Shannen Doherty has heartbreakingly revealed she is getting rid of a lot of her things in preparation for her death, so the task isn’t left to her mother.
The Beverly Hills, 90210 actress, 52, is battling stage 4 breast cancer, which she revealed has spread to her brain and bones.
She has been open about her journey with the disease since being diagnosed in 2015, before her breast cancer went into remission in 2017.
Tragically, just two years later it had returned as stage 4, and while Shannen says she is “fighting to stay alive”, she has also begun preparing for her death by trying to get things sorted so her mom, Rosa, does not have to deal with her affairs after she has passed.
Shannen revealed on Monday’s episode of her podcast, Let’s Be Clear, that she has started to purge her belongings so that Rosa isn’t left with it all to clear when she is gone.
“Because it’s going to be so hard on her, I want other things to be a lot easier. I don’t want her to have a bunch of stuff to deal with. I don’t want her to have four storage units filled with furniture.”
Shannen hopes that by getting rid of the things she no longer needs, she will make it an “easier transition” for her mother to get used to the fact she is gone.
She has begun going through her possessions to donate or sell antiques and other things she has collected over the years “just in case” anything happens to her.
She explained: “So we were in Tennessee and I was packing up one of the places there. It was really hard and really emotional because to a certain extent — I felt like I was giving up on this dream of building this property out, and putting a house for me and a house for my mom and then extending the barn.”
Her initial plan for the home had been to build a rescue sanctuary for horses who were “abandoned by their owners because they are too old” or “broken down,” and it was heartbreaking for her to make the decision to give up that dream.
“And my mom was there and she was like, ‘Don’t get rid of this place, it’s fine. You don’t have to and you can keep going.’ I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely I can.'”
However, a week later she returned to the property to pack up all of her belongings and bring them back to California, explaining that she’d come to the realization that her dream had been a “stupid idea” due to how much it would have cost to renovate the property, and felt a sense of “peace” that selling it was “the right thing to do”.
And while the Charmed star won’t be starting a rescue sanctuary of her own, she is still planning to help abandoned and neglected horses by “really participating in rescues that are far more capable of me doing it.”
Shannen added that purging the things that are no longer needed while she is alive will “leave behind a cleaner, easier transition” for her family, as well as freeing up more of her money for her to enjoy while she is alive.
“It allows me to take more trips because I’m making money, I’m selling it. Then I get to build different memories and I build memories with the people that I love,” she explained.