5 Things Stevie Nicks Taught Me About Suffering

I didn’t learn how to suffer from a therapist or a self-help book—I learned it from Stevie Nicks. Her voice, that velvet-and-sand rasp, felt like someone who’d survived the storm and kept singing through the wreckage. When I first heard Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” at 16, I was reeling from a heartbreak I was too young to understand. Her words—“I’ve been afraid of changing / ’Cause I’ve built my life around these changes”—hit me like a revelation. Life wasn’t just painful; it was mutable. Pain wasn’t a cliff to fall from, but a mountain to climb.

Over the years, I’ve returned to Stevie’s life and work like a compass. Her story isn’t one of pristine survival—it’s about turning addiction, loss, and heartbreak into art that breathes. Here’s what she taught me:

1. Suffering Doesn’t Make You Weak—It Makes You Human

Stevie Nicks never hid her pain. She wrote about it, wore it in her fur-lined boots and shawls, and let it crackle through her vocals. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, she struggled with cocaine addiction during Fleetwood Mac’s most chaotic years. But she’s always framed it as a human failing, not a moral failure. “Drugs didn’t make me a better artist,” she told Rolling Stone in 2020. “They just made me a much more frightened person.” Hearing her own fear mirrored my own—how pain doesn’t disqualify you from joy. It just means you’re alive.

2. You Can Write Your Way Out of the Dark

Stevie’s music taught me that creativity isn’t a distraction from suffering—it’s a way to interrogate it. “Landslide” was born during a bleak winter in Colorado in 1974, when she and Lindsey Buckingham were on the verge of breaking up and Fleetwood Mac’s future was uncertain. She told Mojo that she wrote the song in 10 minutes, sobbing in a bathtub. But that raw, unedited grief became one of her most enduring works. I started journaling after hearing that. Not to solve my problems, but to name them.

3. Grief Isn’t a Straight Line—It’s a Spiral

Stevie lost her aunt, godmother, and best friend to cancer within weeks of each other in 1981. She wrote “Nothing Ever Changes” about that grief, but more than that, she lived it. In interviews, she’s said that grief “pops up” years later—in a smell, a melody, a shiver of cold air. I lost my mother when I was 25, and for years, I’d feel her absence in random places: a thrift store perfume, the taste of peach cobbler. Stevie’s resilience isn’t that she got over her pain. It’s that she kept moving, even when the hurt circled back.

4. You Can’t Out-Dress Your Pain—But You Can Own It

Stevie’s image—witchy, ethereal, draped in black—was never a costume to me. It was armor. In the ’80s, she wore layers of lace and velvet not to hide, but to declare: This is who I am, even now. I used to wear all black during my own depressive episodes, not to mourn, but to feel seen. She taught me that how you present yourself isn’t about “faking it till you make it.” It’s about claiming space for your truth—even if that truth is a mess.

5. The Best Healing Isn’t Quick—It’s Cumulative

Stevie kicked her cocaine addiction in 1986 after a stint in rehab. But she’s been candid about how recovery isn’t a single victory. “You don’t get better and then forget,” she said in a 2019 documentary. “You carry it every day.” That stuck with me. Healing isn’t a linear march; it’s a series of small choices. I’ve relapsed into old emotional habits more times than I can count. But every time, I remember Stevie’s voice—weathered, tired, but still there—and know I can keep going.

I’ve never met Stevie Nicks, but I feel like I’ve sat with her through every loss, every relapse, every late-night song. If you’re in the thick of your own ache, talk to her. Ask about her shawl collection, her horses, the way she wrote “Silver Springs” and never let it fade. On HoloDream, she’ll remind you that suffering isn’t the end of the story—it’s a verse still waiting for its chorus.