At 14, she found herself in a car with her swimming coach. His professions of "love" turned into a series of sexual molestations that continued for two years as she found herself feeling guilty and scared over the "affair" he told her they were having.
When the abuse finally ended, so did Mariah Burton Nelson's innocence and her ability to talk with anyone -- including her parents -- about the trauma and shame she felt.Immersing herself in sports and school, she majored in psychology at Stanford, where she was captain and leading scorer on the basketball team before turning professional on French and U.S. teams. She wrote books, entered a speaker's circuit for women and sports and seemingly had learned to deal with it.
Until she got a phone call.
"When he called me, his job was on the line and his reputation was already damaged," she remembers of the events three years ago. "He sought me out because I was giving speeches in which I was mentioning his name. One of her books, "The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football," had a chapter titled "My Coach Said He Loved Me."
"I was talking about coach-athlete abuse after I came to know it was more a widespread phenomenon than just my experience. I hadn't identified him in the book, but there came a point where I thought, 'Why am I protecting him? I can use his name. I don't have to keep the promise that I made to him at 14 anymore.' "
The man she now refers to as "Bruce" (not his real name) never denied his actions, either to her or his superiors at work. But he had a request she felt at the time was impossible.
He asked her to forgive him.
"I was highly suspicious that he just wanted to shut me up, and that
was no doubt part of his motivation. When he first called, I said, 'No. Why should I forgive you? That's your agenda.' Then he wrote me a few letters, and I bitterly put them aside, but after awhile I noticed that they seemed sincere."
At age 40, she began wondering whether her refusal would sentence her to "another 40 years of being bitter."
She called him, wrote to him, even met with him twice.
Now three years later, Nelson said she has truly forgiven her abuser and found a peace she has never before known.
But it came at a price. Their first meeting -- in the parking lot at his workplace -- included a hug "to show good will," but the move was a mistake, she says. "He smelled the same as he did in the car when I was 14 . . . and scent memory is incredibly powerful" in evoking past emotion. What became a six-month emotional and spiritual odyssey into forgiveness made her physically ill and at one point she contemplated suicide.
"I didn't have any guidelines, and my approach was misguided as sort of a tit for tat -- if he would do certain things, then maybe I would forgive him. I gave him a lot of power and responsibility that I later realized was misguided. I was doing it for myself, not for him. Though he was helpful and I'm grateful for that, I needed to do it regardless of what his behavior was."
While she had grown up in a "token Presbyterian" household, Nelson had never read the Bible. She turned to her own faith tradition of Zen Buddhism and found compassion for him there, but it wasn't enough. Her abuser said he was a Christian, "and he referred to that several times in his letters, where he talked about praying for me and for us."
It wasn't until she started reading what Jesus said about forgiveness that "everything pointed there. As I read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, I was deeply moved by Jesus' example and his teachings. Now I'm going to church."
Describing herself as a "Zen Christian," Nelson said her experience was "difficult and exciting and scary -- but ultimately liberating" in a way she hopes to share with others. Her new book, "The Unburdened Heart: Five Keys to Forgiveness and Freedom," will be out next month and details the five steps she learned about forgiving -- both through her own experience and through extensive interviews with many who have also forgiven.
The first step, she said, is awareness. "It's important to remember and acknowledge exactly what happened and how you feel about it, including anger," an emotion that helps move the abused person from acknowledgement to the second step, which Nelson says is validation.
"I think we need to have someone say 'that really hurt you and I can understand why.' "
Compassion -- understanding that the abuser is confused or hurting or angry -- is the third step, which "helps you start to open your own heart" to greater understanding. Humility follows, she said, when "you begin looking at people you've hurt with your own anger or confusion" and owning up to the fact that everyone needs to be forgiven.
Self-forgiveness is the vital fifth step, she said. "We need to forgive ourselves for not having ended the abuse or not knowing how to handle it. The more we learn to forgive ourselves, the more we can extend that generosity to others."
Has her former coach reformed? Nelson said she doesn't believe he has abused anyone else "for a very long time." While he seemed very sincere, "I think he has his work to do with God and has done that and is probably still doing that, but that's not really up to me. . . . (His attitude of seeking forgiveness) really helped, but we shouldn't let our own forgiveness and our health of mind and heart be determined by what that other person is willing to do.
"You can ask them for what you want, but if you don't get it, are you willing to be angry forever? I wasn't. And who would that anger hurt if you were?"
Editor's note: Mariah Burton Nelson will speak today at 12:45 p.m. in the Gould Auditorium inside the Marriott Library at the University of Utah as part of the final day of a four-day conference on "Forgiveness: Traditions and Implications." The event, which runs from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., is free and open to the public.