What if the idea that success and wealth “start with yourself” is actually a myth?

This week, I'm bringing a religious studies lens to the self-help industry and break down the buzz and backlash around Emma Grede’s Start With Yourself. I use it as a case study to think about how myths work and how the American Dream continues to sell individual success as the solution to structural problems.

I argue that Grede’s message reflects a gendered and racialized version of success often marketed to Black women and women of color, what I think of as the millennial-coded myth of the pick-me.

From there, I turn to Black thought and the Black Nationalist Movement, specifically the Republic of New Afrika, to explore alternative visions of success beyond capitalism and self-making. I close by thinking at the intersections of the spiritual and the intellectual as I try to define what success looks like in this new career chapter I am presently in.

Chapters

00:00 Opening

00:40 Grounding in My Own Version of Success

02:30 How Myth Functions

06:28 Emma Grede & the Myth of the Pick Me

15:06 A Vision of Success Beyond Capitalism

References

Kees W. Bolle, “Myth: An Overview,” Encyclopedia of Religion (2005)

Imari Obadele, Foundations of the Black Nation (1975)

This week, we turn to Audre Lorde and Ashley Coleman Taylor to get a sense of what is divine about the Black femme through a Black queer and religious studies lens.

We talk about A LOT.

What’s the difference between popular culture takes and social media discourse on the divine feminine and Lorde and Coleman’s theorizing about the Black femme as divine? A lot. Most of the time, the girls are not talking about the same thing. And we get into how a lot of talk about the divine feminine defines itself over and against the Black femme embodiment like that of the rap girls (Sexyy Red, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, etc.).

I explore how Lorde and Coleman Taylor’s work offer a beautiful and capacious understanding of the divine femme! You’ll have to listen for that! And how this definition also opens up a third option for how people answer questions about being Muslim and queerness.

Chapters

00:00 Opening

00:40 Grounded in the Baddie Routine

03:34 Grounding Question: What Is Divine About the Black Femme

05:51 Who Is the Black Femme

14:02 Divine: A relentless commitment to becoming on your own terms

References

Coleman Taylor, Ashley. "Religio-erotic Experience and Transoceanic Becoming at the Shoreline in Audre Lorde’s Zami." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 91, no. 3 (2023): 680–697.

Drawing on my research on Black Muslima thought and history, I turn to two thinkers who have given the saying meaning within the context of U.S. anti-Blackness, imperialism, and gender violence: Safiya Bukhari and Amina Wadud.

I discuss how the phrase has been a rallying call to struggle against tyranny and oppression, an action-oriented understanding of what it means to be Muslim and embody Islamic monotheism.

Chapters

00:00 Opening

00:40 Grounded in the Fact That It Is That Deep

04:59 Listener Question: What Do Muslims Mean When They Say, “I Fear No One but Allah?”

07:53 Safiyah Bukhari’s Escape from Prison

15:43 Fearing No One, Not Even Snakes

20:46 Amina Wadud and the Tawhidic Paradigm

26:40 Closing

References:

Bukhari, Safiya. The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting for Those Left Behind. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2010.

Churchill, Ward. Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States. South End, 2002.

Husain, Atiya. No God but Man: On Race, Knowledge, and Terrorism. Duke University Press, 2024.

Wadud, Amina. Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective. OUP US, 1999.

Wadud, Amina. “Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam.” Praktyka Teoretyczna 08 (2013): 249–262.

Bet you thought I was gonna say something like “it helps you understand the diversity of the world.” WRONG. If you’ve been here for a while, you know DEI speak ain’t got a place here.

Now that I’ve got your attention.

The study of religion…

Is the study of what people do and the meaning they give to those actions. And once you know that, then you begin to see how power and authority are cultivated, maintained, and resisted in this world.

You understand how myths work, you begin to see how systems hold power over you by selling you fiction they market as truth.

You understand how rituals work, you begin to see that the most impactful social movements and thinkers have all ritualized resistance in some way.

You understand how authority works, you start moving in a way that aligns with what you think should have authority over your life, not what you’re told should have.

You understand how knowledge is produced, you start producing your own and finding meaning + purpose in knowledge they’ve told you has none.

The study of religion is a social good because it helps one see the world as it is and turns your attention to all the possibilities of what it could be.

It’s the study of critique not rooted in despair or ambivalence. It’s the study of how the spiritual AND the material are one and the same. It’s the study of how the status quo is maintained and resisted.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome

00:40 Grounding in my own answers

01:59 Why is it important to study religion + spirituality?

05:15 Myth of the Millennial Pick Me

12:04 Rituals that give the everyday meaning

15:10 Authority to move how YOU wanna move

21:25 Knowledge also comes from within

References

Ali, Tazeen M. The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority and Community in US Islam. NYU Press, 2022.

Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978).” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (2020): 53–59.

Pérez, Elizabeth. “Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions.” In Religion in the Kitchen. New York University Press, 2016.

Episode 3: What’s the Difference Between Religion and Spirituality

Episode 4: Listener Question: How to Make a Writing Practice (or Any Practice) Spiritual

This week, I’m thinking through how we, as scholars of religion (yes, that includes you if you’re listening), come to see and engage the unseen, regardless of whether we “believe” in it or can perceive it through our physical senses.

I also share how I encounter and draw on the unseen in my own intellectual work and practices, and what this has taught me about a much broader, more embodied understanding of the unseen. One that goes beyond flickering lights, things flying across rooms, or haunting silhouettes.

Follow me on socials @imanabdk for more of my thinking on the unseen.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:40 The unseen tested me

02:26 What is the unseen?

03:28 Does it matter if I believe in the unseen?

05:58 Stop trying to arbitrate the real

12:21 Beyond ghosts

14:00 My encounters with the unseen

18:50 Broadening what we consider the unseen

Works referenced:

Ahmad Greene-Hayes, “Hair, Roots, and Crystal Balls: Archival Viscerality, Black Conjuring Traditions, and the Study of American Religions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 91, no. 4 (2023): 798–819.

Amira Mittermaier, Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (University of California Press, 2010).

Safiya Bukhari, The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting for Those Left Behind (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2010).

How did you make your writing practice feel like a spiritual practice?

I break down three ways I made the dissertation writing practice feel like a spiritual practice: thinking about writing as channeling, ritualizing the whole thing, and working in some collective accountability.

I've NEVER been motivated by the kind of disposition that says "get up and grind," "show you're the smartest," "dominate the field you are in," or "be the best." It works for some people, just not me. But what has always helped me tap into the kind of discipline I needed in this moment was seeing the task before me as a challenge for obtaining spiritual depth. You mean I’ll get to know myself better through this practice? Develop a deeper connection to my ancestors? Think about my work as part of a larger tradition? Now that I will get up and do every day.

Works referenced:

For my reference to "archival ancestors," see Ahmad Greene-Hayes Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

For my reference to "ancestrally responsible work," check out the amazing public, artistic, and scholarly work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, including Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Penguin, 2024).

For my note on getting started with ancestor veneration, I learned so much from Ehime Ora's Spiritu Come From Water: An Introduction to Ancestral Veneration and Reclaiming African Spiritual Practices (Hay House, 2025) and JuJu Bae's The Book of Juju: Africana Spirituality for Healing, Liberation, and Self-Discovery (Sterling Ethos, 2024).

When it comes to the religion versus spirituality question, that is often because my answer focuses less on defining the terms and more on the question itself. I am fascinated by what is really going on in people’s thought worlds when they want me to distinguish between religion and spirituality in the first place.

This week, I'm thinking through my own experiences alongside Robert A. Orsi’s Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton University Press, 2005).

If you like the episode, don’t forget to share it with a friend and follow me @imanabdk on socials.

This week, I'm finding grounding in a beautiful concept written about by Alexis Pauline Gumbs: dream time. This idea really changed how I think about my responsibility to, as they say, use my time wisely.

Follow me @imanabdk on socials for more at the intersections of the spiritual and the intellectual!

--

I did the reading so you don't have to, but as always, I'd love to hear what you think about it too! Send me a DM or comment on the show directly on Spotify.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Prophecy in the Present Tense: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee Pilgrimage, and Dreams Coming True,” Meridians 12, no. 2 (2014): 142–152.

In this episode, you can hear me talking about the very new season of life that I am in and how I'm finding grounding in abeautoful question asked by Katherine McKittrick and Eugenia Zuroski, where do you know from?

---

References

I did the reading so you don't have to, but of course I want you to too ;)

Zuroski, Eugenia. "Where Do You Know From?: An Exercise in Placing Ourselves Together in the Classroom." MAI: Feminism (2020).

So I’ve got something for you.

Welcome to the Grounded Podcast with your host, Dr. Iman. This is a space where the intellectual meets the spiritual. I’m a professor, a scholar of religion, and someone learning how to find her footing in real time.

I’ll introduce you to the people, conversations, and schools of thought that have changed how I see the world. Together, we’ll seek clarity not through passivity or bypassing, but through intuition, critique, and imagination.

Some episodes are just me reflecting on where I’m finding my footing. Others draw from my research on religion and spirituality, tracing where I’ve seen others find theirs. And sometimes we’re joined by experts, friends, and even you, the listeners, learning with each other and seeking rootedness together.

So wherever this takes us, I’m really glad you’re here.

Let’s get grounded.