Your Love Is The Key 
Dr. Jurgen Vanhauwe was born to a conservative catholic Belgian family in 1973. He was my husband of ten years, and we shared our lives between the USA, Brazil, and Belgium. Our whirlwind of a fantastic relationship started in 2006 after we met drunk in a gay bar in Chicago.
After I met him, my empty and lonely life turned into a rollercoaster full of emotions, and I felt alive like never before. It didn’t take me long to realize we were literally the opposite of each other, as stark as black and white. I was almost 40 years old, and due to my fundamentalist evangelical, I used to believe a God would kill me or send me to hell for being gay.
On the other hand, Jurgen was like a kid with a one-day pass ticket to Disneyland in hand to play. After coming out to his ex-wife and family, he was willing to be happier. It was a beautiful sunny day in Belgium when he introduced me as his boyfriend to his entire family. I will always remember his confidence and pride when he held my hand and walked with me to a lunch party at his brother’s house.
With a generous personality, he used to say, “If you need me, please, do not send me a text message. Just ring at my door. We are always ready for you with a good bottle of wine or champagne,” and that was true. He would be at the door smiling to you even if you had just woke us up from our ‘sacred’ Sunday afternoon nap.
I consider myself a quiet and cautious person while he was a hyperactive human. I’d like to think that some humans vibrate on a higher frequency of energy that most of us do.
As a scientist, he used to consider himself an agnostic person. That all took a dramatic turn after his out of body experience in 2012. He turned into a medium (psychic) at a span of only four years as well as an artist.
At first, he thought he was going crazy. All of a sudden, he was “being taught by entities” an absurd amount of information about quantum physics, meditation, sacred geometry, holistic stuff, and profound life philosophies, to mention a few. The funny thing is that Jurgen was a staunch opponent of any kind of religion or spirituality. The professed idea that ‘everybody has free-will’ and that ‘if we think positive, positive things will happen to us’ or ‘we have to follow this and that in other to whatever,’ NEVER resonated with him.
“Is that true? Try to preach these ideas to a crazy homeless person,” he would instigate people who would gratuitously throw those ideas at him.
During those very intense and tumultuous four years, Jurgen wrote two books. Inspired by the incredibly enlightening info that was being “downloaded into his brain,” he wrote about new and deep insights. Such things as nature, reality as we perceive it, and the game of life. Waking up on both sides & The Chronicles of All-Time: Remember to Forget, were written to help those who have been struggling to live a happy and fulfilled life. With intriguing humor, he describes the process of spiritual awakening through the scope of his own hilarious and painful experiences; of when he was pulled out of his body into “Heaven.”
The many world views presented in his books allow one to see the many challenges and opportunities in this ever-changing universe for their personal growth to live a meaningful life and not turn into a living zombie. Jurgen describes parts of his journey in a beautiful narrative that is sprinkled with divine insights and loftiness; He merges the knowledge of the known with the unknown, which he obtained through being tutored by his Divine Source. All presented with love, gratitude, and appreciation for all. His ex-wife and I have developed a very loving and respectful friendship since we met – while they were still going through the divorce. She was the first one I called when I first heard of his passing in 2016 to what I call ‘another dimension.’
The wish to love and be loved is an innate characteristic of human beings.
In my case, the fear and guilt I used to have in life did not allow me to flavor with happiness and peace of mind such a beautiful time of my life.
This site is to share some facts of my life, with and without Jurgen, which I find interesting. Especially the so-called unconventional ones because they do not follow the “correct life protocol” that is passed on us from generation to generation. Life is based on the teachings we have acquired through family, religion, or the society in which we are inserted.
A time traveler, like he used to call himself, or an Angel, as what he has become to me now, it does not matter. I just feel honored to have had the opportunity to share our love experience together.
I have no intention of judging what is right or wrong here. But a neutral look at the information on this page could be useful for you. Enjoy it!!
