I had an empowering birthday this year, doing things I would never have imagined doing if I didn’t take the plunge. My mom would tell me stories of how I was the biggest scaredy-cat when I was younger. As a small girl, I was prone to crying at almost anything — as my mom famously tells it, I cried all the way through the “It’s a Small World” ride in Disneyland, which is the most sterile and mundane ride you can go on. I cried when in one of my earliest swimming lessons, the instructor decided it was a good idea to throw me into the pool without warning (it was not).