In many novels, stories, movies, and TV shows, grief functions as a narrative device (or even a shortcut). A tragic loss appears, it’s explained, and whether it quietly disappears or lingers—it’s always resolved. Its purpose is fulfilled once it has justified a character’s personality or ambition, or driven them towards meaningful change. This approach treats grief as a plot device rather than a lived condition.
And grief is a lived condition. In life, it doesn’t end because you completed the grief journey of losing a loved one. There is no completion to grief, no resolution to it. Grief just is, whether it changes you now or keeps changing you forever.
In Las Luchadoras, grief is not a closed chapter or an arc, but part of the character in their entirety. It is an ongoing force that shapes decisions, relationships, health, and identity. Esperanza’s loss of her mother does not exist merely to explain why she wants to become a doctor. It informs how she experiences her body, how she reacts to medical systems, how she understands care, and how she carries fear alongside hope.
This distinction matters because real grief does not resolve neatly. It resurfaces, whether during milestones, moments of success, and periods of transition—or just to resurface because we, as humans, cannot control what and how we feel. It can complicate joy and coexist with ambition. Treating grief as decorative undermines its psychological and emotional reality.
In immigrant and first-generation narratives especially, grief often accumulates rather than replaces itself. Loss of a loved one intersects with loss of homeland, language, community, and imagined futures. It cannot be isolated without distorting the truth of the characters’ lives.
Fiona’s story offers a parallel perspective. Her grief is quieter, shaped by fear, inherited trauma, and the looming instability of her parents’ legal status. It is not marked by a single death but by prolonged uncertainty. This form of grief is often overlooked in fiction because it lacks a singular dramatic event, yet it is no less formative. It is narratively messy…exactly how grief can occur in our lives.
In this story, grief remains an active force throughout rather than something to be resolved. The expectation that characters must “overcome” loss to be credible or successful is the antithesis of authenticity in presenting grief.
This approach challenges a broader literary tendency to reward emotional closure. In reality, many people build meaningful lives without closure. They carry loss forward, integrating it into who they become rather than erasing it.
Treating grief as motivation rather than decoration restores its complexity. It allows characters to be driven by more than just trauma. Las Luchadoras is one among a greater renaissance of authenticity in grief and other lived experiences.