▸ Column · The Hidden Leaf Village, in the era of the Fifth Hokage
TSUNADE replies.
Replied to by Tsunade, with a rebuttal from Hinata Hyuga.
The letter
My mother — a retired kunoichi — took a bad chakra-collapse eight months back, the kind that left one side of her slow. She can't run her own medicine regimen anymore, can't make the walk to the apothecary. I'm the only one of us still posted here in the Leaf: my brother Darren's stationed out in the Sand, and my sister Yvette is "too buried with the little ones." So it's all me — every healer's appointment, the Thursday supply run, the messages at the eleventh bell asking whether it's safe to take a pain pill on top of her blood-thinning herbs. Twice I've asked the two of them to split the load or chip in for a part-time aide, and somehow both times I'm the one apologizing by the end. Last moon I missed my own son's Academy demonstration because Mom's dosages got mixed up and I had to race over and sort it. Darren sent back a single frowning sketch. Yvette wrote, "you're just so good at this, we'd only mess it up." I love my mother and I don't want to resent her — but I'm starting to. And I'm scared that if I push my siblings too hard I'll just get branded the difficult one and end up even more alone in this.
Tsunade replies
Listen up. Eight months you've hauled this alone, and your brother answers a missed demonstration with a frowny face scratched on a scroll. Let me name that for what it is: a bet placed and lost. You keep asking Darren and Yvette to ante in, they keep folding, and you keep covering the whole pot anyway. Stop asking people who've already shown you their hand.
Here's the hard part I learned wearing a hat I never wanted: somebody has to be worth what your mother spent raising you, and right now that somebody is you — not them. Fine. Own it. But own the terms too. Hire the aide. You don't need their permission or their coin to do it — schedule the help, then send them the bill. Tell them, don't ask them.
And that resentment you're so scared of? That isn't you turning cruel, kid. That's the warning light. A medic running on fumes makes mistakes, and a boy whose parent misses every demonstration cracks something harder to mend than any stroke. Protect him too. You're the one getting crushed in this fight right now, and I don't leave the one getting crushed standing there alone. I came all this way back. So can you.
— Tsunade
Hinata Hyuga weighs in
Um — Lady Tsunade is right that you can't keep waiting on them. But please don't hear "you'd only mess it up" as cruelty and close the door. My cousin once aimed years of bitterness at me, and underneath all of it was just fear and hurt that was never really about me. "You're so good at this" is sometimes what frightened people say when they don't believe they could ever be enough. So before the bill, I'd try one honest thing: tell Yvette plainly, "I'm drowning, and I need you" — not the task list. Your heart. Steamrolling gets the aide hired. It doesn't get your family back. I think, quietly, you can have both.
— Hinata Hyuga
▸ Read next