Seeking Inspirato with De'Onna Banks in Asheville, North Carolina

City and Hills Kind of Girl

De'Onna (DE-YAH-NUH) is a North Carolina girl, through and through.

She is an urban/rural hybrid having spent time in both the city and the hills of North Carolina. When she was a kid, she’d go back and forth from her mom’s place in Charlotte to her dad’s place here in Asheville.

On Saturday mornings in Asheville, De’Onna would accompany her dad to the local barbershop, and then walk down the street to start helping her grandmother set up the bar.

Entrepreneurship runs in the family, and De’Onna is manifesting hers.

She has fond memories of visiting Asheville throughout her childhood. She was put to work — helping her grandma set up the bar by hauling in cases of beer and bags of ice. Grandma fed her early creativity with a Polaroid camera, which she used to take pictures of the local bar flies. De’Onna tucked these portraits underneath the glass bar tables as keepsakes.

Being young and immersed in the bar scene of Asheville gave De'Onna some exposure and free range to see what others were wearing.

Her mother would describe her style as,

“Eclectic ... which basically meant, ‘go change.’”

We had a good laugh about this because my own grandma calls my style “interesting.” At first, I too thought this was a nice way of checking my Dynamic Personal Style, but it turns out she really thinks my clothes are engaging!

The Definition of Dynamic Personal Style

You can look through De’Onna’s Instagram feed and quite literally feel her Dynamic Personal Style. It’s an experience as unique as the way De’Onna walks and talks. She is a force.

But today, instead of talking specifically about De’Onna’s clothing style, we’re going to talk about her growth experience. Why?

Because with growth comes freedom in self.

With growth comes the ability to express yourself however you want.

This includes self-expression through clothing.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about De’Onna’s story ever since I interviewed her in Asheville, and I have a feeling it’ll resonate with you as well.

Growth looks different for everyone, but the principles that De’Onna speaks to remind me that I too have the need to grow in some key areas, particularly around positive self-talk.

Photo of De’Onna Banks by Maddison McKinley

Steady As They Come

“I don’t feel like anyone can come and knock me off of the De’Onna block. You may be able to knock me off the world block because I can’t deal with the world, it’s too much. But my block, nobody’s going to knock me off.”

When I first came across De'Onna, I noticed a question she listed in her Instagram profile: Who are you influencing?

It’s a play on words. She once was referred to as an “influencer” and has made new profiles since because the old ones didn’t resonate with her anymore. She doesn’t want to influence for the sake of influencing. She wants to influence meaningfully and with purpose.

“That’s not the person I am, nor that I want to be.”

We all change and evolve, but De'Onna is one of those people who truly has herself in check. She’s not going to let herself slip up. She’s authentic in the truest sense of the word.

And it took some time to get here.

A few years ago she moved back to Asheville from NYC and felt like she had lost her chance at success. She went from a rising modeling star going on international shoots to coming back home, empty-handed and asking, “what’s next?”

“When I moved back to Asheville, I was so depressed. I didn’t get out [of my apartment] for a year. I had to figure myself out. I felt like because I left New York, I was a failure. I was having a hard time. I thought that I had reached my peak because I had already been in Vogue, but then I’m not getting signed and going here or there, so what’s going on?”

But of course she wasn’t empty-handed. Sometimes we discount our previous experiences because we get obsessed with having the next one. We keep chasing the next milestone forgetting to ask if it’s what we actually want anymore.

But remember, we are the sum of our experiences. They make us, but they don’t define our futures.

Sometimes we need a change even if we don’t know it yet.

For De'Onna, it was realizing that being at the [perceived] top of her game wasn’t actually what was making her happy. She was featured in Vogue and had done runways for NYC Fashion Week at Pier 59. And while the top looked glamorous from afar, it didn’t feel so charming once she got there.

Setting goals and milestones is smart, but we also need to be able to pivot and reevaluate because sometimes the thing we wanted doesn’t actually turn out to be that fun — which can feel confusing.

This process can produce damaging thoughts for us: “This is what my goal was … and this is what people I look up to also did … shouldn’t I want this?”

Recouping in the Mountains

De’Onna had to do some serious self-reflection when she returned to the “Land of the Sky.” Once home, she asked herself, “Why am I here?” “Who do I want to be?”

For De’Onna, the answer was realizing that her favorite part of her work was collaboration. Now, she’s teaming up with fellow creatives daily. De'Onna’s face covers half of Asheville.

“It’s more fun. I like it better than I did when I was living in New York.”

But getting to the point of modeling again took some self-reflection. De’Onna had to listen, notice, and react to the voice in her head.

“People give people the benefit of the doubt more than they give themselves the benefit of the doubt. It’s nuts!”

