For nearly a decade, she practiced traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy, helping patients “manage” loss with thought records and exposure hierarchies. But she felt like a fraud.
“I was teaching people to close doors,” she admits. “But grief kept opening windows inside me.”
“Western culture treats grief like a broken bone,” she says, her voice steady but soft. “We ask, ‘When will you be okay again?’ But grief isn’t a fracture. It’s an amputation. You don’t heal from it. You grow around it.”
For most of her life, Márquez believed grief was an enemy to be defeated. A clinical psychologist turned grief companion (acompañante duelo), she now teaches a radical idea: El Poder Del Duelo Ana Maria Patricia Marquez...
For two years, Elena kept her daughter’s room exactly as it was—clothes on the chair, half-colored drawing on the desk. Therapists called it “complicated grief.” Márquez called it “love without a channel.”
Together, they designed a ritual: every Sunday, Elena would move one small object from the room into a new “living altar” in the living room. Not throwing away. Relocating.
But Ana María Patricia Márquez is saying it now. 1. The Empty Chair (for ambiguous loss) Place an empty chair facing you. Speak aloud to the person, relationship, or version of your life you lost. Then sit in the chair and answer as them. “You will be surprised what you hear.” “But grief kept opening windows inside me
Márquez responds bluntly: “I am not romanticizing pain. I am honoring agency. There is a difference between saying ‘your loss is beautiful’ and saying ‘you have the capacity to create meaning after devastation.’”
Her turning point came during a research sabbatical in Oaxaca, where she studied Día de los Muertos traditions. There, she witnessed a grandmother speaking to a photograph of her deceased husband as if he were in the room—not in denial, but in continuity .
“That’s when I understood,” Márquez says. “Grief isn’t about letting go. It’s about finding new ways to hold on.” Today, Márquez leads workshops and retreats across Latin America and the U.S. Latino community. Her approach, documented in her forthcoming book “Duelo Salvaje” (Wild Grief), rests on five pillars: 1. Despatologizar la tristeza (Depathologize sadness) “Sadness is not depression. It is the correct response to loss. We have medicalized mourning. I invite people to be inefficient in their grief.” 2. El cuerpo no olvida Grief lives in the sternum, the throat, the gut. Márquez uses somatic techniques: shaking, breathwork, and what she calls “grief mapping” — drawing where loss physically hurts. 3. Ritual como ancla “Without ritual, grief floats. With ritual, it walks.” She helps clients create personalized altars, goodbye letters, and annual “anniversary ceremonies” that evolve over time. 4. La comunalidad del dolor Inspired by indigenous collectivism, Márquez rejects the privatized grief model. She runs círculos de duelo where participants do not “share advice” but simply witness each other’s tears. 5. Transformación del vínculo The most powerful pillar. “You don’t cut the cord. You weave it into who you are becoming.” III. The Power: From Paralysis to Presence To illustrate el poder del duelo , Márquez shares the story of a client she calls “Elena” (name changed), a woman who lost her 8-year-old daughter to leukemia. You don’t heal from it
“After six months, the room was empty,” Márquez recalls. “But the altar was full. And more importantly, Elena started painting again. The energy that had been frozen in preservation began to flow into creation.”
Don’t write “I feel sad.” Write what sadness does in your body. “Sadness is a cold stone in my right hand.” Then draw the stone.
She smiles, and for a moment, the afternoon light catches the gold paint on her canvas. Lo que el silencio no dijo. What silence did not say.