On June 26, 2025, we welcomed home our beautiful daughter Anayara Anne Harder. By this point in our adoption journey with her, we knew she was incredibly sick and we had been told we were given fraudulent information regarding the health of our child. We had the option to dissolve our adoption while still in India, but just sharing this part of the story makes us feel sick. Anayara was always meant to be ours for many reasons we believe are true signs from God. Before we had even been home a full week, our doctor directly admitted us into the ICU. Less than two weeks home, we were given a devastating diagnosis that we had feared since we held her in our arms. Our daughter did not have the blood disorder we were told about upon being matched with her. She has a severe brain injury that has now caused refractory epilepsy on both sides of her brain.

What has felt like a desperate search to find answers to help relieve her seizure burden, has caused us to fear more that she may never reach adulthood. Anayara has not responded to three medications, has been disqualified from Clinical Studies we have investigated and her seizure burden is so high, we have seen healthy areas of tissue now being impacted. Anayara has compromised airways that causes her to require support from a BiPap while she sleeps and multiple breathing treatments and chest percussions through out the day. Anayara requires support from a feeding tube due to how low tone her upper airways are. These airway challenges increase her already higher risk of SUDEP. As much as it devastates us, we had to make the most gut wrenching decision to hold Anayara's quality of life to the highest we could help her achieve, and give her the chance of living a life where she would know a seizure free day. In her short little life, we can assume Anayara has never known a seizure free day due to the nature of her brain injury. We are now with the best option for refractory seizure freedom with her severity of brain injury that comes with the biggest risk. Anayara will have a Functional Hemispherectomy on August 14th, 2026. Once she is discharged from the hospital, we will spend an estimated month or longer in a children?s rehabilitation hospital. The expectations we have been educated about is that recovery for each child undergoing this surgery falls on a large spectrum with good reason to remain hopeful.

We created this campaign to help Ana now and extend into her future. We pray she can reach adulthood. How beautiful for her would it be if we could all showcase what she has taught us to be, Joyfully Strong. We hope others will join us to wear our Joyfully Strong shirts and be reminded how we can remain Joyfully Strong when faced with a challenging circumstance. Anayara?s infectious smile is the proof we get to witness daily that she is the true definition of Joyfully Strong.

Profits we make from this campaign will go towards buying equipment for Anayara that will help us give her a higher quality of life such as a Robotic Gait Trainer. Putting the profits of this campaign towards equipment will help set both our children up for their dreams when we can no longer be the primary caregivers should Anayara continue to need 24/7 support.  

We can?t wait to see anyone who wishes to wearing a Joyfully Strong shirt. If you are inclined, share how you are Joyfully Strong to connect further to learn being Joyfully Strong doesn?t always mean you have to have a positive day, and no one has to do these things alone. We hope to make a book for Anayara with pictures of others wearing these shirts with us. We can collect them thru social media using the hashtag #JoyfullyStrongforAnayara and tagging us or by reaching out to us for our email.

Let?s be Joyfully Strong for Anayara!

Our little Anayara's fist that inspired our Joyfully Strong design.