Sometimes, and this is me inserting myself into De’Onna’s narrative, but I think when we’re overachievers, we think that critical voice has helped get us to the next place. We think we need self-destructive criticism to grow. We think we need a tyrannical voice to become more disciplined versions of ourselves.

But if this sounds like you, you’re not any better than that NFL player that has to touch the wall twice before leaving the locker room. It’s just a ritual.

But your critical ritual is dangerous because it erodes your confidence.

“At the end of the day it’s only you and that voice, so what are you going to do? Work with it, or act like it’s a whole different person that you can just shove in a closet?”

Maybe the voice served you at one time, I won’t take that away, but when you’ve realized it’s doing more harm than good, pay attention, and change the way you talk.

“I had to make that voice patient with the child inside of me, and that’s how I got to be so aligned with self.”

I love De’Onna’s commentary on the voice. She’s spot on:

“I finally found the voice in my head that was yelling at me, and I changed it. It [was] a tone of the way I talked to myself. It was my voice, and it was saying whatever it needed to say like “you’re inadequate” and [made] me feel like I [wasn’t] worthy of something. And a lot of the time it’s not your voice, it’s someone’s voice from your childhood that wasn’t patient when you needed it. I don’t think I’m stupid, I just needed some time.”

That one hits close to home.

Growth is painful and sometimes we don’t even know we’re in the middle of it. When we’re in the middle of growth, it can feel challenging because not only are we likely uncomfortable, but we also don’t have the 10,000 foot high perspective yet that allows us to say “oh, I had to go through that to get here, of course.”

Hindsight is always 20/20. And if there’s one thing 2020 has given us, it’s the space to reflect.

Staying inside for a year was the biggest thank you De’Onna could have given herself. She took the time and did the work.

“I looked in the mirror and made myself think of things that you don’t want to think about. Self-manifestation [is] big for me. I check myself daily. I will check myself just as if I’m in a relationship.”

De’Onna describes growth like a flower, a thing that with nurturing and time, blooms into something beautiful.

Orchid from the Biltmore Mansion in Asheville, North Carolina. Photo by Maddison McKinley.

“When people embark on the healing journey they’re like, ‘oh yes, I’m going to be better!’ — the healing journey is just like a flower. Everyone wants to bloom, and everyone wants to reach that spring season when they’re in bloom, but no one remembers when the bulb is under the ground, and it’s very ugly. It’s trying to root itself through the ground and it has to punch through grass; that is some heavy-duty stuff. People don’t even think about the stuff that has to happen before the flower even blooms. If I respect the flower being beautiful, then I have to respect the process as being beautiful. So I had to be patient with myself.”

Don’t Dim Your Light

But it’s all so worth it! You know why? Because when we grow into authenticity, we become better people. We’re more honest with ourselves; we own up to our past mistakes, and we treat others how we want to be treated.

When, like the blooming spring flower, we’re in tune with our bodies spiritually, we’re more in tune with our surroundings and the people we interact with. From there, we prune, weed, and fertilize. We figure out if we want to continue interacting with the people around us, or not. We invest in those things that are working and we cut those that aren’t.

It’s a peaceful feeling to cultivate a blossoming, thriving life.

But, it’s hard to grow intentionally if you don’t know what you want. You must reflect on what is stifling your life and what is feeding it.

Understanding who is working for you and who isn’t is incredibly hard to do, but it will end up serving you later.

For De’Onna, she had to recognize the kinds of people she wanted to be around.

“I used to go out with people and I felt like I was dimming myself to fit in with them. It wasn’t even them, it was me. I had to figure that out. I didn’t want to dim my light anymore.”

If you don’t take ANYTHING AWAY FROM THIS ARTICLE BUT THIS:

Do.

Not.

Dim.

Your.

Authenticity.

Do not.

If you notice that you’re “fitting in” or there’s a little voice going “I want to say this, but feel that I can’t because…” then listen to De’Onna:

“Find new friends. I don’t think we’re all meant to get along, and that’s ok. That’s how it should be. It’s not bad on you if we don’t vibe, that’s ok! It’s information for the two of us to use and move on.”

So many of us go through life jumping from one group that will accept us to another, never fully embracing ourselves.

If we all gave ourselves a year to unapologetically figure ourselves out and who we want to be and actually look at ourselves in the mirror, maybe more of us would be accountable for our actions and our lives.

“If more people were accountable, we’d have a much better world. If more people owned their sh**, we’d be so much kinder to one another.”

And De’Onna quickly, and aptly, brings up...

“Ignorance is bliss. We’d rather not look so deeply at our actions, or listen to the voice in the back of our heads trying to tell us something helpful.”

Cultivate the voice. When it tries to tear you down, check it, but when it tells you something that is hard to hear, listen up and live accordingly.

“Never let the outside noise kill your inner peace. Negativity doesn't deserve your energy” @synchronistic