Nothing to pull me out of my funk like a news story about someone incredible. 21 year old Rachael Scdoris finished 7th out of the 20 rookies who took on the Iditarod this year, reaching the finish line yesterday at 1:42 am. What an accomplishment! She’s even from my neck of the woods, the great Pacific Northwest.

The Iditarod is a grueling 1150 mile journey across Alaska’s frozen wilderness. The athletes race their teams of 12 to 16 sled dogs from the starting line in Anchorage, reaching the finish line in the tiny town of Nome in about 10 to 17 days. The race commemorates the history of dog sledding as a means of transportation in Alaska, particularly during the diphtheria epidemic of 1925 in which 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs rushed medicine to Nome in record breaking time, saving the city and surrounding communities from disaster. Participants face incredible obstacles, such as scaling rocky mountainsides and crossing miles of frozen river. Temperatures frequently plummet below zero. Both men and women compete in the Iditarod, each of them with their own reasons for “going the distance”.

Rachael is certainly one of the youngest athletes to attempt the race, but the most amazing thing about this woman? She’s legally blind. Rachael was born with a rare disease that makes her nearsighted, farsighted, and colorblind. In other words, all she can see is blurry shapes from a few feet away. She is the first legally blind participant to ever complete the Iditarod. Her website chronicles the accomplishments she has achieved in her short lifetime, and you can even track her progress across the Iditarod in Alaska.

How incredible is this woman? The determination she has just blows me away. Her bio on the Iditarod website says that she has been mushing since she was three, and has planned to race the Iditarod since she was eight years old. How I wish I could have been there at the finish line to share the triumph of the moment her dream came true.

Stories like this always have a way of putting things in perspective for me. They remind me that my trials are so small, and my blessings are so great. They remind me to look back on my life and remember the amazing moments I have already achieved, and look ahead to the victories yet to come. Most importantly, they remind me that if you are passionate about pursuing your dreams, anything is possible. I think that’s something we all need to remember. We should write it on our bathroom mirrors in lipstick, or tape a sign to the ceiling over our beds. If we wake up every morning with that thought in our minds, think how much farther the day will take us! Rachel is someone whose journey has just begun, and whose incredible personal achievements stretch out before her as far as the eye can see. That’s the kind of person I want to be.

“Some call my blindness a disability. To me, ‘disabled’ means ‘unable’. I am by no means unable.”
— Rachael Scdoris

Motherhood is a powerful thing. When you are fighting to protect your child, anything becomes possible. If the need arises, logic and rational thought become overpowered by the fierce instinct to do what needs to be done. Your instinct may drive you back into the flames of a burning building once you realize your child was left inside. It may send you up against a powerful animal many times your size, even if the battle seems impossible to win. You will do it. Mother-instincts give you the courage to risk your life, even die for your child, without a moment’s thought or hesitation. But what happens when you find yourself in a situation where you can’t rely on instinct alone? When you’re forced to make frightening, potentially deadly decisions, in order to keep your child safe?

Imagine you have a 16 year old daughter. Imagine that the most dangerous gang your police department has ever seen decides to recruit your daughter to help them blanket your city with crack cocaine. What would you do? Could you go undercover within the gang, risking your own life and your daughter’s, to try to bring them down from the inside? Carla Shultz from Springfield, Missouri found herself faced with that difficult decision. But Schultz felt like she had no choice- her daughter was in danger. In the news story from the Ozarks news-leader.com website they describe Schultz’s frightening ordeal:

In the summer of 1994, Shultz immersed herself in the gang. Armed drug dealers cut and packaged crack in her house before stashing it everywhere inside, including electrical sockets. When the supply ran out, she went with them to Chicago’s ghettos for another shipment. Once, Shultz said, the so-called Chicago Boys stole several guns from a rival gang and drove them back to Springfield under the hood of her car. Shultz performed dozens of drug buys for police and wore a wire to capture conversations about the burgeoning business.
Shultz, who was like a mother to the gang members, is certain they would have killed her had they learned she was a spy.
“They would’ve killed me and Kari. I know for a fact they would’ve,” she said. “But if you get pushed into a corner, you do whatever you have to do to get out of that corner.”

Thanks to Schultz’s help, police were able to arrest and prosecute the gang members that were involved in running the drug ring. Justice was served, the town was free from the most notorious gang it had ever seen, and most importantly to Carla Schultz, her daughter was safe.

The thing is, sitting here in my warm house, snuggled up in bed with my laptop, I find it easy to judge Schultz’s actions. I would never do that, I think to myself. Why didn’t she just pick up her daughter and run for safety once she knew how dangerous the situation was? How could she willingly put herself and her child in such a prolonged state of vulnerability? From the safety of my bedroom it seems like a foolish and ridiculous risk to take, and I silently vow never to put my family through such a nightmare.

But I don’t think I could ever really understand. Not until I am face to face with the moment in which I need to do something drastic in order to keep my child safe. I don’t think I have any idea what I am really capable of.

After all, I am a mother.

Chile shocked the world this week by electing their first woman president. Michelle Bachelet is a pediatrician and single mother of three, and with 53% of the votes in her favor she became only the second woman elected to head a South American nation (Janet Jagan was chosen to succeed her husband as president of Guyana in 1997 after his death). Ms Bachelet has already made some strong pledges to her country, including helping women have a stronger voice, and promising to bridge the gap between the rich and poor. This was Chile’s fourth election after their return to democracy in 1990, ending 17 grueling years of military rule.

Liberia also swore in a female leader this week! Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa’s first elected female president. The world is changing, according to the female author of this article, and women leaders are bringing new skills to the table: “The modern world, if it is to be sane, is going to have to be much more of a woman’s world than a man’s. The operative words today are not kill, but negotiate; not hate, but understand; not riot, but institutionalize.”

Where does the United States stand amidst this swirling tide of growth and change in the world’s elected leaders? Some speculate that as one of the world’s longest-running democracies, perhaps the answer lies in “social constructs that have been embedded in the nation’s very fabric.” Whatever the reason, I think that America is past due for a change in the way we think about our elected leaders. Our country could only benefit from breaking away from the traditional white Christian male authority. Several countries have not only broken ground by electing their first female leader in the past fifteen years, but they have continued the trend; New Zealand, Bangledesh, Ireland, The Phillipines, Lithuania, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Finland have all elected two women as president so far, and Sri Lanka has had three women leaders, two of them serving as Prime Minister, and one as President.

Laura A. Liswood, the co-founder and secretary-general of the Council of Women World Leaders, has made it a personal mission to get a woman in the oval office. She believes that there are several main problems preventing America from electing a woman as president. According to her, the two-party, “winner-take-all” system does not work for out-of-power groups, which includes women. The United States is also the only country that requires an enormous amount of cash to finance an election, which is another obstacle to those outside of the power structure.

Ms Liswood believes that “women must play an integral role in all the world’s issues or else humanity’s challenges will never be solved.” I agree wholeheartedly. Not only are women as fully capable of taking a leadership role as their male counterparts, but I think that our gender can add a much needed dimension of caring and softness to the role of president. A woman thinks differently, approaches problems differently, and applies solutions differently. Gerald Ford is rumored to have said that America will only have a woman president after a woman becomes vice president, and then succeeds a male president who dies in office. Ford said that once that happens, we’ll never have another male president again. Imagine that!