How Heartbreak Led to Ebonee Davis’ Awakening
In July 2016, I received an Instagram DM from an up-and-coming model.
Hello! My name is Ebonee Davis and I have written an open letter to the fashion industry on its relation to police brutality. I would love to share it with you and perhaps get it published online. It's powerful, compelling, insightful, and necessary. Please let me know, and thank you for your time.
I already knew exactly who Ebonee was; one of my unofficial jobs at Bazaar was knowing all the models, and after landing a Calvin Klein underwear ad campaign, she was on my radar. I told her to send me the essay, but I remember at that time feeling slightly worried that this might be a bit radical for our outlet. Yes, we covered some heavier topics but to call out the industry's complicity in systemic racism? I worried about how it could affect her career as well. My pitch to run her essay was received positively though and just a few days later, we went live with: “Calvin Klein Model Pens Rare and Honest Open Letter to the Fashion Industry.”
“My advice to models, fashion designers and public relation agencies: use your personal platforms to speak out against injustice and show your support rather than standing by in silence. Most importantly, love Black people as much as you love Black music and Black culture. Until you do, society will continue to buy into the false notion that people of color are less than—a concept already deeply embedded in America's collective psyche, which is reinforced again and again through depictions in media.”
The story went viral. It was poignant, considering we'd just seen the murder of three Black men (Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile, and Delrawn Small) the week prior. She called upon the industry to acknowledge its power in shaping narratives—of being the gatekeepers for what is considered cool and desirable. Ebonee's Calvin Klein ad was also a powerful illustration of her very point. After constantly being told she wouldn't get booked with her natural hair, she landed one of the most prestigious fashion campaigns that proudly displayed her natural curls in all their glory. But it would still take another four years of police brutality and unjust killings of Black men and women before the industry collectively admitted there was a real problem and that changes needed to be made. We're still waiting to see a lot of those changes.
It was such an honor to reconnect with Ebonee for today's newsletter though. Of course, I've been keeping tabs on her since we first corresponded. We published more of her writing at Bazaar and booked her for shoots. But both of us have experienced a re-directing of our trajectory over the last several years– and we're in very different places in our lives. Below, Ebonee and I catch up about how that essay changed her life, and the heartbreak that led to her spiritual awakening, and, ultimately, her debut book, Daughter.
Do you remember the response to that Bazaar article and the feedback you got from people in the industry?
Ebonee: Honestly and surprisingly, the feedback was positive. It's the reason why I did a TED talk: The person who was curating the event saw the article and was like, "Hey, would you like to do a talk on this?" It really opened up a lot of doors, and it gave me a lot of confidence to use my voice and know that I could create change within the industry.
When I look back on my time as an editor at Bazaar, those are the moments that make me so proud that I was able to give this massive platform to someone like you and other marginalized voices that I felt really deserve to be heard, and maybe in other instances would've been rejected. It's interesting to think back to 2016 because 2020 became the point of reference for social justice reckoning, but this has been going on for such a long time. When everything got kicked up again in 2020, did you feel like, "Were you all not listening to me four years ago?"
Ebonee: As much traction as that article got, and as successful as it was, I would say there was still a lot of disappointment when 2020 rolled around. It felt like all of a sudden, people were now trying to make change, allocating budgets, and creating opportunities when it didn't even have to get to that point. It had to get to this point where everyone was affected because we're all in quarantine, we're all suffering behind this pandemic. Now, you have a little ounce of empathy for other people when you could have already been putting systems in place.
Just to touch on what you said in regard to holding that position at Harper's Bazaar and giving space to marginalized voices to speak. I'm sure we're going to get into it, but even with my book, trying to get my book published, I just want to emphasize the fact that people like you, people in positions like you, are so important because without you, the gates are kept. Trying to get my book into the publishing world, I submitted it. I waited, I waited, I waited. It took someone new being hired, a Black woman, going through these submissions in order for my book to get published because someone in that position finally saw value in it. It's so essential to have people in those positions who can make those calls and recognize when something important needs to be said.
But back to 2020, I kind of spiraled into a depression because I've been screaming into the void for years. Now, all of a sudden, we see people who are calling themselves activists, who are getting these accolades and recognition in the industry, people who've had power in the industry, people who have had success in the industry just now speaking up. For me, I really created my own career that's been industry-adjacent, and I haven't had those systems of support that are already built by the industry.
