My name is Josemar Negreiros. I have decided to write this posting to share how I am healing my grief while driving for Uber and Lyft.

A bit about me: I am a Civil Engineer with an Architect soul. I have a small company in Brazil that works with the construction of houses. I live in San Diego, CA, where I have another company Live Cozy San Diego that operates in the field of Real Estate, hosteling, and tourism. In my free time, I drive for Uber and Lyft. I started doing this as a temporary “job” that would give me the opportunity not to have a boss or to not put me in a 9am to 5pm job condition with ten vacation days a year. That would kill me. I ran away from formal federal employment in Brazil that used to give me comfort and security, but it was killing my freedom and creativity. After the passing of my husband Jurgen Vanhauwe, who was just 42 years old when he had a heart attack while sleeping, I found out that sharing my love story with my passengers was the most significant healing to my devastated soul. The sharing is so amazingly powerful that my passengers started suggesting to me to write about my life.

Some days, besides the necessity of getting extra money to help me to pay my bills, and keep my comfortable life, what motivated me to get out of my bed was the opportunity to share my experience and touch some souls who had been in the same pain or who wanted to know about love. People want to talk about this!

I was born and raised in Brazil where I lived until my early 40’s. In my teenage years, my mom converted from the Catholic Church (although I don’t have in mind her ever taking me to mass) to a Pentecostal church. Although, people in my congregation were so lovely and I don’t remember any sermon that sent me to hell for being gay. Actually, I had no clue what I was until I finished college and my very best old friend came out to me as gay, and I said to him: “I think I am too.” I didn’t know what means being gay. I didn’t have a good time pretending to be straight. Those who suffer from bullying in school, who belong to a society or community that do not understand the sense of respect and love for others, know exactly what I am talking about. I used to be full of fear, and I didn’t like myself.

One of my missions, now, is to show the power of healing through love. Yes, Love. Unconditional Love. I will dissect the topic in future posts.

The reason I ended up in the USA is that when I was 39 years old, in 2006, and on vacation in Chicago, and more than tipsy, not to say drunk in a bar, I met my beloved Belgian husband. He had come out as a gay man just a few months before he met me. He was the happiest and the most enthusiastic person I had ever met. Our great love story will be the base of my blog. I went from “heaven to hell,” from a very comfortable life to very frugal living to experience the real meaning of love.

Jurgen had a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, specialized in Neuroscience. Born and raised in a conservative Belgian Catholic family. In 1999 when he was 25 years old, he moved to Chicago with his wife, who is one of my dear friends.

In 2012 Jurgen had an out of body experience. At that time we were about to celebrate six years together. He was under severe stress in his job, and in his personal life, he was struggling with the way of living in the USA. I could not get a resident visa here because gay marriage was not allowed at that time. Because of this, with a tourist visa, I could not stay in the country for more than six months after every entrance. One of our best friends was diagnosed with cancer and would not live much longer. Another one almost died. Jurgen’s grandfather passed away the year before. To make worse my sabbatical time from the federal government work that I had in Brazil was ending and I had to move back to Brazil until we could find a solution that would allow us to continue to be together. We had two options. To move to Brazil or to Europe where we could marry and work and live our lives.

Jurgen was a person with a unique personality and one of the purest hearts on Earth. Besides always trying to have fun in life, he was continually thinking about the meaning of some aspects of human life. As a scientist, he used to consider himself an agnostic person. After his out of body experience, that he had in our bathroom, our life changed completely. It was not an easy time for both of us. He turned into a medium or psychic, whatever you want to call. First, he thought he was getting crazy because, in addition to all the knowledge he had already, he expanded much more his understanding of life, quantum physics, meditation, sacred geometry, and all things related to what we call “holistic stuff.” He lived a full life. Most of us would need at least one hundred years to do what he did in only 42 years of living on Earth. His best legacy in my life is my Spiritual Awakening (please, please, please DO NOT relate this to any religion or Spiritual movement). What is it? There are different versions of it, but they are all based on discovering a new life fulfilled with love and self-realization. It is annoying to me when some gentle souls from all kinds of religions and spiritual movements tell me to think positive and positive things will happen to you. Is that true? Oh, come on!!! In this reality we live, if you have been misguided through false belief systems the way most of us have been since the beginning of our existence, you will never get that point of “blessing.” In future writing, I will share why I have decided to name this blog as the same name as one of Jurgen’s book, “Waking Up At Both Sides – Discover What You Couldn’t Ask.” I am so excited to start this and make you think more about this.

Have you ever had that feeling that you don’t know what you are doing here, why you came to life, and what is the meaning of the pain and continued suffering on Earth? That inner voice is kindly calling you from the deep of your heart saying: Hey! I am here! Let’s have fun and try to have a fulfilled life! Do you really think you came here to grow up, to be a slave of this survival mode system and die? Wake up!! You are more than you think you are. This blog will be “speckled and seasoned” with a narration of my beautiful love story and how I am healing myself just sharing it. It looks so cliché, but Love can heal.