Does anyone remember Camberwick Green? It wasn't that long ago so I don't think I'm showing my inner dinosaurus but I will always be happy to be corrected. Anyway, for those who don't know it, due to being shiny and not craggy, or for those who grew up miles away from the isles, it was a British TV children's show that aired in the 70's. Looking back, the beginning and ending of each episode was perhaps slightly creepy in its slow, pronounced tone combined with scary clown puppet, but I found it utterly magical as a child. It began with a little music box which would turn and open and out would come the character whose story was to be told that day...

"Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play, but this box can hide a secret inside, can you guess what's in it today?"

It was this that came to my mind's eye when some very useful comments on the blogspot reminded us that our experiences of depression are not the same. This is a huge benefit to us all. If we were experiencing the same anxieties, confusions, lethargies, anger, energy extremes or rewinds, blackness or blinding lights, numbness or searingly sensitive feelings (to name just a few) then we might be herded up like Daleks and fired from the galaxy.

We are different in our depressions and this is a fantastic thing. I struggle with anxiety but I didn't have a clue...I only stumbled over it through Moodscope. I thought I was 'just' depressed and that it came in a singular lump of a package. My deep-seated, gnawing, clawing, grumble of anger only wore a badge once I heard others talking of their anxiety. Being a high-feeling kind of a person, I wanted to kiss these people on the cheek (whether they wished for my slobbering or not!) such was my relief at understanding myself a little more. Now I know, I have started to size it up, try loving it, try being disciplined with it, try killing it with kindness and batting my (twitching) eyelashes at it in the hope it might give me an afternoon off now and again.

My point is this. Moodscope is, for me, my beautiful, magical, musical box. Each time I receive my email is like an opening sequence on Camberwick Green. Who will I meet today? What will I learn from them? Who can I stick out my hand for and help cross the stream? We are not Daleks and neither is life as simple as Camberwick Green, but we can learn to bend and not break when we share.

Love from

The room above the garage.

A Moodscope member.