If we're keeping it real, it was very disheartening. I had to ask myself, if this is no longer my identity because it's now been absorbed into the collective consciousness, then who am I outside that? I feel like it pushed me in the direction of getting my book published and stepping into this new thing outside of activism. I had to go through that caterpillar, cocoon, and rebirth phase all over again to get to that place.
I want to take it all the way to the beginning for a moment before we continue. I always like to ask my guests what they were like as children. This really sets the stage for understanding the essence of who you are. Five-year-old Ebonee is still inside of you.
Ebonee: Oh, she is. I take her with me everywhere I go. We have a very strong connection, a very strong relationship. I'm always affirming her, and I'm always acknowledging her, and I sit with her. Whenever there's a dip in my frequency, my vibration, maybe I'm feeling a little less than fully capable for whatever reason, all it takes is a moment of me talking to her, and then all of a sudden, I feel very bold and ready to conquer the world again, so that's my girl.
As a child, naturally, I was very outgoing. I had a lot of energy. I was an artist; I was very expressive. But, we grow up in certain circumstances that program us to be a certain way, and so, outwardly, I became very quiet and shy; I didn't talk much. I hung out with a lot of adults, more than kids my age, because I just felt like I wanted to have real conversations, which is still how I am. I want to have deep conversations—deep, meaningful conversations about life.
I was always an artist. Luckily, I got to go to this arts-focused middle school called Da Vinci when I was living in Portland, Oregon, and it really allowed me to open up and get out of that shell that I had put around myself due to the environment I was in. That's where I really discovered my writing ability.
I loved nature. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and being outdoors was huge for me. Despite any of the lack of privilege that I had, growing up in nature is the biggest privilege. I definitely don't take that for granted because it has helped me cultivate who I am as a person.
Touching upon 2020 again, that was a time of rebirth for so many people, myself included. I left my job, not knowing what was coming for us. I knew I wanted to do my own thing, and I wasn't entirely sure of what that was going to look like. The idea for this newsletter was born through taking time to think about who I am and my purpose. A really important question I asked myself was, what do I enjoy doing? What would I want to do, even if I wasn't getting paid to do it? I thought about having deep conversations. I always love talking to people, whether it's my good friends or a stranger, someone I'm seated next to at a work dinner. I always want to have deep conversations with people about life, love, career, whatever. And I always loved writing. It's interesting to see how we return to the things we loved as a child.
Ebonee: Yeah, they never leave us. As a child, we have all the codes and the keys to who we're meant to be in this lifetime. We get it programmed out of us, and we're constantly conforming and shifting to accommodate our environments and the people in them. Still, I think true happiness and true success are found in returning to those natural gifts that we innately possess that we're born with.
I could not agree more. When did you get discovered? Take me through your modeling journey. Or did you have dreams of doing something else?
Ebonee: I like to say that I discovered myself. I was living in Seattle during my senior year of high school. All my high school years were just a lot of turmoil and moving around. I was on the verge of getting kicked out of the place where I was living, which was my dad's mom's house. A lot was going on, and so I was like, "I got to do something for myself." The support systems in my life aren't supporting me in the way I would like. I have to be independent in this way so that I can just get it moving. I went to Seattle Models Guild and they signed me. I was 18 years old. I started working for Amazon, a Seattle-based company, and they were starting their fashion division. I was shooting mostly waist-downs, so that means they would literally photograph my lower body. That's how my career started.
I did America's Next Top Model after I graduated. Back to our childhood dreams, we always know what we're supposed to do. That used to be my one show; it came on every Wednesday on the CW. I have to watch it, and one day, I will be on it. They came to Seattle; they had auditions at this mall. There were thousands of girls. My mom took me, and I ended up making it on the show. So I did that, but I got accepted into the University of Washington as well.
After the show, I came back to school for two semesters, and I was like, "I'm moving to New York." I love learning, and I love being at this institution, but I want to take my career to the next level, and I feel like there's something there for me. I researched agencies, and that's when I really started to notice New York agencies. It would be one or two black models. Hella blondes, hella brunettes, boom! Maybe an Asian girl, a light-skinned black girl, and a dark-skinned black girl.
