Growing up, I had the absolute perfect example for the beauty of female friendships and all that they bring to your life. My mom was blessed with ten of the greatest women on this entire planet, who I have spent my whole life watching love, laugh, and support one another with every breath they take. The Bunco Babes started their long lived friendships in their late teens and early twenties, and have together celebrated some of life's most beautiful moments. They have wiped each other's tears through moments of fear, fights with cancer, infidelities, and the deaths of their parents. They have supported one another through the navigation of motherhood and understanding teenagers, and they have spent numerous Friday nights proving to those very same teenagers why they will never be as cool as them… as they laughed their butts off over eight bottles of wine and fireball shots. Whatever the situation, the Bunco Babes come together every single time in whatever ways they are needed only to continuously prove to me why I have spent my entire life longing for friendships like theirs.

Starting as early as I can remember I have strove to find female friendships that reflected the ones in which I spent my whole life admiring. A group of women who loved and supported me through my best and worst moments and who were always there to be the break of laughter I needed in life. Unfortunately, as most women know, finding your Girl Tribe is about as easy as finding the man you want to marry, and it takes a lot of "dating around." I can remember being as young as 16 years old and crying to my mom longing for a "friend group" that would never leave and accept me for exactly who I was. Am I saying I didn't have friends? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I was lucky enough to have a group of girls in high school that I enjoyed every single moment of our teenage years with, friendships that I hold near and dear to my heart to this very day. Unfortunately, at 18 years old you're never quite sure of who you are, where you're going, and you for damn sure don't understand the importance of female friendships in its entirety.

As I started college and continued on with the search for my Tribe, I was blessed to find some of the greatest women I know, some of which I am lucky enough to still have a part of my life today, and unfortunately some that just didn't work out. With every failed friendship I had, I felt that all too familiar feeling of being a 16 year old girl "longing for a friend group that would never leave." When I was 21 years old I experienced one of the hardest loses of friendship I had ever been through (seriously worse than any breakup I've ever had). It was after that loss that I finally thought to myself, what am I doing wrong? I soon realized that I had spent so much time trying to model a group of friends after the group of women my mom was so blessed with, yet I wasn't trying to model myself after the example they had set for me for what it took to be someone who deserved friendships as beautiful as theirs.

I began to see a change in myself as I started to model myself in my friendships after the example the Bunco Babes had set for me. I wanted to become the friend that my friends knew would always answer the phone no matter the time of the day. I wanted to be the woman who always remembered to check on her friends, because sometimes you never know what's really going on until you ask. I wanted to be the woman who never let her friends face the unknown alone, and who never failed to offer her support. For the first time in my life, I began to strive to become the friend that my mom and her friends were to one another, instead of striving to find a group who mirrored them.

Last week, I watched my mom go through one of the toughest feats imaginable as she said goodbye to her own mom for the very last time. As I watched each of her girlfriends walk into the funeral home with a week's worth of pasta salad, chicken fingers, and taco dip, I was again reminded of the beauty of their friendship and the support it takes to preserve a friendship for over 20 years. I smiled knowing that my mother was surrounded by such loving and supportive women in one of the worst times of her life, and I smiled even harder as my own friends walked through the door with flowers and hugs to help love me through the loss of my granny.

It was in that moment that I realize I had found my very own tribe. A group of women who loved and supported me through my best and worst moments and who were always there to be the break of laughter I needed in life. I was left in awe, hoping that I bring even a fraction of the love and friendship to my tribe's life as they did for me that day, because it is something I will never forget. Today, I am left in complete gratitude for the women who set the true example of friendship for me, for it has brought me some of the most amazing women I have ever known and the best group of friends I could have ever imagined.