Shannen Doherty says she’s in the midst of a “really hard” and “emotional” process.
On Monday’s episode of her Let’s Be Clear podcast, the Beverly Hills: 90210 alum — who has stage 4 cancer — got choked up while explaining why she’s currently getting rid of many of her possessions.
“Cancer, for me, has really made me take stock of my life and shift my priorities, and my priority at the moment is my mum,” Shannen said.
“I know it’s going to be hard on her if I pass away before her, but — ugh, I’m so sorry, this is going to be a hard one for me,” she continued, her voice audibly trembling.
“But … 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 said that she recently cried while packing up items to sell and donate in one of properties in Tennessee.
The idea of getting rid of her possessions made her feel like she was “giving up on [her] dream,” she said, of making the property into sanctuary for abandoned and abused horses, which she’d planned to run with her mother.
“Did [this] mean I was giving up on life? Did it mean I was throwing in the towel?” she pondered aloud, before saying she feels it’s the “right thing to do”.
“You know that it’s going to give you a sense of peace and a sense of calm …because you’re helping the people that you leave behind [to have] a cleaner, easier transition,” Shannen explained.
The former Charmed star says she plans to sell her things — which includes a ton of antiques she’s collected throughout the years, thanks to what she calls her “furniture addiction” — and hopes to use the money to travel with her mum. But she said she also wants to make sure her loved ones are taken care of in the event of her death.
“So then I get to build different memories, and I get to build memories with the people I love,” she said.
She added the process has also given her a new perspective on her possessions — it’s “just stuff” that doesn’t “bring me any great joy.”
“But what does bring me a lot of joy is taking my mum to the places she’s always wanted to go to,” Shannen said. “And building those memories with her.”
Shannen has been very candid about the difficulties she’s faced since she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 — including the revelation in June 2023 that her cancer had dangerously spread to her brain.
But in January, she offered her podcast listeners a glimmer of hope by sharing that a new treatment she’s undergoing could possibly grant her a “miracle”.
“I’m on a new cancer infusion, and after four treatments, we didn’t really see a difference, and everybody wanted me to switch [to a different one], and I just kind of was like, ‘We’re gonna keep going with this and see,’” she said.
But after the sixth or seventh treatment, Shannen said she saw some progress. “Do I call that a miracle? Yeah.”