Surrogacy Fund for Colin & Hark
Hello, everybody! Thanks for watching our video! We're grateful for all the support in our goal to reach $30,000 and appreciate every contribution -- no matter the amount! If you've already donated or are financially unable to, please share this page with your friends and family. With each new person who sees our video, our journey to bring home a baby gets a little closer, so thank you so much!!
My name is Hark, and my husband is Colin. We met each other online back in July 2011. Our fated meeting almost never occurred, because I had meant to cancel my online dating subscription at the time. Luckily, I forgot to. A few months later, we stumbled upon each other’s profiles and decided to go on our first date. We agreed to email each other the next day on a place to meet up. Several hours later, I thought of a restaurant to recommend and went to message him...only to find an email from Colin suggesting the exact same restaurant! I took it as a very positive sign!
The first thing that really broke the ice on our first date was our shared love of Harry Potter. The second thing was our deep desire to have children some day. (I think we knew that was typically not an ideal topic to discuss on a first date, but it worked out for us just fine!) We started picking out names of hypothetical children two years into the relationship. We even got into a heated debate on the “proper” way to read our future children bedtime stories. Three years later, Colin teamed up with 10 of my friends for 6 months to plan a surprise all-day Harry-Potter-themed proposal! My response was, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good -- Yes!”
We then got married on the 4th of July 2015! One week prior to that, Colin was in front of the Supreme Court steps in Washington DC when gay marriage was legalized nationwide! We knew that our journey to fatherhood would be a long and arduous one, so we immediately began the process shortly after tying the knot. This included combining both of our last names so that everyone in our future family would share the same one. With my last name being Tagunicar and his being Verbesey, we became the Verbicars! Despite all the effort in the name change, we couldn’t be happier with our new name! Nobody has mispronounced our last name for once -- something we had both experienced throughout our lives!
Colin’s insurance provides fantastic coverage for IVF -- 90% up to $100,000. Unfortunately, as two gay men, we do not benefit from any of this coverage. As a result, we have been advocating for “equal and equitable” opportunities to allow the LGBT community to start their own families. We have reached out to our insurance companies, employers, the State of Virginia, Congress, Oprah, Ellen Degeneres, and The White House…and have come up empty. We will continue to reach out. We believe that change will come nationwide -- just like it did for gay marriage. We hope that our advocacy will prevent future LGBT couples from facing the the financial struggles we’ve experienced. In the meantime however, the results will not be timely enough for us to benefit. This is why we were seeking help -- to create our own magical miracle!
A close friend of mine volunteered to be our surrogate a week after we were engaged (long before we were even married), knowing that we desired to have children some day. After two years of trying to update our insurance policy, a local radio station was sponsoring a contest with a local fertility clinic to award one lucky couple up to $25,000 towards having a child. We thought this would be our chance -- that our wish for parenthood could finally be fulfilled! We entered the contest and were told a few weeks later that we were one of the semi-finalists! Unfortunately, by this time, our surrogate decided that she could no longer commit. As a result, we ended up not moving further in the contest. We appreciated our previous surrogate’s honesty and have no ill feelings towards her. Nevertheless, we found ourselves with yet another challenge to overcome. 
Fortunately, Cait, my friend from college, enabled us to find another surrogate, Melina. This extremely generous woman is the mother of three children. She had been looking to become a surrogate in order to help pay for some of her student loans. She shares a lot of our geek interests, and we adore her! She is our guardian angel during this very difficult time!
The proceeds from this campaign will go towards helping to compensate Melina, as well as to help subsidize the IVF process. Any support you are willing to provide would be greatly appreciated! We will continue to advocate for equal and equitable opportunities for all couples -- gay and straight -- to have a chance at starting families of their own. So please share this page with your loved ones!
Thank you so much for listening to our story. We can’t wait to share with you a happy ending to this chapter, and the beginning of a new one!