Check, check, check the boxes.
Ebonee: I was just like, "Dang!" Again, with this discouraging reality I was facing. I didn't have this romantic idea of the industry, but I had this dream, so I'm going to go out there and chase it. I really took it upon myself to start building connections because I was like, "I understand that I'm in this situation where I have my foot in the door, but no one's really pushing for me, and I have to begin pushing for myself." The first thing that they said to me was, "We'll sign you, and we'll push for you when one of our other Black models isn't available. When their clients are asking for them, but they're not available, we'll suggest you as the backup.
You're on the bench. Wow, to get told that…
Ebonee: Yeah, add up all of these little microaggressions. Shooting waist-downs, being asked about if my hair is a weave, being told I'm the second string, when you add it up, imagine the self-esteem, the toll that takes on a person. I didn't even realize I was carrying everything inside of me.
I'm grateful for that time because if I'm keeping it real, I am carrying all this low self-esteem and all this trauma from my childhood, I get to this big city, I now have access, I'm a model. I was in the club, and I was going to these dinners. I was doing things I had no business doing. I was just getting wasted...
You were also a young, attractive woman in New York City, and of course, you're going to be shaking your ass in the clubs.
Ebonee: Exactly. There are two sides to it. I give myself grace because I lived my life young and popping in New York City, but then, on the other side, there's the subconscious part of it where I'm numbing a lot of how I feel about myself. When I went into my agency to take digitals, that was my first hint of, "Ooh, my health." I gotta think about my health a little bit. I started doing kickboxing classes. I started cutting back on drinking. But again, it's hard to take feedback without internalizing it and then becoming self-conscious about it.
Also, I'm curious, as someone who is a conscious person, what is that existence like when you are in this profession where you are only judged based on what you look like? No one actually cares about what you have to say.
Ebonee: It's definitely been a journey of learning to value my own voice because no one else around me has valued my own voice. It's always be the hanger. It's all about how you look, and, for me, as a conscious person, my vessel is sacred, but it's also the least of who I am.
I love myself. I pour into myself. I honor myself. I understand that this is my temple, this is my sanctuary, but my spirit, my soul, my energy, the part of me that is eternal is way out here, and that is the part of me that is going to be around 200 years from now, and that was around 3000 years ago. This vessel that I'm in right now may get a hundred years if I'm really lucky. To be minimized in that way definitely was very disheartening at times.
Then, as I started to step into that expression and decided to wear my hair natural, there was this pushback. You're going to lose the clients that you have, and so it's constantly this weighing of like, "Am I going to walk in my truth and do what I'm being instructed to do on a spiritual level or am I going to conform?" When I made the decision to wear my hair naturally, I started speaking out. I had just done Calvin Klein, I had just done Sports Illustrated, I had just got my foot in the door with Victoria's Secret. I was at a point in my career where things could have really, really quickly accelerated into this supermodel.
You were on THE path.
Ebonee: The career that every girl wants. But for me, my spirit, that wouldn't have been satisfying for me. I'm so grateful for those opportunities, and I know that the doors that I want to open will open, but they'll open with so much integrity, and they'll open because of who I am authentically and what it is that I have to say. When they do open, because of what I have to say, they can never be closed. When somebody's opening a door for you based on how you look, and they're still the gatekeeper of your destiny, they can close that door, and everything could be gone. The way that I see my career going is I am opening these doors myself. I'm building the houses, I'm building the structures, nobody can shut me out of that.
Absolutely. And how validating is it that you received all this pushback around your hair and then got a Kerastase hair campaign?
Ebonee: It was like this poetic justice. I got a Kerastase contract, the biggest luxury hair brand in the world. If I listened to what those people were saying to me a few years ago, I never would have been in this position, and so if I can tell anybody out there who's listening, stay true to yourself, and do what is authentic and real for you because people can have their opinions. People give you the advice that they think is going to help position you to win. Even your parents and people who care about you will try to minimize your dreams, not because they want to see you fail, but because they themselves are operating within certain limitations. They know what has worked for them, and they might have their own fears and hesitations about stepping outside of the status quo and going around things in an unconventional route. Still, you must be attuned to your authentic guidance because you are the only person who knows what's right for your life.
