About me

My name is Anne-Mieke Herrera. (Pronounced Anna-MEEkah Her-era) I grew up in a town of 25,000 people in The Netherlands named Sliedrecht.
I graduated from DaVinci College in 2003 with a degree in Occupational Therapy and worked within the social service field for a few years while saving money to travel the world.
I back-packed across Australia and New Zealand, walked the streets in Hong Kong and tanned on a beach in Fiji. After visiting ruins in Mexico I was afforded the opportunity to visit the United States on a work visa as an exchange social services worker.
There, in the forest town of Oakland, I met my husband to be. Him, and his three year old daughter. Insta-family! Suddenly I was a mom. I had said I was never going to have kids!  I mentioned that I grew up in a town of 25,000 people. That might sound huge. Geographically, it is not. There are 5000 people per square mile.  That density is not much different than LA.  I liked to hike. On trails. With people. And take pictures.  My new husband liked to wilderness camp and fish in northern Maine. Population density per square mile? 10. You read that right. 10  So there I am, a step mom, a wife, "settled down" on the other side of the earth from my family, immigration, and college transcript translation Oh My! My husband got a new job. I traveled back and forth from Europe, working in both places. We moved into a house. I started worked for the school system as a teacher.   Then we stared talking about having another baby. A year and a half later we had a beautiful baby girl. We knew that our family was complete. About 9 months after that we were visiting with friends who were looking for a surrogate. And that is how my journey to my Journey began.