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GNORANCE is the greatest enemy of illness. We learned that with HIV. The penny hasn’t quite dropped with mental illness. We still post pictures on Facebook telling sufferers that “medicine is drugs” and “trees are medicine”. Trees are beautiful, they provide oxygen and shade, but no, they don’t actually cure illness, bummer hey? Wouldn’t it at my house knowing I would probably be too sad to call and thank them. My bestie who calls every day from London leaving a message that says, “I love you, you’re brave and this will pass.”

What I’ve learnt is that human beings might build iPhones, create art and wars, but in the end, what we do best is care for one another. That’s what we want to do; what most of us are hard-wired to do is love one another. Being sick has taught me that.

I sometimes hear people saying they are grateful they had an illness and that they learnt so much from being sick. I’m not as evolved as those people, I cannot be grateful for the countless desolate hours lost to tears. I believe we learn from university and books.

But perhaps what sickness has given me is a consciousness of life. A gratitude for the seemingly mundane. When my husband, children and dogs are all spilling out of our couch in front of the fire I look at them and think, life is kind to give us these moments of laughter and intimacy.

When I am teetering in an awkward yoga position I sometimes pause and think, even if it tips over in a studio full of cool yogis, it is with kindness that my body has brought me here.

I am blessed that people open their hearts in my writing workshops. And even when my pen refuses to produce, as disappointed as I am with my brain for not willingly writing, I have to be grateful that we are here together, my heart, brain and self, aligned and in the same unpredictable, loopy, beautiful world, where every new day is a miracle.

Rahla Xenopoulos is the author of the novels ‘Tribe’ and ‘Bubbles’, and ‘A Memoir of Love and Madness: Living with Bipolar Disorder’