Preach! People want you to do what is safe. Listen, I worked in corporate America for over a decade. My dad's like, "Okay, but you're not going to leave your job until you have another job lined up, right?" It took some time to educate my parents. I'm going to do my own thing. Luckily, my parents trusted me and started to understand, they know I'm not going to jeopardize my future. It was very scary for them because no one in my family is an entrepreneur.
Ebonee: Right. To this day, my grandma's like, "So when are you going back to school?" I'd just be like, "Oh my gosh," because I don't think she realizes that success for me doesn't look like what success might have looked like for her days ago.
Of course. Now, let's get into your spiritual journey. I want to hear about what first sparked that.
Ebonee: Yeah. Man, 2016 was a year that was the catalyst for it all. Around the time that I wrote this open letter, I met this guy who ended up breaking my heart. He came into my life with this very divine energy that just ignited something in me. Then, he ghosted me. I was like, "Whoa! What do I do?" I'm heartbroken. I'm devastated. I started drinking a lot again, just being very self-destructive because my self-esteem was wrecked. His presence really sparked this thing in me. I was starting to become conscious of the patterns and behaviors. One thing he told me that really stuck with me was,
“ What would you tell other people to prevent them from going through what you’ve been through? What is your truth? Share your truth with the world.”
I was like, "You know what? I'm going to start talking. I'm going to start speaking about this," that's when I really started to open up about what I had been through, my traumas, my childhood, and my modeling journey. I think after that abandonment, after he ghosted me, I hit this place of rock bottom, and I was like, "I have a choice where I can either begin to get it together, or I can continue down this path." I started to make different choices, and accountability became so huge for me. I can act out of in reaction to my environment, out of reaction to this trauma, or I can do something different. I am essentially the author of my own story. I'm the creator of myself.
When I became conscious of my choices in those moments, I also started to become more conscious of how I was behaving in general, in reaction to my childhood, the community I grew up in, and how my parents raised me. I really did this deep dive in self-evaluation into why I behave the way I behave. At the same time, that's when I decided to go natural and write the letter to the fashion industry. I was like, "If I believed for twenty-four years that I was inadequate with my natural hair, then what other limiting beliefs were preventing me from being who I wanted to be in this world?" It was like all at once, this overall-
All the structures were coming down.
Ebonee: Introspection and all of this, who am I? What is my truth? Who have I been programmed to be? All just came to the surface all at once and had a lot of work to do. I had a lot of work to do to get out of that place, but just steadily sharing my journey with the world and really doing the work to reprogram myself into the person that I wanted to be.
Isn't it always heartbreak? Oddly enough, my spiritual journey started in 2016, also sparked by heartbreak. How could I allow someone to make me feel like this? My self-worth felt like it was in the dumpster, and I was like, "I need to gather myself. I need to look at what is happening at a deeper level here because this keeps happening." Were there any tools you were using? Were you in therapy? Were you journaling? Spiritual practices?
Ebonee: I was definitely journaling. I have so many journals, and I was like, I need to burn them, honestly. Going back and reading them now, I certainly was hung up on this person. But I realized I put them on a pedestal and exalted them. It was like, "If I change myself enough, maybe they'll see me, maybe they'll choose me, maybe they'll want to be with me." Now, I realize that I saw myself reflected in them, and it was never about them. It was always about me. It was always about me becoming me and projecting my best qualities onto this person. So, as I evolve and change, I'm looking at this person, and I'm like, "You were never what I thought you were. You just mirrored something inside of me that I wanted to become," and now, I'm embodying deeper levels of self-love.
Isn't that crazy how that happens? Similarly, leading up to that time, I was always attracted to men who worked for themselves, were creatives, and always traveled. They could pick up and go whenever they wanted. As soon as I stepped into that, I was like, “Wait, I'm attracted to them because that's the life I wanted,” and now that I have that life, I'm not attracted to that anymore.
