This article expands on Episode 10 of My Many Selves with Damaris Nightingale: “Forgiveness: The Prison Break.”
Key takeaways
Forgiveness is not necessarily a favour to the person who hurt you. It can be a decision to stop carrying their pain into your own life.
Letting go of resentment does not mean forgetting, excusing, reconciling, or allowing the same behaviour again.
Holding a grudge can keep another person’s presence in charge of your emotional atmosphere long after the original event.
There is no moral requirement to forgive on anyone else’s timetable. This is an invitation for anyone who wants greater emotional freedom.
Stillness, visualisation, blessings, self-forgiveness, fragrance, and deliberate boundaries can all become doorways into a lighter way of living.
A natural perfume elixir or essential oil perfume can serve as a sensory cue: the loop stops here; I choose how I enter the room.
“Mama, I’m not doing anybody a favour”
Years ago, Damaris felt wronged by a relative.
There had been betrayal, pain, and the familiar inner replay that follows an experience we cannot quite put down. Eventually, she went through her own process and released it.
Her mother noticed.
“How can you be so forgiving?” she asked.
Damaris’s answer was simple:
“Mama, I’m not doing anybody a favour. It comes from self-preservation. I don’t want to drag anybody’s pain or suffering (whatever they were going through that made them do all that) into my life. I don’t want to get up every morning carrying that. It’s too much burden. I just don’t have the fortitude for it.”
That is the heart of this conversation.
Is forgiveness a favour to someone else? Or is it an opportunity for you to become free of a person, a memory, or a feeling that has occupied too much room inside you?
For Damaris, forgiveness is a prison break.
Not a moral performance. Not permission. Not pretending that the event did not matter.
A prison break.
What resentment costs when the event is over
Sometimes the original moment lasts five minutes, but its emotional echo moves into your calendar for years.
If the person works with you, they enter the meeting room and your body reacts before your thoughts catch up. You hear their voice and freeze. You see their name on an email and feel the old irritation rise.
If the person is part of your family, you may have to see them at birthdays, weddings, holidays, or gatherings. They walk into the room and something tightens in your stomach. Your thoughts become crowded. You are no longer simply attending an event; you are managing the atmosphere created by their presence.
There may be self-pity, anger, rage, sadness, embarrassment, or an exhausting need to understand why they behaved as they did.
But there is a question worth asking:
Do I really want to give another person the keys to my emotions?
When someone can enter a room and instantly change your inner weather, they still have access to you.
That does not mean your reaction is foolish. It means the situation may deserve your attention, not necessarily because the other person deserves more of your time, but because you deserve more freedom.
The vending machine of emotion
Damaris uses an image that is difficult to forget.
Would you like someone to treat you like a vending machine?
They put in money. They press the button.
Boop.
Out comes the drink.
That is what it is like when somebody knows exactly how to press your emotional button and receive the response they came for. They say one sentence, walk into one room, make one expression, and suddenly out comes the anger, the cringe, the silence, the tears, or the old resentment.
Damaris’s preferred response is:
“Keep pressing that button. Out of order. No drink. No pulse. You cannot get that from me.”
Perhaps there is a little defiance in that. She admits it.
But mostly, she describes it as freedom.
She has her own issues, questions, unfinished thoughts, and unanswered mysteries. She does not want to add the lifelong project of explaining somebody else’s behaviour.
Maybe that person was in pain. Maybe they were sad. Maybe they suffered when they were young. Maybe they were influenced by someone else. Maybe they were simply cruel.
Whatever the explanation, Damaris asks whether it deserves unlimited space in your life.
How to forgive someone who hurt you without excusing them
Forgiveness is often misunderstood because people confuse it with several different decisions.
