Soraya and Dani’s love story began in yoga class one Saturday morning in the spring of 2017. Their yin-yang relationship has seen the couple through both joyous and difficult times, and has always managed to bring the couple closer together. Dani is a professional jazz musician who moved to the United States from Israel at the age of 17 to attend Berkeley School of Music and pursue his dream. Soraya is an attorney focused on immigration and refugee law, born to a Jewish mother and an Iranian immigrant father and raised on the North Shore of Chicago. She also freelance writes on the side.

When the couple met, Soraya was in her late 30s and already undergoing cryopreservation of her eggs with the hope of one day having a family. Two years into their relationship, Soraya received a diagnosis of ovarian cancer and underwent a unilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. They considered themselves lucky to have found the cancer early, with no spread detected at the time. Her oncologist cleared her for continued fertility preservation with her remaining ovary and pregnancy, and the couple continued their fertility journey together, embryo banking, so they could start a family together after marriage. In 2020, the couple’s June wedding was postponed until October due to Covid. They considered postponing their wedding again in October, but didn’t want to wait any longer to fulfill their dreams of parenthood. They went forward with an outdoor micro wedding with most of their guests attending on Zoom. Shortly after, they did their first embryo transfer and in October 2021, a miracle happened – their daughter Hannah was born! She is almost three now and is the light of their lives.

In the spring of 2023, just before the couple planned to embark on a sibling journey, a CT scan showed Soraya’s ovarian cancer had spread. The couple paused their plans to expand their family to address Soraya’s health condition. She went through two additional surgeries that summer, diagnostic laparoscopy and an open abdominal debulking surgery, including the removal of her other ovary which put her in surgical menopause, splenectomy and omentectomy. In addition to her radical surgery, Soraya was put on hormone therapy and advised against another pregnancy due to her hormone sensitive cancer. Navigating survivorship has been difficult on the couple, but possibly the hardest part has been letting go of the desire to give their daughter a sibling.

Since then, Soraya’s cousin has been cleared to be the couple’s gestational carrier, filling them with hope, but the costs are prohibitive and include a legal agreement, psychological evaluation, diagnostic tests, medication, and the transfer itself. After paying upwards of $75k for 3 rounds of IUI, 8 rounds of IVF, and the transfer – none covered by insurance – plus some of the costs associated with having a gestational carrier, the couple’s resources have been exhausted, and they are so grateful to be 2024 recipients.

Soraya and Daniel are recipients of the Path to Parenthood Grant from the Jewish United Fund – Chicago.