Ebonee: Exactly, it's this mirror effect. It's cool once you understand that, even in this greater scope, once you understand that you see things in people, and that is an indication of your own desire, it eliminates jealousy, it eliminates comparison. All of these things come up when you see somebody else doing something like, "Oh, I don't need to fall in love with you. I don't need to resent you. I don't need to feel anything towards you. All I need to do is recognize that this desire lives inside me, and I need to do the work to cultivate it." Instead of projecting whatever emotion comes up toward anybody, whether male-female or anything. It's all about me. It's all about how I feel about myself and what I think I can do.
Isn't it such an empowering place to be able to recognize that?
Ebonee: It is. That's high-level self-awareness. There's nothing outside of me that has the power to make me feel anything that I don't choose to feel. When you can not be swallowed up by your emotions and actually examine this emotion, "Oh, I'm starting to feel this comparison thing, or I'm starting to feel this jealousy thing. Why?" And what people do is they shame their emotions. It's literally just all information. Even this information, like, "Oh, I'm romantically interested in this person. Why? What is it? How can I cultivate greater levels of self-love that would make me not even interested in this person anymore because the only thing that I'm interested in about them is what I want to love more deeply within myself? If I feel abandoned by this person, how am I abandoning myself?"
I know that abandonment wound all too well. It's a hard one to work through.
Ebonee: It is, but it's like, how am I not pouring into myself? How am I not honoring myself? How am I not giving to myself? Because everything outside of me is just reflecting how I'm treating myself.
Now, let's talk about your book Daughter, which is also the name of an organization you started.
Ebonee: In 2019, I started my non-profit organization, Daughter, which is a Birthright Organization. We provide birthright trips to take descendants of the diaspora back to West Africa for immersive experiences for about two weeks at a time, and the point is really just to get people reconnected back to their roots, to their ancestors, to their lineage. For me, my journey of reconnecting with my ancestors has been such a big part of stepping into my power, realizing that I am them, they are me, they exist within me, all of their traumas and all of their gifts are within me, and I can do the work to heal the trauma and cultivate the gifts so that I can live out my life as the highest expression of myself, which is also them. I went to West Africa for the first time in 2018, and it was just such an eye-opening journey for me.
It gave me this sense of identity and self that I had not experienced prior to my arrival there, and I was like, "I want to create this experience for as many people as possible," and so that's why I created Daughter. It's been a great experience to be able to facilitate those trips and see how people's lives are changed. The goal of it is really just to be able to take people who can get the knowledge and bring it back to their communities and plant those seeds so that they can then feed their communities with the fruit of that knowledge that they've learned during their time there.
So then, how did the idea for the book come to be?
Ebonee: The oldest parts of this book are from 2016, those moments of introspection as I was on this journey of awakening and conscience, which I think is cool because it truly is a blueprint that takes you from point A to point B of being completely unconscious and unaware to being fully aware of self and self-actualized. I wrote it with the intention of just being a tool, being a guidebook, particularly for Black women, but for all people ready to take that spiritual journey and that journey into greater self-awareness.
Ebonee: I didn't know it was going to be called Daughter at first. I've always been interested in a lot of things: I write, I direct, I model, I creative direct, I write poetry, I do all of these things, and it's like I am starting to see that it's all coming together and that Daughter is actually an umbrella. Daughter is a movement; Daughter is a world. I'm building this Daughter reality. There are Daughter products, the Daughter book, and the Daughter Diary, which is now in Nordstrom.
Daughter is becoming a reality. Naming the book Daughter was just me adding to this world I'm building, this ecosystem that I'm building where it's like when people come into Daughter, they know that it's a space of healing, reflection, and empowerment, particularly for Black women. They know everything that they come into contact with that's Daughter-related is of quality.
Is it important for you to see the lessons in life? There is a camp of not everything is a lesson; sometimes, things just happen. I do understand that to a certain extent, but I don't know; I think part of our reason for being on this Earth is that we all have specific lessons we are learning on our journey. They're very specific to us. I think it's helpful to see things from that perspective.
Ebonee: Yeah. I think everything is for the evolution of the soul. People can feel and say what they want, there is no judgment over here. I think people who look at things as just a random occurrence are looking at life from a very physical perspective, where it's like the sum of their reality is this physical reality. To me, this is the last thing that manifests. When you understand energy and you understand spirit, everything happens on a quantum, energetic, and spiritual level first. What we can see in our physical reality is a very small part of what actually is going on. If we could understand the bigger reality, if we could understand what our souls are doing, what our souls need, what our souls look like, and what are our karmic contracts, then we would not think in the sense that things just happen. We would understand that everything is happening for a reason and it's for the evolution of our soul.
