The journey to creating a fragrance is often an involved one, encompassing lifetimes, loves, even hard lessons. Yet it’s not often that a story begun in near-death experiences—plural—ends in something as life-affirming as Wellfounded.

For its founder, Sara Rotman, you might say the journey of a thousand miles began with a single misstep: an undiagnosed disease that sent her into renal failure, and onto a labyrinthine road to healing, sans GPS. Yet for all its seeming dead ends, that road—and her superhuman determination—ultimately led her to her own 63-acre cannabis farm and Wellfounded Botanicals. A luxury CBD- and THC-based skincare line cofounded with her husband (an equally determined human), it was crafted to help heal others just as she had healed herself.

A graphic designer and celebrity branding dynamo in her former life, Rotman’s relationship with aesthetics was (and still is) almost a spiritual one, so on discovering the complex, exhilarating olfactory characteristics of terpenes—the fragrant compounds in cannabis and essential oils—she was an immediate convert. Between those compounds and the farm’s own “perfumes”—fruits, herbs and florals, the smell of woods and warm earth—it was an appreciation that ultimately blossomed into Wellfounded’s inspired, CBD-infused signature scent.