Why we moved to Costa Rica, Part 8: I trip and fall into the world of energy healing.

Years of childhood trauma had wired my brain all wrong. My nervous system was stuck in fight or flight, operating in survival mode for so long it had become my "normal".

I was desperate to do better for my children. I wanted to give them the childhood I never had, but I wasn't handling the stress of baby number 2 well, and the cracks were starting to show.

My tolerance for normal toddler behavior was incredibly low. The noise, mess, and chaos felt like an assault to my nervous system. My heart pounding, cortisol pumping - but there was no danger to flee from. Just a toddler spilling cheerios and a baby whining for his milk.

I was struggling to stay calm, overreacting to everything. The first time I raised my voice at Felix I watched in horror as his precious face crumpled up and his eyes filled with tears. I promised I would never do it again. But I did. Terrifed I'd become out of control like my father, I persisted in my journey for healing. I had to be better for them.

Then I stumbled upon an interview with Gail Lynn - also a woman in her 30s, she had been diagnosed with heart disease from living with chronic stress. She too had tripped and fallen into the world of spiritual healing, cured her disease, and later invented a sound and light healing device called the Harmonic Egg.

Skeptical, but exhausted and depressed, I was facing the proposition of sitting for an hour in a quiet pod with lovely music and gentle lighting - I had nothing to lose.

And what do you know? Only a handful in existence at the time, there happened to be one 30 minutes from my house. I booked an appointment right away.

I was experiencing a lot of coincidences lately. Carl Yung, the renowned psychotherapist, would call them synchronicities. "Meaningful coincidence without causal connection." Working with Wolfgang Pauli, a founder of quantum mechanics, they formed the idea of an underlying reality they called unus mundus - "one world". That perhaps both mind and matter spring from a deeper level of reality where everything is connected.

And with all the ghosts in my house, the nature of my universe was feeling awfully connected.

Continued in Part 9.