Forgiveness is not…Forgiveness may be…Saying the behaviour was acceptable. Deciding that the behaviour no longer gets unlimited access to your attention. Forgetting what happened. Remembering without rehearsing the event every morning. Permission to be hurt again. A choice to create boundaries with family, partners, colleagues, or friends. A favour to the person who caused harm. An act of self-preservation. Immediate reconciliation. Emotional freedom, whether or not contact continues. Denying anger or sadness. Choosing what you do with those feelings. A demand placed on every reader. An invitation for anyone who wants to feel less burdened
Letting go of resentment does not require you to open the door and invite the same behaviour back into your life.
You may forgive and still leave.
You may forgive and still say no.
You may forgive and still choose distance, privacy, documentation, or firm boundaries.
Forgiveness concerns what you carry. Boundaries concern what you permit.
The marriage story: when the warden is also in the jail
Years ago, a client called Damaris for advice after discovering that her husband had been unfaithful.
The client asked what Damaris thought she should do.
Damaris answered:
“It’s your choice. If you want to leave, I support you. If you want to stay, I support you. That’s something you have to decide, but do it only for you.”
The client decided to stay.
But she also decided that her husband would pay.
She stopped speaking to him. She ignored him. The home became tense and difficult to inhabit. Every room seemed to hold the same unresolved argument.
Eventually, the husband called Damaris too.
“Can you believe she’s doing all that?” he asked. “But I deserve it. I must suffer.”
They continued in this pattern for several years. One person delivered punishment. The other accepted it. Both remained tied to the original offence.
Then Damaris said to the client:
“I know you feel justified in keeping up this anger and keeping your home in turmoil, and he feels he did wrong so he must take it. But have you considered that you have imprisoned him in this feeling, and you have become the warden, the one with the keys? Don’t you realise that both of you are in prison? Both the warden and the prisoner sleep in the jail.”
A friend had an even sharper way of putting it:
“You’re plucking your eyes out just to spite your face.”
The client did not respond immediately. She thought about it.
Not long afterward, Damaris noticed that the couple had begun speaking kindly to each other. Their relationship took a different shape. They started enjoying one another’s company again.
The client had freed herself.
As a consequence, he was freed too.
That is not a directive about what anyone should do in a marriage. It is a story about the cost of remaining warden to a prison you also inhabit.
What research says about forgiveness and rumination
Forgiveness has been studied extensively by researchers including Everett Worthington, Robert Enright, and Fred Luskin, whose Stanford Forgiveness Project explored ways people respond to grievance and recurring resentment.
Across psychological research, people who practise releasing resentment often report lower hostility and less repetitive grievance-focused thinking, alongside greater overall wellbeing. Studies vary in method and quality, and these findings are not promises about what any one person will experience.
Research on rumination offers a plain-language explanation for Damaris’s prison metaphor. When the mind repeatedly reviews an event, the grievance continues to occupy attention and mental capacity long after the event itself has ended.
The memory remains, but the repeated rehearsal keeps returning the person to the same emotional room.
This does not mean every difficult feeling must be dismissed. It means repeated mental review can become expensive. It can take time from work, creativity, intimacy, rest, family life, and the next chapter waiting to be written.
For a deeper exploration of how attention is shaped by sensory cues and intention, visit the Scented Potions Journal.
The stillness practice: entering the dome of light
Years ago, Damaris was part of a Reiki group. One day, the teacher said they would do something different: a forgiveness practice, which he called terapia del perdón.
In this article, we will call it a forgiveness practice or the practice of el perdón.
The group became still, silent, and quiet enough to listen to their own thoughts and feelings.
Some people imagined a dome of light around themselves.
Some saw themselves inside a crystal capsule.
Others used prayer, singing, or chanting. Each person arrived at stillness in a different way. There is no one-size-fits-all route into a contemplative mood. One person may sit quietly. Another may look out of a window without trying to accomplish anything. Someone else may need music, a repeated phrase, or the visual image of a protective sphere.
Damaris says the teacher gave one aspect, the dome, and she would add the pieces that make the practice more complete for her.
The invitation is simple:
Sit somewhere you can be undisturbed.
Choose an image, prayer, sound, or sensory cue that represents safety and stillness.
Become quiet enough to notice what arises.
Do not argue with it.
Do not interrogate it.
Let the first person, memory, or feeling appear without deciding in advance what it should be.
The surprise was that many participants expected an ex-partner, a former friend, or someone they openly disliked to appear.
Instead, some saw their mother.
Their father.
Their spouse.
A sibling.
Someone they loved.
Beneath the love was a low-grade resentment, so quiet it had rarely announced itself. It appeared occasionally, then disappeared again. The practice simply made it visible.
Sending blessings instead of repeating “I forgive you”
Damaris has her own version of this practice.
Rather than repeating, “I forgive you,” she sends a feeling of blessings to the person.
Her reasoning is personal. If someone genuinely did something harmful and the event has already happened, she does not know what will unfold inside that person. She has encountered research and ideas suggesting that one person’s emotional state may affect others, but she holds that possibility lightly rather than presenting it as established fact.
So she chooses blessings.
She also sends forgiveness to herself.
She asks:
What part of me was playing the victim?
What part of me made somebody feel they had the audacity to come at me in that way?
What was my participation in the pattern?
What would my freedom look like now?
This self-questioning is never a way to blame yourself for another person’s choices. Damaris is clear that she does not diminish the other person’s responsibility.
It is simply that she can do very little about what the other person chose. She can do something about her own participation, attention, and next step.
She finds it uncomfortable that someone can do something to her, walk into the room, and enjoy themselves while she is the one cringing.
She does not want to live with somebody else having that much power.
The friend, the Christmas gathering, and the grand entrance
A close friend of Damaris had been deeply hurt by a woman she once trusted.
They had been friends for years. Later, that woman became involved with the friend’s son and began creating considerable conflict within the family. She shared private secrets: things one woman might tell another woman, never expecting them to be carried into a son’s relationship.
Damaris called the woman a Xanthippe, a brief classical reference to Socrates’ famously difficult wife. Over time, the name came to mean a quarrelsome woman.
The son was unduly influenced by the intrigue. Damaris did not excuse him; he was an adult. But people can become carried away by emotion, loyalty, and the stories others tell them.
Then Christmas arrived.
The family would gather from different cities. The friend was nervous, anticipating the encounter and wondering how she would survive the celebration.
Damaris asked her:
“Do you want to play the role of the hurt one, the victim, or do you want to take your rightful place as the matriarch? Do you want her presence to destroy your whole celebration with your family, or do you want to set the tone and free yourself from all this pent-up emotion?”
The friend understood the concept, but she wanted specific instructions.
“What exactly do I do?” she asked.
Damaris told her:
Let the event happen.
Let the other woman arrive first.
You wait.
Put on your loveliest makeup and your best clothes.
Walk in last.
When you enter, walk in as if you own the space, not as the victim.
Then, when you approach her, find something genuinely nice and compliment her on it. Do not invent a lie. Look for one true thing rather than focusing on every ugly thing that has happened.
The woman expected resentment and hostility.
Instead, the friend flipped the script.
Sometimes another person writes a script and expects you to play your assigned role. The only way out is to say:
“No. I am not playing that script. I am the author of my own script. Those are not the lines I want to repeat.”
The dynamic changed completely.
The other woman was disarmed. The transformation was not immediate or magical, but the friend stepped out of the role. She refused to let another person’s presence dictate the emotional temperature of the entire gathering.
She took her rightful place.
Scent as the door out of the loop
Resentment can become a loop the mind replays.
Stillness gives you a way to notice the loop, but many people need a doorway into stillness first.
Scent can become that doorway because it arrives before language does. Smell signals travel through the olfactory system into regions closely connected with memory and feeling, including the amygdala and hippocampus, with fewer relay stages than sight or sound.
That is why scent is such a powerful ritual cue.
Not because a fragrance can decide what you feel.
Not because a bottle can erase a memory.
Because a repeated aroma can become a small, recognisable signal:
“The loop stops here. The room changes now.”
A fragrance can become your dome of light.
It can be the sensory container you step inside before journaling, praying, sitting quietly, or deciding how you want to enter a difficult room.
It can also become the perfume version of the grand entrance: your deliberate choice to arrive as the author of your own script.
Choose How You Enter the Room: The Scented Potions Collection
The products below are not substitutes for boundaries, reflection, conversation, or qualified support. They are cosmetic and wellness products designed to become part of a personal fragrance ritual.
Think of them as sensory symbols for different stages of the prison break.
The centrepiece: Fox & Diamonds $195
For the reader who is walking into the room where the person who hurt her will be.
Fox & Diamonds is the direct companion to the grand entrance story. The woman who puts on her loveliest clothes, walks in last, and takes her rightful place instead of playing the victim.
Its notes are rose, tuberose, sandalwood, tangerine, and vanilla:
Rose and tuberose create floral presence.
Sandalwood gives the composition a warm foundation.
Tangerine adds brightness.
Vanilla leaves a sensual finish.
This is the fragrance for the line:
“I am the author of my own script.”
Wear it before a family gathering, a difficult social event, or any moment when you want your entrance to be chosen by you.
Clear Mind, also known as Mental IQ Mood Shifter Inhaler: $38
For the reader who needs a sensory doorway into stillness.
Clear Mind contains spikenard, rosemary, basil, sage, geranium, mandarin, patchouli, lavender, rose, and labdanum.
This is the “dome of light” ritual: a portable aroma for sitting quietly, journaling, meditating, or allowing the next thought to arise without forcing it.
Rosemary has a long traditional association with remembrance and clarity. Here, it is part of a larger composition with green herbs, citrus, florals, earth, and resin.
The companion Clear Mind Crown Chakra Clarity Roll-On is available at $99 for a skin-worn ritual.
Happily Perfume Elixir: $179
For the reader who has carried a grievance through too many evenings.
Happily contains artemisia, lavender, vetiver, rose, and Peru balsam.
Its ritual arc moves from herbal freshness through soft florals into an earthy, resinous finish. It suits the evening when you decide to put the heavy thing down rather than rehearse it one more time.
This is not denial. It is not pretending that everything was acceptable.
It is the deliberate gesture of saying:
“I am not carrying this conversation into another night.”
Say It Bold Mood Shifter Inhaler: $35
For the reader who needs a boundary, not another performance of silence.
Say It Bold contains blue tansy, jasmine sambac, myrtle, and amyris.
Release is not permission to be hurt again. Sometimes the free response is to say the thing plainly, ask the direct question, or state the boundary without wrapping it in ten apologies.
Use the inhaler before a difficult conversation, then pair it with the Say It Bold Roll-On when you want the intention close to your skin.
The ritual is simple:
“I can speak without becoming consumed by the argument.”
Fermonica “Come To Me” Perfume Elixir: $195
For the reader who wants to feel rooted in her own life again.
Fermonica contains jasmine, chocolate, hay, rose, red cedar, and musk, with a Root Chakra intention.
Its earthy, floral, warm, and sensual character is for the woman who does not want to be defined by the offence. She wants to remember her own body, home, work, desire, creativity, and future.
Pair it with the Come To Me Root Chakra Roll-On for a more layered ritual.
Coco Zen Mood Shifter: inhaler and roll-on
For the reader who wants strength without consuming anger.
Coco Zen is available as an inhaler and roll-on, with chocolate, rose, tangerine, magnolia, patchouli, and vetiver creating a warm citrus, floral, chocolate, and earthy profile.
It is a ritual of steady power rather than frantic energy. Use the Coco Zen Inhaler when you want a portable aromatic pause, or choose the Coco Zen Roll-On for pulse points.
GEMS $240
For the reader standing at the edge of a new chapter.
GEMS represents the version of you who exists on the other side of what you have been carrying.
It is luminous and elevated, suited to marking a change in identity, a new season, or the decision not to drag an old relationship into the next chapter.
Dollars and Scents Luxury $250
For the reader reclaiming the attention once consumed by the grievance.
Dollars and Scents Luxury is a ritual of reclamation: taking the attention that was flowing into the old story and redirecting it toward your work, creativity, abundance, and future.
Use it before planning, building, negotiating, or returning to the part of your life that deserves your energy.
Explore Dollars and Scents Luxury.
Olfactory Ritual Roll-On and Inhaler Collections
Freedom looks different on different days.
Some days call for a grounding ritual. Some call for softness. Some require a boundary. Some ask for stillness before a difficult decision.
The Olfactory Ritual Roll-On Collection and Olfactory Ritual Inhaler Collection create a full wardrobe of scent directions, including Be Well, Clear Mind, Coco Zen, Fermonica, Happily, In the Mood, and Say It Bold.
You do not have to choose one emotional costume for every day.
You can choose how you enter the room.
Karma, lifetimes, and releasing the link
Some people believe in karma. Some believe in an afterlife. Damaris treats these ideas as personal reflection rather than doctrine.
She once said to someone:
“If you don’t like being with this person in this lifetime, and if you continue with this resentment and anger, whether it’s justified or not, that isn’t the point; the emotion is the point. You are linking yourself to this person. So you will see them again in another life. If you didn’t like them in this one, why are you trying to drag them into the next? Let them go. Move on.”
She also notes that karma, for those who believe in it, is complex. It is not necessarily one event producing one result. It may be a series of conditions leading toward an outcome.
The useful question is not whether you can calculate another person’s karma.
It is whether you want to keep linking your attention to them.
The other side of the prison: when you are the one who caused harm
There is another side to this conversation.
What if you are the person who committed the offence?
What if you have apologised, made amends where possible, and the other person still refuses to forgive you?
You do not have to wait for the warden to open the door.
Make amends if you can.
Tell the truth if it is appropriate.
Repair what can be repaired.
Accept that the other person may need distance.
But if the warden will not hand over the key, you can still make a prison break.
There is no requirement to keep paying for the same act forever. You acknowledge what happened, take responsibility, and stop repeating the punishment inside yourself.
You do not have to say mea culpa for eternity unless you choose to remain there, or find it too difficult to imagine another way.
There is no right or wrong answer
Damaris is not speaking about righteousness or morality.
She is speaking about the psychology of freedom and the experience of not wanting to be oppressed by an old emotion.
If you can carry resentment and feel perfectly fine, that is your choice.
For her, it is too burdensome. She finds that, for many people, the consequences spill into work, family, friendships, and new relationships in ways they never expected.
Still, there is no universal commandment here.
If you are willing to pay the consequences of holding onto rigidity, hurt, and recurring anger, that is your choice. It is not wrong.
The point is awareness.
Notice what the emotion costs.
Notice what it gives you.
Notice what you are protecting.
Notice what it prevents you from receiving.
Damaris wants to be the master of every aspect of her life.
She is not.
Neither is anyone else.
But it is a goal, a quest, and a worthwhile direction.
The warrior and the spit
There is a story about a warrior in ancient times.
He was fighting out of duty: for his country, his sect, and his religion. He subdued an opponent and was about to kill him.
Then the opponent spat in his face.
The warrior released him.
The opponent was shocked.
“Why did you let me go? You could have killed me.”
The warrior answered:
“Because when I was going to kill you, it was out of duty. I was doing my duty as a soldier and a defender of my own group, country, caste, or sect. But now you spat in my face, and I would have killed you out of anger, and that would have soiled my soul.”
The act was the same.
The difference was the space it came from.
There are times when you must respond forcefully to something done to you or someone you love. There is room for protection, consequence, distance, and decisive action.
But consider where your response comes from.
Do what must be done from a sense of duty, clarity, or protection, not from a consuming anger that remains long after the event has ended.
Not from the feeling of a wrong done to you.
Not from imprisonment.
From a place that leaves you free.
A final ritual for emotional freedom
Tonight, if you wish, place a fragrance near you.
It could be Fox & Diamonds before a gathering, Clear Mind before stillness, Say It Bold before a boundary, Happily before setting down the day, or Coco Zen when you want quiet strength.
Breathe in gently.
Imagine the dome of light.
Ask yourself:
“Whose emotional machine have I been allowing myself to become?”
Then ask:
“What would it feel like for the button to be out of order?”
You do not need to force an answer.
You do not need to forgive before you are ready.
You do not need to reconcile.
You only need to notice where the keys are.
The prison break begins when you decide that another person may have written part of the story, but they do not get to write every remaining chapter.
Explore the Scented Potions Journal for more reflections on intentional living, spiritual self-care, fragrance, attention, intuition, and the many ways scent can become part of your personal ritual.
Listen to Episode 10 and explore the full series at mymanyselves.com.
A gentle care note: Scented Potions creates cosmetic and wellness products for personal fragrance and intentional self-care. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease. If what you are carrying feels like more than you can set down alone, speaking with a trusted person or qualified professional is a strength, not a failure.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you forgive someone who hurt you?
Begin by separating forgiveness from permission, forgetting, and reconciliation. You may reflect on what happened, acknowledge its impact, establish boundaries, and decide that the event will no longer receive unlimited access to your attention. Forgiveness can be a private choice about what you carry.
What does letting go of resentment actually mean?
Letting go of resentment means loosening your ongoing attachment to the grievance. It does not mean pretending the event was acceptable. It means choosing whether repeated anger and mental rehearsal still deserve a central place in your life.
Is forgiveness a favour to the person who hurt me?
It does not have to be. Damaris describes forgiveness as self-preservation: refusing to carry another person’s pain, choices, or suffering into every morning of your own life.
Can I forgive someone and still have boundaries with family?
Yes. Forgiveness and boundaries are different decisions. You may release some of what you carry while still choosing limited contact, private information, physical distance, or clear conditions for future interaction.
Does forgiveness mean I have to reconcile?
No. Reconciliation is a separate choice that requires trust, safety, changed behaviour, and willingness from more than one person. Forgiveness can happen privately without restoring the relationship.
How do I practise self-forgiveness?
Self-forgiveness may begin with honest responsibility and compassionate self-questioning. Ask what you can acknowledge, repair, learn, or change. This is not a way to blame yourself for another person’s choices.
What is the prison break forgiveness metaphor?
The metaphor describes forgiveness as leaving a mental and emotional prison created by repeated resentment. The person who caused harm may be outside the room, yet their presence continues to control your reactions. A prison break is the decision to reclaim the keys.
Can scent support a forgiveness ritual?
A fragrance can become a sensory cue for stillness, reflection, blessings, journaling, prayer, or a deliberate change of attention. It does not erase the event or decide what you should feel. It simply marks the moment when you choose to enter the room differently.
What is the dome of light forgiveness practice?
The dome of light is a visualisation used to create a private, still inner space before noticing thoughts and feelings. Some people prefer a crystal capsule, prayer, singing, chanting, music, or simply looking out of a window. Choose the doorway that feels natural to you.
What if the person I hurt will not forgive me?
You can make amends where possible, acknowledge what happened, and accept that the other person controls their own timing. If they do not release you, you can still stop repeating the punishment inside yourself and begin your own prison break.
What is the best Scented Potions product for entering a difficult room?
Fox & Diamonds is the direct companion to the grand entrance story, with rose, tuberose, sandalwood, tangerine, and vanilla. It can become part of a ritual for choosing how you arrive, especially when another person’s presence might otherwise dominate the atmosphere.
Which scent is best for a stillness ritual?
Clear Mind, also known as Mental IQ Mood Shifter Inhaler, contains spikenard, rosemary, basil, sage, geranium, mandarin, patchouli, lavender, rose, and labdanum. It can become part of a quiet sitting, journaling, or contemplative ritual.
Where can I listen to My Many Selves Episode 10?
Visit mymanyselves.com to explore the podcast and listen to Episode 10, “Forgiveness: The Prison Break,” with Damaris Nightingale.
