SHE had been struggling with depression for years.

The death of her father, ill health in her family and being involved in a serious car crash had all left Lori Juniper struggling to cope.

And when her long-term relationship came to a sudden end at Christmas it felt like the last straw.

Signed off work with depression since last November she said she began to self-harm to numb the emotional pain.

The 29-year-old from Bitterne would never have believed that six months later she would be feeling great and launching a new singles company.

“I felt really down and because I had so much going on in my head I needed something to stop the emotional pain – having physical pain to concentrate on stopped me feeling as blurred,”

Lori says of her self-harming.

Following the end of her relationship Lori had to move back in with her mother. She was binge eating and began to develop severe stomach problems, which saw her hospitalised for eight days in March, with suspected Crohn’s disease.

It was then that she realised she needed to take action.

“I decided it was time to turn my life around because it was just going downhill,” she says.

“I started to look online for business opportunities and franchises and came across singles franchise When the Music Stops.

“I decided to go ahead with it and started the business in June.

“I’ve always wanted to have my own business but never had the get up and go to do it. This has driven me forward.”

Lori returned to work in June but has now resigned so that she can focus on her new business.

“The singles business fitted me because I was single and everywhere I looked there seemed to be couples,” she says. “At first I thought When the Music Stops was just for dating but I realised you don’t just have to go to the events to find love. You can make single friends, too, which is where I’m at right now.”

So is she hoping that as well as helping single people make friends and find love that she will find someone special herself?

“Of course, everyone wants to. I’m not ready yet, though – at the moment I just want new single friends.”

Lori’s When the Music Stops region covers the south from Chichester to Southampton.

At the moment she is concentrating on getting events going in Southampton, starting with a launch party at Yates’ pub on Friday, July 26 and some dinner party events at Grosvenor Casino.

But she is hoping that eventually the business will take her much further afield – all the way to Australia.

There are plans for the singles company to be expanded overseas and she hopes that she will be able to emigrate there as a franchisor.

“It has always been a dream of mine to go there,”

she says.

Lori says that it is hard for her to believe how much her life has changed in just a few months.

Counseling Following counselling and having been prescribed antidepressants, she no longer self-harms and isn’t depressed and feels very optimistic about her future.

“I’d reached the bottom and decided that there was nowhere to go but up,” she says.

“I don’t do things by halves. If I go high, I go sky high!”