My hometown friends are the real unspoken heros in my life.

There are many ways in which I consider myself to be extremely fortunate, but my hometown base group of friends is one of the most prominent ways in which I consider myself to be extremely blessed.

At the age of three, my family and I moved to Massachusetts. I fell in love with that house - it was my sanctuary. Then, a year later, my oldest friends moved into the house behind mine. With just a small stone wall in between our houses, our backyards were considered one big yard.

We biked to school together everyday, and in first grade, there was one more added to our group. Over the next five years, countless bike rides, Friendly's ice cream trips, and never ending American Girl Doll games and copious amounts of jump rope wars took place.

Then, in middle school-our group expanded by one more. Now, at this point, we were "too cool" for dolls, so we spent our time buying J-14 and Tigerbeat magazins at CVS and also stopping at Blockbuster to see if we could all float a dollar or two and split a movie.

Then, I went to high school 45 minutes away - and while we were all worried that the group would fracture. It didn't. Like any friend group, we had fights that tested us - but at the end of the day, we always came back to another.

Then came the dreaded college departure, where we all took our different roads and got used to the idea of only seeing each other on breaks. We were just getting into that groove when the dreaded college graduation rolled around.

Now, with one friend in California, one in Louisiana, one in DC, one in New York - and then me, in Boston, we hardly ever see each other. I would say we have gotten down to seeing each other about once a year. But, thanks to technology, they are always one text or snapchat away when I need my dose of my hometown non-biological family.

When we DO get together, we put our phones down, laugh until our stomachs hurt, play bananagrams, and drink copious amounts of wine - and that one or two nights a year, make it all worth it.