Shouting out the women who stepped up with Kamy. I have a confession to make. All last week I was afraid. Afraid I'd over-reached, over-asked and generally over-stepped by asking you to plan She Writes meetups for our first birthday. What if nobody does it? I fretted. What if nobody comes? And why are there only six people on She Writes right now, including me? (I might have noted that it was 2 a.m. on a Tuesday.) The urge to crawl into a deep, dark, very private hole is sometimes very strong indeed. And then you all went and knocked the fear right out of me. Fifteen cities, including London and New York, will be hosting She Writes birthday meetups on June 29. (Despite the fact that the London meetup, hosted by our very own State of the Art columnist Sarah Glazer, will take place a few days earlier, I still count it.) I don't know how successful they will be, or how many people will show up (please RSVP now if you can!), or if those of you who do attend will have a good time. But I do know that if She Writers gather in fifteen cities (or more -- create an event for your city here), all on the same day, that will be something I will never forget. Fifteen women have stuck their necks out and said, "come celebrate with me," and sent out an invitation to a group of women some of whom they know, but many of whom they have never met. And that takes fearlessness and courage I admire a great deal. It isn't easy to hang a shingle out and hope people will walk through your door, because when you hang a shingle and open your door, you are bound to see people stare at it, make faces, whisper things, and walk on by. Believe me, I know. But then again, some of them will come in and stay awhile. And that can change everything. Believe me, I know that, too. So today I want to thank the She Writers who took a risk with me this week, right here on the main page, and say it loud: THANK YOU. If you live in or anywhere near these cities, please thank them too -- with your RSVP, even if it's no, thanks, at least thanks are still in order. (If you don't see a city near you, again I urge you: join their ranks!) They are: Hope Edelman and Gabrielle Burton in Los Angeles. Jennifer Lauck in Portland. Meg Waite Clayton in San Francisco. (Meg has personally welcomed most of you to this site -- is anyone surprised she's organizing a meetup in SF, too?) Christine Frank in St. Louis. Judith Van Praag in Seattle. Densie Webb in Austin, in my home state of Texas. Jaclyn Friedman of Women, Action and the Media (aka WAM!) stepping forward in partnership with She Writes in Boston. Ananda Leeke, who I met a year ago at Blogher in Chicago, just weeks after She Writes launched, in Washington, D.C. Siobhan Fallon in Central California (Monterrey). E. Victorian Flynn, who may be hosting a small gathering in Madison, WI, though as the founder of Mother Writer! she's rarely lacking for company. Carleen Brice in Denver. Sally Schloss and Julie Jeffs, our Member News superheroine, in Nashville. Jessica Keenan Smith in Philadelphia. And then of course there's Debbie and me in New York. (And ya'll better come see us there if you are in town.) A final thought, a la Jerry Springer, who once asked me out on a date. (True story, but that's for another time.) On Tuesday I attended the Astia We Own It Conference, "a summit convened to drive collaboration, energize the global discussion, and create a roadmap for increasing women's participation in high-growth entrepreneurship." And I heard a lot of things I've heard before: women don't run high-growth companies because they are excluded from the male-money-networks; women don't think big enough; women don't have the sense of entitlement that men do; women don't ask. I struggle with all of the things that were talked about at that conference: a fear of not being good enough, or qualified enough; a fear of asking for too much, or of asking for things I don't have a right to. But I am going to work on asking for more -- on asking, in fact, for a lot. Because this week I took a risk and asked, and I got more than I had hoped for. It was worth a little late night worrying. True that.