Love is one of the most powerful feelings that run the entire Universe, not just this world where we live. It has created and fulfilled everything you can imagine, our World, our galaxy, The Universe, All-That-is. Love goes beyond our comprehension, and it breaks all barriers of time, race, ethnicity, age. When love is in charge, nothing goes wrong and “miracles” happen.
We experience love in different ways, like enjoying our family, our kids, our parents, our pets, our jobs, our friends. However, most of us are seeking that special love that comes through a romantic relationship with a partner. That one who you want to get old together, to buy a home, to constitute a family (if you want it), to share the special moments together, like traveling, watching movies eating popcorn on the sofa, taking a nap, cuddling, sharing our deepest secrets, fears, dreams and the list goes on and on…. Some people call a soul mate or a twin flame.
It is possible to live and to be happy alone, but we like to share our life experience with others. It is so fun to hang out with the ones we love! Isn’t it? Although some people insist on living like they are plants, we are social beings, we have divine sparkling souls, and we all came here to have fun.
So why sometimes it is not that easy to find that one who can make our eyes shine when we first meet? That one who makes us smile when we feel sad or lost in our thoughts. That one who can be in complete silence close to us, but we still feel a sense of completeness, an understanding of the security that an anchor gives to a captain of an anchored boat on a stormy night. That person that, no matter what happens, we can count on, that makes us feel so special, and that gives us happiness and a feeling of fulfillment.
I am not saying that we need someone to be happy, neither that that person is responsible for our happiness. We are accountable for our happiness and our soul fulfillment. No one can do that for us. So please do not say things like “I need to find my other half.” You are full. You are entire.
So why so many people are hopeless about love or the number of the broken heart is so high? I am entirely sure that the high number of divorces and separation nowadays is because of our frustration, our intransigence. We are becoming so selfish, so uncompromising and so lost in the trap of our mind that we blame the other for our dissatisfaction. We are always right! Our partner is responsible for giving us this and that, and if he/she is not doing what we think he/she was supposed to do, we assume that the relationship is not working and the best thing to do is to put an end to it. That simple. Like changing a t-shirt. Some couples keep their marriage just for some convenience. They probably have kids, business or they are afraid of being judged by society (or by themselves) for their “failure.” However, their souls are no longer connected. They are probably living at the same house, but the partner is more like a “pillow on the bed” or as an ornamental plant.
The “perfect” one does not exist. I am sorry. Not in the meaning that our society forces us to seek, because like my beloved husband says in his book Waking Up at Both Sides ‘We are all perfect in our imperfection’. I love this statement. Doesn’t it bring you relief? It is like taking a huge rock out of our shoulder. We don’t need to be perfect. We are all in the same game of life, learning how to live, how to survive, how to love, and how to be loved. We are all kids in this big “playground.”
Let me share with you a little episode of my love story. I was 39 years old, lonely in my balcony in Brazil when I asked the Universe for me to find my love, my soulmate. I wanted to love and to be loved. I wanted to know the meaning of love. Six months later I was on vacation in Chicago, drunk in a bar when I met Jurgen. We had good and bad moments together, but love and respect were always there. However, only on a specific day, I felt the meaning of that love. We were in the darkest time of our lives. We lost our money, our close friends, almost losing our home and had no support from some of our relatives. One day, after Jurgen leaving a hospital with more bills to pay, we were both sad and hopeless. To the point of we had no meaning for living anymore. Jurgen was feeling miserable and lost in his thoughts, and I was desperately trying to find a way to solve our problems. As an instinct to protect him, I just hugged him and said to him: “Honey, we can lose everything and everyone, but you have me, and I have you, and I will make whatever is necessary to protect you, because I love you so much, I love you the way you are.” On that moment, nothing was more important to me than our love. Also, I felt for the first time in my life the meaning of Unconditional Love. That was the Universe’s answer to my pray made back in my balcony in 2006. I am writing this one today, 3 years after his passage for another dimension, and trust me: the love is bigger than ever and it will fulfill my soul forever…
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.
Thanks for joining me!
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Your Love Is The Key 