Yes, I completely agree with that. I think, difficult things happen to us, and in the moment, you sometimes don't want to see a lesson or you can't see a lesson. But when you can move through that, and in hindsight… actually going back to both of us being heartbroken in 2016. It took me so long to really get over that. A good couple of years before, I really felt like I was over it. Then I got to a point where I was like, " Oh I actually would not be on the path that I am on today if it weren't for him and if it weren't for all the fuckery that I went through." That put me on the path that I was meant to be on, and that has also enabled me to share my stories and create a space of healing for myself and others.
Ebonee: Yeah, I think once you move past the grief, you can actually get to a place of gratitude, and I think that's where we get to understand the lesson, the doors start to open, and it's just like, "Man!" Then, you really get to this point where it's like, everything does happen for a reason. Everything is moving me toward a greater state of being. I'll even share that toward the end of 2022, I went through another massive wave of spiritual awakening, and I was like, "I have to go be in the forest. I have to move to Atlanta. I have to be with the trees. I need to be grounded in nature." LA is not serving me anymore.
In the midst of me leaving LA for my mental and spiritual health, I had to leave a relationship. I had to walk away from a lot of the success that I was experiencing in this momentum as a model. I had to leave the fancy parties; I had to sell the luxury vehicle; I had to humble myself completely. I was very, very broke in 2023. I basically had no income. I had no idea how I was going to pay my bills. I had no idea where my money was coming from. A lot of people don't know this, but I was struggling. I was legitimately struggling for most of the year; it was very hard and very stressful, and on top of that, I was navigating the death of my brother. There were just so many things that were going on, and I'm finally at this place where, still, when it comes to dealing with my brother's death, I'm still not ... that's not one of those things where it's like, "Okay, everything does happen for a reason,” but it's hard-
That's hard to grapple with.
Ebonee: Yeah, that grief, it's like I can look at that grief and be like, "Yo, that grief made me a warrior. I'm stronger than ever. I feel like life cannot break me." I went through that grief, and I literally came out, and I'm like, "Life cannot break me." Yes, I've extracted lessons from it, but I can't sit here and be like, "Yo, my brother had to die in order for me to become strong," that I can't do. You know what I mean?
But I will say that I'm to the point now where I understand why I had to leave my entire life and move to this place because this is where God needed to position me for me to become the best version of myself. So I'm finally reaching that place of, "Okay, I had to grieve that past life that I was in, but now I'm in the space of gratitude."
Last question, what is bringing you joy in 2024?
Ebonee: I feel free, in a way that I've never felt free. After going through a year of financial struggle, after a year of grief after the loss of my brother, and after a year of grief after removing myself from the timeline that I was on while living in Los Angeles, I feel so strong within myself. I feel so sure and certain within myself. I know that if I continue to just pour into myself and cultivate myself, then anything I want can be magnetized to me.
I'm really stepping into my gifts this year. I think one of the biggest things that I was battling while living in Los Angeles was this desire to be more than a model while also operating within this context that wants to put you in a box as a model, content creator, a very physical being. I want to express more of myself, but now I'm really stepping into that with a lot of self-assuredness, directing, creative directing, and working with brands to create high-level spiritual content. I just did a project with Target that was really dope when I got to incorporate my poetry and my book. Creating this Daughter ecosystem, I'm in the right position to affect change in the world the way that I've been wanting to for a long time, so that makes me happy.
Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body by Queen Afua
A great guide on holistic health and how to heal the mind, body, and spirit as we ascend out of trauma into higher levels of consciousness. It really helped me get back in touch with my femininity and womanhood while purging experiences of patriarchy and capitalism.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
This book explains how trauma lives in the body and continues to play out until we address it and free ourselves from it. I encountered it around 2014, before I intentionally began my spiritual journey, but it definitely planted some initial seeds of consciousness.
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
This is a great book to begin understanding human psychology and the mental, spiritual, and emotional limitations that trap us into lesser ways of being. It opened my mind to a broader view of the world and human interactions.