The Joy of Uber Driving: A Wild Ride to Self-Love

by Yamini Redewill

Overview

Yamini Redewill is an Uber driver in San Francisco—one of a growing number of rideshare drivers around the world. What makes her unique is that she’s a seventy-nine-year-old single woman who views her Uber driving as a form of spiritual practice!

The Joy of Uber Driving chronicles the unexpected corkscrew twists and turns Redewill encounters on the road to love and happiness. How could she know that all those fabulous dreams she cherished as a younger woman were just illusions on the way to reality and would vanish like dust in the wind? But ultimately, her wild ride through life—which includes obsessive love on Catalina; sex, drugs, and alcohol in Hollywood; eleven years of celibacy in Buddhism, and Tantric sex and spirituality in India—helps her wend her way to her authentic self and to creative fulfillment in the winter of her life. In The Joy of Uber Driving, Redewill shares the wisdom that comes from living a full life of heart-centered passion, as well as the self-awareness that has allowed her to be the happy, confident, creative, and young “old broad” she now finds herself to be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631525674
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	06/25/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Born Frances Hamilton Redewill in 1939 in Oakland, CA, Yamini Redewill was given the name Ma Veet Yamini, meaning “going beyond the night,” by Bhagwan Shree Rashneesh in India in 1981. Redewill attended UC Berkeley and graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from UCLA in 1964. After first pursuing a career in acting and singing, she later rose to prominence as the head of wardrobe at CBS-TV and later as a freelance costumer and designer at various Hollywood studios. She later became a photographer and women’s empowerment advocate who created a new niche in photography with her Natural Goddess portraits of women over forty in nature. In 2014, Redewill compiled her best goddess portraits into a self-published book called The Natural Goddess: Portraits of True Beauty in Women Over 40, which included portraits of Diane Ladd, Connie Stevens, Marla Maples, and Stephanie Powers, along with such notable authors as Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ariel Ford, Lynn Andrews and others.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Forever Young May Your Wishes All Come True 5

2 My Heart Belongs to Daddy So Take a Hike, Laddie 11

3 That Old Black Magic Blinds Me with Love 24

4 Let Me Entertain You Pleeeze?! 29

5 What's Love Got to Do with It? Absolutely Nothing! 33

6 Strawberry Fields Forever Adventures in Alternate Realities 40

7 I Will Survive Goddammit! 46

8 If You Could Read My Mind You Probably Need a Psychiatrist 49

9 Isn't She Lovely A Gift for Another Mother 53

10 Somewhere Over the Rainbow A Lesson in Miracles 60

11 Happy Days Are Here Again In La-La Land 72

12 I'm a Believer My Fate Was Sealed When I Saw His Face 82

13 Up, Up, and Away To Unchartered Territory 99

14 I Feel the Earth Move It's a Seismic Awakening! 110

15 What I Did for Love And Love Is All There Is 126

16 I Can See Clearly Now An Artist and Dabbler in the Supernatural 129

17 The Age of Aquarius Starfair Visionary Arts Expo Is Birthed 135

18 She Works Hard for the Money The Art of Housecleaning 141

19 You've Got a Friend One Dies, One Is Born, and Two New BFFs 144

20 I've Got to Use My Imagination Musical Pillows and LED Shoes 149

21 Dream Weaver Humanimal Rises from the Ashes 152

22 Wind Beneath My Wings A Joyful Unexpected Reunion 159

23 Send in the Clowns Compliments of Match.com 166

24 Imagine A Retirement Community of Loving Friends 173

25 The Greatest Love of All My Soul's Purpose Revealed 177

26 What a Feeling I Took My Passion and Made It Happen 189

27 Finding My Way Back Home Who Knew It Would Be in Marin? 193

28 Be A Light unto Yourself 199

29 Hallelujah Says It All 205

About the Author 215

Editorial Reviews

2020 International Book Awards Finalist in Spirituality: Inspirational "A heartwarming and entertaining peek into the heart and soul of an Uber driver. Funny, poignant, and refreshingly honest, Yamini Redewill has made certain that we will never take a ride from someone in quite the same way!"
—Katherine Woodward Thomas, New York Times best-selling author of Calling in "The One"

"The Joy of Uber Driving is a wild, nostalgic 'soul retrieval' road trip that weaves true tales from Yamini Redewill's Uber driving experience (at age seventy-eight!) blended with her life-review-in-the-rearview-mirror stories. It skillfully blends humor, warmth, pathos, insight, and inspiration . . . and, at the very least, will give you an enormous respect for your next Uber driver."
—Kelly Sullivan Walden, dream expert and best-selling coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and Premonitions

"Uber drivers and passengers will enjoy Yamini Redewill's escapades as riders reveal their deep inner longings in the back seat of her Prius. Sometimes 'therapist' and sometimes 'cheerleader,' Redewill touches hearts as she shares stories from the lives of her passengers along with her own roller coaster journey to fulfillment."
—Randy Peyser, author of Crappy to Happy

"Yamini Redewill takes us on an insightful ride into her creative world, interweaving life experiences with those of her passengers. A must-read!"
—Judith Morton Fraser, MFT, author of What's So Good About "Bad" Feelings? and Grandmas Never Die

"Yamini Redewill has turned up the volume on her extraordinary life. You'll be riveted by this memoir. Her storytelling is at times intensely raw and insightful, and at other times unexpectedly hilarious, as she weaves in meaningful Uber stories with her own personal stories."
—Jill Lublin, international speaker, publicity strategist, and four-time best-selling author

"The evolution from victim-hood to self love is highlighted in this story of a 79 year old woman who loves spreading joy and conscious awareness through her daily service as an Uber driver. In The Joy of Uber Driving, Yamini pays tribute to each of her riders by relating their stories along with her own humor and compassion.”
—Marci Shimoff, #1 NY Times bestselling author of Happy for No Reason and Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul

“This is a portrait of one woman’s journey into self love that will reach to the very core of every woman’s heart. The raw honesty and insight Yamini shares with us through her challenges and interactions ignites the spark of hope in all us. You'll be taken over by her unexpected humor and her lightheartedness. Take the joyful ride and read this book, it will delight you!"
—Agapi Stassinopoulos, Wake Up to the Joy Of You

“In The Joy of Uber Driving, Yamini Redewill shares the wisdom that comes from living a full life of heart-centered passion, as well as the self-awareness that has allowed her to be the happy, confident, creative, and young ‘old broad’ she now finds herself to be. . . . A deftly written, thought provoking, and inherently fascinating read from cover to cover.”
—Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher