessary. What I can do is choose the future I want. I want that future to include Justin, our family, and the possibility of welcoming a child into a home filled with the love, stability, and security that every child deserves.