I’ve been thinking about Fruits Basket more and every time I remember Tohru’s relationship with her mom, I get so sad
Because Kyoko was literally so young when she had Tohru, so young that she didn’t get to go to high school (Katsuya, they’ll never make me like you) which is why she wanted Tohru to finish high school
And while she was obviously a great mom to Tohru and became a mother figure to not only her biological daughter but also her friends, she underestimated how the time that she struggled with grieving Katsuya affected her
Like we the audience know that this time period is what made Tohru so polite to the point where she was a people-pleaser. In her mind, she had to become like her father to get her mother to stay, and while we know that’s not the case, she doesn’t—she was a little kid.
And it’s not even Kyoko’s fault, she was barely out of her teens, lost her husband, became a single mother, and her husbands side of the family is accusing her of cheating because Tohru was a carbon copy of her mother and not her father. Not to mention, she had no support system of her own since she left the Crimson butterflies and her parents sucked. She was struggling, and the only thing that stopped her from giving up on life was her daughter, but she’ll never know that.
And I feel like their finances aren’t talked about enough. If Kyoko died at 30-ish, she was spending her 20s at work trying to support herself and her daughter which is a large contributor to why Tohru knows how to cook. She was the one that would be making dinner for her mother instead of the other way round.
Like they were literally growing up together, seeing each other struggle, but never fully knowing how much because of how young they both were
