After 52 years of emotional isolation, I became a single father through surrogacy. Sara’s birth forced me to reinvent myself — and in an unexpected way, she ended up teaching me the very lesson John Lennon once taught the world: All You Need Is Love—
There is something extremely destructive about spending your entire life — 52 years in my case — completely disconnected from the world and from society, denying love and emotion, stripping yourself of any real chance of forming meaningful relationships with other people.
And yet, for me, it was also the most comfortable way to live.
Locking myself inside my home.
Praying that no one would want to come in.
And if possible, not answering phone calls either — to me they were all unnecessary and bothersome.
The best periods of my adult life were the ones in which I was forced to stay inside my home, confined within my own four walls. Two of those periods stand out clearly in my memory: the year I was unemployed during the COVID pandemic, and the month and a half when I underwent three surgeries and isolated myself at home to recover and heal.
For me, there is no greater satisfaction than spending all of my hours watching my favorite TV series and movies, playing PlayStation for hours on end, skipping meals, sleep, and anything else that interrupts the flow of the game. Those were the days when I felt I was living life to its fullest, when the human battery inside me felt completely charged all the time.
Ever since I was a child, friends never really interested me. I always preferred my own company.
I never thought about the consequences — I just wanted to escape, to shut myself off from the world.
The reasons for this lifestyle — which in many ways was also forced upon me — were partially described in one of my previous posts and may be described more fully in future ones. This is how I lived my entire life, for as long as I can remember.
The Decision to Have a Child
At some point around the age of 48, I decided to embark on the ultimate adventure a person can take — especially a single man who is probably already in the second half of his life: bringing a child into the world as a single father.
I assume there were several reasons for this decision: the fear of being alone in old age, the desire to pass on the modest property I had accumulated to someone of my own flesh and blood, and the wish to give my parents a grandchild — preferably a daughter whom I could name after my mother, who had always been the center of my life.
But if I’m being honest with myself, the main reason I entered the surrogacy process was the desire to start my life over — in a sense — this time in the right, healthier, more normal way.
I fantasized about dedicating my entire life to raising my child so that she would never turn out like me.
I wanted to use my strange life experience so that all the many mistakes and unpleasant events that had accompanied me throughout my life would not become part of her story.
I was incredibly excited when I began the surrogacy process. I was tense with anticipation, filled with hope for what lay ahead — the bright future that seemed to be waiting just around the corner.
In short, I dreamed of changing my life completely, if only so that my child’s destiny would be dramatically different from my own.
A Blog Without Filters
As I have promised again and again, this blog has no filters. Everything is transparent. I am no longer hiding.
What remained sealed inside me for 52 years is now coming out, in a way and at a pace that will allow me to deal with it.
The lifestyle I had escaped into made me addicted to isolation, to solitude, to silence — and when Sarah was born, everything ended. All at once.
As you can probably imagine, it was not easy for me. The change I had to undergo was dramatic and extreme — and at my age, almost MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.
Fortunately, the first stage was relatively gentle.
Straight from the maternity ward at Rambam Hospital, I went to a one-month “training period” at my parents’ home, where my mother taught me the basics. Beyond that, she shared the burden with me, which helped tremendously.
I could simply coordinate with her: Sarah would be under her supervision while I retreated into a room with my movies and music.
Becoming a Father 24/7
Only after a month did I truly begin to feel like a real parent, when Sara and I moved into our own apartment, close to my parents’ home. That was when I truly understood what it meant to be a father 24/7, with no shortcuts and no breaks.
That’s when things started to become difficult, because for the first time in my life, the concept of “me” essentially disappeared. The realization that there was no more solitude, no more disconnection, no more escaping reality through movies and video games — that there was no longer “Yaniv” as an independent entity, but rather Yaniv as Sara’s father, a tiny human being who is constantly in the house, completely dependent on him and requiring his full attention every second of every day.
This was an incredibly challenging learning experience.
It wasn’t a small adjustment in my personality or a gradual change that simply happened on its own.
I was essentially forced to reinvent myself.
Sara was in my apartment, in my home — the place that had always been my refuge from the world, from reality, from life itself. A miniature being that had attached itself to my life and had become its very essence, forever.
Taking care of Sara consumed all the time and energy I once used to escape into movies, music, and PlayStation. I felt trapped, like a fish caught in a net.
Yet the situation was still somewhat manageable as long as I was on parental leave. At that time Sara was only a few months old and still slept a lot, which allowed me to catch my breath occasionally and get some sleep — even sleeping late in the morning as long as she woke up late as well.
Returning to Work
The real problem began when I returned to work about a month ago.
At that point, my sense of self almost disappeared completely.
I leave the house at six-thirty in the morning for work, devote myself entirely to my job, and then return in the afternoon to my second boss — Sara.
I stay with Sara until she finally falls asleep, usually around eleven at night. At that exact moment I jump into bed myself, hoping to fall asleep quickly, only to wake up several times during the night to feed her or to put the pacifier that fell out back into her mouth.
There is no doubt about it — this is the most difficult and challenging period of my 52 years, and sometimes it feels like it might be too much for me.
So How Do I Manage?
The answer is very simple, at least in theory.
Love.
Along with all the seemingly impossible changes came the transformation I had secretly longed for my entire life, even though I had done everything possible to deny it until it became, for me, an abstract and almost alien concept that didn’t exist in reality.
Without even intending to, Sara taught me what love is. What emotion is. Because of what I felt toward her immediately, I reconnected with myself — slowly — as if I were closing emotional gaps that had existed for decades, since the days when I was a shy and frightened child unable to cope with the horrors of the world.
The strangest thing of all is that despite a lifetime spent suppressing the emotion and love inside me, thanks to Sara they became the most natural thing in the world for me, as if they had always been there deep inside my subconscious, waiting for me to find them — waiting for Sara to help me find them.
Whenever I feel that I can’t go on any longer and that I’ve reached the limits of my strength, all I have to do is look at the sweet round face of my little princess, and instantly everything becomes more colorful, lighter, and more natural.
All You Need Is Love
One of the most gifted and talented musicians in the history of music — who now seems to me to have also been one of the wisest people who ever lived — once wrote a seemingly simple song. A song that sounds almost as if it had been written by a child. No grand words, no complicated rhymes — just five words repeated over and over again, words that became a universal anthem uniting all of humanity.
Five words that define the very essence of our existence on this planet:
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
That great musician was murdered, but his legacy will live on forever.
And now I understand this better than ever.
Thanks to Sara, I truly reinvented myself.
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Read Next
If you’d like to read more about Sara and our life together, here are two more posts you might enjoy:
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