weaving loss into life
Patricia Montoya
Patricia (she/her) is a death doula, grief coach, and energy healer completing her Master of Social Work. Originally from Colombia and bilingual in English and Spanish, she brings over a decade of experience in grief facilitation, trauma-informed care, and end-of-life support as a certified Death Doula and Anticipatory Grief Coach through her work at Titipoza. She's also a Psychic Medium, Tarot Reader, and certified Reiki practitioner, drawing on all of it to offer the kind of healing she once needed herself, believing healing happens in community, in the body, and across generations.
My Story
I've lost two siblings. My parents' first son died at two, before I was born. Years later, when I was seventeen, I lost my younger brother to leukemia. I was at his side through his sickness and death.
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Two months after my brother died I moved to the United States for university, far from my family and every support I'd known. Grieving him in an unfamiliar place, where the people and customs of my day to day life were new and not woven into my deep home or heart, was very hard. Nine years after that, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I traveled back and forth to Columbia to be at her side, too; returning, with my grief, to a place where I had no extended family or close community who knew and grieved for her with me, nowhere to lean for the kind of holding I needed.
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Being with my mother and brother while they died taught me that no one should have to face dying alone. It also taught me something trickier to communicate: while everyone's care went to my brother and, later, my mother, no one was checking on me. I was grieving too, in real time, watching a loss I could see coming, with no one holding space for what I needed.
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That's why I became a death doula, and why I offer anticipatory grief coaching. I don't just want to be with the dying. I want to be there for the people caring for them, too: the family members and caregivers quietly grieving while they hold everything together for someone they love. I am happy to do this in a wide range of practical and emotional ways. I'll feel glad to sit with you and learn what your particular grief is asking for.
No one should die alone. No one should grieve alone, either.