My mother was always full of little sayings so when I woke up this morning with an itchy foot her words came back to me: "It means you will be going to a new place."

It's quite true though. 2015 looks like it will be a year of many changes for me.

In a few weeks I will move house and become mortgage free.

In the garden of the new house I plan to convert a large garage to a studio/gallery/classroom.

I intend to start running art classes to provide an income and a new life.

I will graduate from University after 5 years study with my first BA degree.

My son's girlfriend will move to the UK from Germany to start a course and he will rent a flat with her and move out (one down, one to go!)

After being married for 23 years it looks like my hubby may finally come and live with me.

At the end of the year I will have one of those special birthdays ending in a zero.

And after 5 years I will finally be discharged from the care of the local psychiatric team back to my GP.

A very different story from 2009 when I lost my job through depression and spent months hardly able to get out of bed. Or the start of 2010 when I recall sitting on a hospital bed in the mental health unit crying in despair convinced that there was no future for me and the world would be a better place if I was dead.

When you are in the depths of clinical depression it seems that things can never get better, it is an evil illness that robs you of all hope. People talk about being in a pit, unable to get out. For me it has been more like walking in a tunnel of twists turns which give you a glimpse of a light of hope in the distance only to turn a corner back into the darkness and an uneven floor which causes you to trip up and fall on your face over and over again till you believe you can no longer carry on, there's no point. But I am now starting to think that I really can see the opening of the tunnel and whilst I may yet trip and fall before I get out, there is some hope for the future.

Wherever you are in your tunnel remember there is a future for you, you just have to keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other and one day you will find the end...really.

Penny

A Moodscope member.