The Fragrance You Leave Behind
The following are the original notes from Pastor Kim Petree's message, shared alongside her spiritual daughter, Jaedyn, at the 2026 Better Together Conference. Created especially for mothers and daughters, this conversation took place just before the conference's Create Your Bloom activity, where each attendee crafted a personal fragrance. Together, the message and the experience encouraged mothers and daughters to reflect on the invisible "fragrance" they bring into their relationships—the lasting impression left through their thoughts, words, actions, and love.
We hope these reflections encourage, challenge, and inspire you as you consider the fragrance you're leaving behind.
The Fragrance You Leave Behind
Have you ever caught a familiar scent and been transported instantly back to childhood?
The fragrance we put off to others, we usually think of the perfume or cologne we intentionally wear. But in a deeper sense, our “scent” is the invisible, lasting impression we leave on people. The atmosphere of peace, energy, or warmth we bring into a room.
The sense of smell is the most powerful sense that we have. The difference with our other senses is that everything we smell is processed directly in the amygdala (the part of your brain that acts as your emotional alarm system and links memories) and therefore immediately evokes emotion and memory. This contrasts with our other senses, which have to process the stimuli first before we get a response from our brain.
The sense of smell or scents. We can’t see them, but they change rooms, moods, and cause memories.
Within the Hebrew Bible the phrase reah nihoah - “a pleasing smell” - appears frequently throughout accounts of sacrifice and pleasing worship. Leviticus 1 – “and the priest shall burn all of it on the altar, as a burnt offering with a pleasing aroma to the LORD.”
In the New Testament, Paul expands that picture:
"Through us, He spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere... We are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ..." (2 Corinthians 2:14-15)
Who does your scent resemble?
Sense of Smell
Did you know that we can detect over a trillion difference smells?
Women have a stronger sense of smell than men.
We remember smells longer than anything we see, hear, taste, or touch.
Smell is the only sense that bypasses the thinking brain – it goes straight to emotion and memory.
You can’t see a scent, but it can change the entire feeling of a room the moment you walk in. (Sunday dinners as a child – walking into roast filling the air!)
The Fragrance of Your Life
The scent we are talking about is not in your bag. It’s the impression you leave after you’ve left a room.
The atmosphere you carry in. The feeling people have after being around you.
You are always leaving an impression. The question is what kind.
Your scent is powerful; it affects everyone you come in contact with.
The Three Notes
Fine fragrances are built in three layers. So are we. What goes into the perfume produces the fragrance – and what goes into life produces one too.
Head Notes – First Impression
Light, bright, arrives fast, sets the tone. Evaporates quickly but shapes everything that follows.
Our thoughts are our Head Note. What you believe about yourself shows up before you say a word – in your posture, your face, your eyes.
When you walk in, what is the first impression you give?
Heart Notes – The Main Body
What the fragrance really is. Emerges after the first impression settles. It’s your actions, your consistency, how you show up over time.
Your actions. Body language. Whether you listen. Whether you stay.
Your Heart Note with those close to you could be bitterness, distance, silence. We’re not skipping over that. But the heart note takes time to develop. That means it’s not too late to shift into forgiveness and connection.
Base Notes – What Lingers Longest
The notes you don’t notice until everything else fades – but they stay for hours.
Words are Base Notes. The words spoken when emotions were high.
“You will be nothing without me.” – I had to choose to listen to a lie or the truth.
How Are the Best Fragrances Made?
The most prized fragrances don’t come cheap. Rose oil requires 2,000 crushed petals – 40 to 60 blossoms to produce one single drop.
The fragrance doesn’t come from the flower being left alone. It comes from the crushing.
A seed has to break before it grows. Olives are pressed before they release their oil.
Some of the most fragrant women in this room have been through the most.
The crushing always asks one question: will this make me bitter, or will this make me beautiful? Both are possible. The difference is what we do with the pain.
Your pain is not pointless. It is being used to refine something in you and your relationship as a mother and daughter – if you’ll let it.
Closing – What Fragrance Will You Choose?
You walked in here today carrying a fragrance. Maybe you’ve never thought about it. Maybe you don’t love what you’ve been leaving behind.
First step is to recognize and own it. “Nose blind” – blind to your own smell.
I am responsible for my fragrance – no blame game.
Change It: A Story
In 1993, a chain-smoking chemist at P&G’s laboratory returned home from a long day of research, his wife was waiting for him. She asked him if he had suddenly decided to quit smoking. Despite his disappointing ‘no’, she did not smell cigarettes as she usually did. At that time, the chemist was working with a substance called HPBCD, now known as Febreze. P&G went on to market Febreze as a spray that could eliminate odors. Although it could indeed take away odors, sales never took off and the product failed. They changed their approach and instead of just removing the bad scent, they added a fresh new scent to Febreze so it would replace the bad scent with the good scent. Sales skyrocketed.
It’s not enough to stop/block out the bad, we must replace it with a good fragrance for our relationships to flourish.
Fragrance will change as the tone you put into it change (head/thoughts – heart/actions). Different tones go in = different fragrance comes out.
Want to experience more from the 2026 Better Together Conference? Watch the conference highlights on our YouTube channel for additional encouragement and inspiration. Sign up below to be notified when 2027 registration opens!
