💫 Mon Thoughts on Mon Guerlain

Grief has a funny way of showing up in unexpected places. For me, lately, it’s been showing up in scent.

I can’t take credit for the title — Mon Thoughts on Mon Guerlain — I read it somewhere, but I loved the scent-iment 😉. And honestly, it fits this story perfectly.

I was in a department store the other day, planning to buy Guerlain’s Shalimar. Not because I adore the scent, but because it’s iconic — and because it reminds me of my Karkey.

Yes, you read that correctly. Karkey, like “car key.” My mom’s mom — who was forever misplacing hers and asking, “Has anyone seen my car keys?”  When my oldest brother was little, he assumed that was her name, and it stuck. From that day on, she was just Karkey.

Shalimar was her signature. Whenever I catch a trace of it, I see her wrists dusted in perfume and gold charm bracelets clinking softly against one another — the sound of comfort and memory intertwined.

I realized I didn’t actually own a bottle, so I thought, let’s finally get it. I sprayed it on, and… well, let’s just say my nostalgia smelled better than reality. Not bad, exactly — just an antiquated, powdery sweetness that didn’t quite fit who I am anymore.

Then I noticed Mon Guerlain sitting nearby. So I tried her. 🤯

It was everything I didn’t know I was looking for. Just enough of that classic Guerlain powdery DNA to feel timeless, but softened and modernized — radiant instead of retro.

Mon Guerlain opens with a breath of lavender and a flicker of citrus before settling into a creamy heart of jasmine and iris. Its base — vanilla, sandalwood, patchouli — is warm and enveloping, the kind of scent that lingers like a memory you can’t quite name.

Even though I went searching for my grandmother, I found myself thinking of my stepdad instead. He would’ve loved this perfume. He was one of my biggest Sooo Human supporters, always asking what I was wearing and lighting up when he caught a trace of it in the air.

There’s something about Mon Guerlain — its beauty, its balance, its bottle — that feels like both of them. The transparent etching at the base, the gentle curve of glass, the quiet sophistication with just a wink of sex. It’s elegant but alive, polished but human — exactly how I want to move through the world.

So Shalimar stayed on the department-store shelf. And Mon Guerlain came home to my shelf.

Because sometimes what we think we’re looking for isn’t what we’re meant to find. And sometimes grief finds us — in the soft powder of memory, in the warmth of vanilla, in the scent that reminds us we’re still here.

✨ Note

Because that’s the thing about being human — we find our people again in the smallest, most beautiful ways. Sometimes in scent.