In 2013, Abdah Emporium was conceived of by founder Naseerah Hutcherson in her junior year of high school, in a dark basement corner of her parents' Southside Chicago Home.  It wasn't pretty or inspiring, but it was the beginning.

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The middle: Unrefined as it was, I had fallen in love with watching raw elements bend into a merging of art and science at my fingertips.

 

Ten years, a marriage, and three kids later, a friend purchased “Petrichor", a soap from my Soap-of-the-Month collection. I was obsessed (and still am) with that soap because it triggered so much nostalgia in me. She purchased the soap online, based only on the visuals I had posted on my social media, and picked it up that afternoon.

 

We talked for an hour, standing in the cold on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building. It was our first time meeting but I could tell we were kindred spirits—two Muslim women of color from big cities who had followed our spouses to smaller pastures. She didn’t smell the soap when I handed over the bag but after our conversation, I felt certain she would like it. She texted me later from the parking lot of a Costco: