Thank you, Stewie, for finding the courage to speak out

N ot even her estimable resume playing basketball — an all-timer in the nation's greatest women's basketball program — parallels her heroine within. And that's where we begin. Breanna Stewart — heretofore the goofy, innocent "Stewie" to all of us in Connecticut — is a heroine.

But not for anything she accomplished athletically. Not after this. Not after Monday's essay in the Players' Tribune about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child.

Your heart will ache for her when you read the excerpts. Here are a few:

"I'd hear his footsteps coming down the stairs," Stewart wrote. "He'd sit down next to me, pretending to watch TV. Sometimes, he never went upstairs to sleep and just waited on the couch. I knew what was coming next. I don't know how to say this part. I haven't told many people. I'm not the most vulnerable person — I don't talk about my feelings much — so this is uncomfortable.

"I was molested for years. The TV would flicker, and everything would be quiet. 'It's O.K.,' he'd say. He'd touch me and try to get me to touch him. Sometimes I would try to pull my arm away, but I wasn't as strong. I was just a kid. I wouldn't make any noise. No one else knew it was happening.

"You know those dreams where you try to run but your body won't move? That was me: paralyzed, silent. It wouldn't always happen at night. Sometimes I'd be off from school and it would happen in broad

daylight. But the nighttime ... I'd wait for those steps to creak. Or he'd be there, sitting next to me on the couch, waiting in the light of the TV.

"I couldn't sleep. I was always on guard . ... Basketball became a sort of safe space for me. But no space felt completely safe."

The molestation went on for two years.

Stewart told her parents when she was 11. The perpetrator has long since been identified and arrested. There's more. But it's hard to read. And equally hard to fathom. There are no words. Except, perhaps, these: Thank you, Stewie.

For finding the courage to speak out.

Who knows how many lives you may have saved?

Who knows how many others will find the same courage?

"Even though I play in front of thousands of people or talk to reporters all the time, I have quiet moments every day that no one sees. That's often when I think about it. I could be surrounded by my teammates or friends or complete strangers, living life as I normally would, and memories like lightning will strike," Stewart wrote.

"I wonder how many times what I've been through was a catalyst for where I am or what I am doing now. Even after he was arrested, and the legal process took over, I still don't really even know what to call what he did to me. I'm uncomfortable actually naming it. I'll never forgive him. But I'm not ashamed."

Thankfully, Stewart didn't adhere to the growing notion from the headin-the-sand crowd that she — and other sports figures — should "stick to sports." Au contraire. Sports and their metaphorical richness mirror the rhythms of society. Athletes, male and female, can use their celebrity to make a difference. This is the quintessential example. "Our experiences are different. How we cope is different. But our voices matter," Stewart wrote. "Every time I tell someone, I feel a little more unburdened. I wish it was as simple as saying that it's just something that happened to me. Part of it is just that simple — it literally is something that happened. But I don't know why it happened. I don't know why this happens. Or why sexual abuse keeps happening."

Who knows, though, how much abuse Stewart may have prevented because she reached out?

Here's the part that struck me most: Stewart had trouble with future relationships because the specter of the abuser was omnipresent. I can't imagine the horror of living that way.

"I remember, around fifth grade, having a crush on this boy in my school. That's about the age you start to have crushes. But every time I thought about my crush, I thought about this other guy," she wrote. "I couldn't separate those two things. All I wanted was to think about this boy, when all I could do was think about this man and what he did to me."

Then Breanna Stewart wrote this: "We are all a little more complicated then we seem." Amen to that, Stewie. I'm not sure your reaction to all this. But me? Breanna Stewart just made me want to do better. And be better. Less judgmental. Because until we've walked the proverbial mile in another person's shoes ...

"I also thought about what my dad has said to me more than once," Stewart wrote. "'It's not a dirty little secret. When you're comfortable with it, and when you're comfortable being open about it, you could save someone's life.' That's why I'm writing this. This is bigger than me.

"I'm still working through what comes next now that I have told my story. In sharing, I know that no matter how uncomfortable I typically am making things about myself, as a public survivor, I now assume a certain responsibility. So I'll start by saying this: If you are being abused, tell somebody. If that person doesn't believe you, tell somebody else. A parent, a family member, a teacher, a coach, a friend's parent. Help is there." This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro