April 1, 2024 • 35 mins
A solo episode where Shannen talks through her decision to let go of many material possessions, determined to spend her time and money on the priceless things in life. Embracing those precious moments with her friends and family, and making lasting memories with her mom.This isn't about giving up, it's about giving it all.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty. Hi, everyone,
welcome to a new episode of Let's Be Clear with
Me Shannon Doherty. So, I've talked to you guys a
lot about my cancer journey, my divorce, life in general,
and I've broached the subject about obviously funeralists and trying
(00:29):
to make things clean for the people that you leave behind.
But I had an experienced very very very recently when
I was in Tennessee where I had decided that I
was going to get rid of a place there because
I just felt that even though I have a lot
(00:50):
of hopes and dreams and I'm a fighter, and I
believe in science, and I think that something will come
along that will keep on prolonging my life, like these
amazing protocols and the meds that I'm on, or chemo
or cart cell therapy. Just there's more options out there,
(01:16):
and I know that I still felt that I needed
to make things clean just in case. And listen, it
doesn't matter if you have a terminal disease or whatever.
I believe, yes, obviously you should live life to its
fullest and embrace life while you're alive. But I guess
(01:39):
it's the cancer for me. That has really made me
take stock of my life and shift my priorities. And
my priority at the moment is my mom and about
making things. I know it's going to be hard on
her if I pass away before her, but so sorry,
(02:01):
this is a hard one for me. But because it's
going to be so hard on her, I want other
things to be a lot easier, meaning that 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, because yeah, I have a furniture obsession. Some girls,
(02:23):
you know, obsess over buying purses or shoes or clothes.
I buy furniture. It's my thing. I love furniture and
I love rugs. So I have storage units filled with stuff.
And I have a really good friend Julie who's starting
to like help me go through my storage and get
(02:45):
rid of stuff and donate stuff and sell stuff. But
there's bigger things, like houses that I have to worry about.
And so we were in Tennessee and I was packing
up one of the places there and it was really hard,
(03:09):
and it was really emotional because to certain extent I
felt like I was giving up on this dream. I
was giving up on this stream of you know, building
this property out and putting a house for me and
a house for my mom, and then extending the barn
and rescuing horses and having a sanctuary for you know,
(03:34):
hopefully enough land eventually that I would keep buying to
help rescue all these horses that are abandoned by their
owners because they're too old, or they get broken down
because they work them too hard, and or what BLM
is doing with the wild horse roundups in California and
(03:57):
Arizona and Wyoming and Colorado. Oh, and it's horrifying to me.
And I see these bands, these families of horses just
being rounded up, and lots of dusts in the roundups
because of helicopters and everything else. So I thought, you know,
that was one of my dreams of starting to help
(04:20):
rescue and take some relief off of all these other
amazing rescues like Return to Freedom and all seated in
the barn. And so I was packing up, and I
started crying because again I felt like I was giving
up on a dream. And what did that mean for me?
(04:46):
Didn't mean that I was giving up on life. Didn't
mean that I was like throwing in the towel, and
you know, my mom was there and she was like,
don't you know, don't get rid of this place like
it's and you don't have to and you can keep going,
and so yeah, absolutely I can. The funny thing is
(05:08):
is that a week and a half later, when I
went back to throw it all in a uh and
have my friend Zach drive it back to California, I
started noticing all the things wrong with the place and
like how much money it would cost me, and how
it was kind of a stupid idea anyway. So you know,
I think somehow the brain works in mysterious ways where
(05:33):
even though you're incredibly sad about something and it feels
like you're giving up on something that was very special
and important to you, you know that it is the
right thing to do, and you know that it's it's
going to give you a sense of peace and a
(05:54):
sense of calm, and because you are helping the people
that you leave behind just have a cleaner, easier transition,
which brought me into a whole other area about like
possessions I have. I've accumulated so much crap and it's
(06:18):
sitting in a storage and I'm not enjoying it and
others aren't enjoying it, And do I really need any
of it? Do I need? Do I need to have,
you know, three dining room tables? I know it's so
sad in storage just because they were you know, antiques
(06:38):
that I found. It's an amazing price at you know,
some antique mart or or flea market. And the answer
is no, Like, none of us really need all the
stuff that we have, and we can all, you know,
do with a little bit of downsizing and not be
(06:59):
a hoarder, which I was becoming with all of my furniture.
And you can still I gut still live my dream
of helping horses buy and dogs and cows and sheeps
and pigs and goats. I guess to live that dream
by really participating with rescues that are far more capable
(07:25):
than me of doing it. But it was Listen, it
was hard. And I talked to you guys at some
point or at least touched on a will and what
you leave behind and how you do it and trying
to make it as easy as possible, to keep on
(07:46):
saying that word easy. And again, I know it's never
going to be easy. For the people in my life.
But maybe it's more about ease for myself. Maybe it's
and I'm talking this out with you guys because I
have so many thoughts and so many emotions about it,
and I have found this podcast to be really cathartic,
(08:09):
So I guess I'm using it as a therapy session.
So thank you for digging in with me and listening.
And again, I'd love to hear your comments and everything else,
So feel free after you listen to this to let
me know your thoughts on it. But I think it's
easy for myself. It's again that peace of mind. It's
(08:30):
the looking at what you've accumulated over a lifetime. I'm
fifty two years old. I think I'm fifty two and
I've accumulated a lot of stuff, and some of it
is gorgeous and valuable, and it's time to start selling
that stuff off. It allows me to take more trips
(08:51):
because I'm making money. I'm selling it, so then I
get to build different memories, and I get to build
memories with the people that I love. I get to
take my mom on vacations because I have all this
extra sort of play money laying around and I'm not
digging into the money that's in my state that's going
to make sure that everybody in my life is taken
care of once I'm dead. So, yeah, do I need
(09:14):
an armchair that I can sell for money? Do I
need any of this stuff that doesn't bring that much enjoyment.
After a while, you walk into your house or you
walk into your storage unit, and it's just stuff. Especially
when it's been years and years and years since you've
looked at it, You're like, Yeah, I don't need this.
(09:36):
It doesn't really bring me any great joy. What does
bring me a lot of joy is, you know, taking
my mom to the places that she's always wanted to
go to and building those memories with her. I took her.
She had always wanted to go to Italy, So years
ago I did this amazing trip to Italy with my
(09:59):
mother and took her to you know, Positano and Rome
and Tuscany and Florence, and we wanted to go to Venice,
but it was kind of flooded at the moment. And
that's something that she still talks about all the time.
She talks about that experience and what it was like
(10:21):
to be with me, And I just remember getting out
of the car with my mom as we were driving
to Positano, and she looked out from the cliff over
and she started crying. She had tears pouring down her
face because she never really thought that she would see that,
and she certainly didn't think that she was going to
be able to see it with me. And those are
(10:42):
the memories, and that those are the things that matter
the most, not your possessions, not what you have. It's
all about building memories. And I have, you know, a handful,
maybe more than a handful, but not more than two
handsful of really really really good friends, friends that like
(11:03):
I cherish and I love, And I was with two
of them, actually four of them last night and we
were talking about, you know, another trip that we're planning
and to keep building those memories. And I took my
mom with my best friend Chris and my best friend
(11:23):
Julie and her husband Honors and Hona, Ray and Kirby
and we all went to Croatia on we rented a
boat and we went to Croatia and we traveled all
throughout Croatia. Again, my mom still talks about that trip,
we all do, and so as I was so sad
(11:45):
about giving something up. I'm also now reminded of the
freedom giving that up has given me to then provide
memories not only for myself, not only treasured moments for myself,
but for the people that I love. And you know,
(12:08):
I'll touch on this in a different episode. I'll get
into it a lot more in another episode. But in life,
you know, well, we all go we want to find
our person. We just want to find our person. And
I've had a couple of moments where I thought I'd
found my person as far as a partner goes, and
(12:29):
recently I lost my person. And as hard as that was,
it gave me a couple of realizations. So one is, yeah,
it's really hard to lose your person, and it's really traumatic,
and particularly when you're facing cancer or any disease, any
(12:50):
life altering event, you are so used to going to
your person and being able to have a conversation and
being able to say, you know, that's it's your person.
So all of your fears you get to share with them,
and because they're your person, they're comforting, they know how
to help you through it, or you cry together, you
(13:12):
laugh through it together. And I had to feel sorry
for me a moment, you know, self pity moment where
I was like, wow, like I don't sure it would
be nice to have my person, Like I don't have
a person anymore. And then I kind of like slapped
(13:32):
myself in the face and said, what are you talking about, Shannon?
You lost one person, But because you lost that one person,
you put your trust and love and faith in so
many others that I gained like six persons. I know
(13:54):
that's incorrect grammar, because now instead of only turning to
one person, I turned to a lot of others. And
what ends up happening is I get a completely different
love and support and caring and advice from each one
(14:17):
of them. And I love. Yes, it's a different kind
of a love, but my love for these people in
my life is so deep and so rich, and I
know how much they love my mother, and I know
how much they're going to take care of her when
I'm gone, and how important that is to me. It
(14:52):
also really bonded my brother and I together a lot more.
I mean, I've always loved my brother and his family,
but I just felt like I could open up to
him more and not protect him from what I was
going through because I tend to do that. I tend
to protect the people around me, and I try not
(15:12):
to share so much stuff so that they're not perpetually
in fear mode with me. And I've stopped doing that recently.
I now call my brother and say, hey, I'm having
a really bad day. And I woke up really scared
(15:35):
and really contemplating not being here anymore because I don't
want to die. I'm I'm so not the person who
wants to die. I mean, nobody wants to die. But
I have so many like hopes, and I have so
much left to accomplish, and I can't imagine not being
(16:01):
able to do that. And you know, my brother, My
brother has a very very very strong belief system and
he he you know, they go to church all the
time and they pray all the time, and he's just,
(16:24):
you know, a great human being. And I, you know,
thoroughly believe in God and I I definitely have faith
and I believe, you know, that we're walking the path
that we're supposed to. But he, I think his faith
(16:44):
gave me what I needed at that moment when I
called him in a weak state, His faith renewed sort
of my faith and made me stronger in my faith,
which was really a great thing. And maybe that wasn't
something I would have gotten from my person before, whatever
person that was. And you know, then I can call
(17:08):
Chris and we'll cry together on the phone and we'll
laugh together about it. Or I'll call Julie and you know,
she'll be like, let's go here, let's go there, let's
do it, like everything that you want to do, let's
do it, like do your bucket list, like, let's do it.
So I guess my point is is that if you're
going through something difficult, and if you have a disease
(17:30):
like I do, and everybody tells you, the internet tells
you when you look it up, that there's a timeline
on you, and you don't have a person, like it's
okay to not have a person in the romantic sense.
Just your friends are your person. And I'm so glad
(17:59):
that the last week and a half two weeks has
brought a lot of different emotions to the surface, from
giving up a home to what that led me to
emotionally and coming to the realization that the material things
(18:22):
don't matter, that it's the time that I spend with people,
it's the memories that I build with them. It's you know,
the road trip from Kentucky to Tennessee with you know,
Holly and Drew. It's showing my mom leapers Fork in
Tennessee for the first time and realizing that she connected
with it as much as I connected with it, going
(18:46):
on those trips with friends, planning things, downsizing, selling things off,
and putting it in a you know, I now have
what I call it bucket fund, and that bucket fund
goes along with a list that I made that it
is all about the things that I want to do
with certain people, all the places I want to take
(19:09):
my mom, all the things that I still have yet
to see and do, and the impact that I still
want to make. So now I'm looking at it in
a very positive sense and saying, I'm cleaning stuff up
so that I can have a better quality of life.
It's not even yes, ease for everybody else, but it's
(19:30):
my quality of life is going to be so much
better because I get to just take a lot of
adventures and live out a good majority of my dreams
that way. Obviously, this comes with you know, ups and downs.
There's going to be times when I feel great about
(19:52):
the decisions that I'm now making and there's going to
be times and I'm really really sad about it, But
those are the moments that I think that you have
to draw a lot of strength from your friends and
your family, and a lot of strength from God and
just try to dig deep and try to be positive
(20:14):
and try to believe that you know, there's a lot
more life in you. You know, I had talked about
a protocol that I said the word it's. My statement
on the podcast was that, you know, I'm a I'm
on a protocol that's it's like a miracle to me
(20:36):
because it's it's it's working. It's not a miracle protocol.
It's just a protocol like that's you know, they're just
if they last a really long time like some of
mine have. That's a miracle to me because I watched
one of my best friends blow through protocols so quickly,
(20:57):
and you know, she didn't she didn't cancer for long
before she died because she just kept on blowing through protocols.
Her body wasn't responding to them, versus mine that has
responded really well to protocols. And I recently switched protocols again,
and I guess part of this whole emotional thing was
(21:20):
that I switched protocols and I have had like a
lot of back pain and hit pain and knee pain.
And to me, traditionally in the past, that has meant
that the protocol isn't working. And I think, because in
(21:42):
my head, I said, oh my god, the protocol is
not working. I need to I need to, you know,
settle things off. I need to make sure my will
is and I've now double checked it five times and
I keep on making changes to it and just making
(22:03):
sure that it's ironclad and that everybody is taken care of.
So when these pains started coming back, I was like, Okay,
(22:26):
that's I. Yes, I'm getting rid of the place in Tennessee,
as much as it hurts me to get rid of it. Yes,
I'm I'm going to start selling off my furniture and
my storage unit. But you're doing it with a little
with a lot of fear behind it. By the way,
I'm fine. It's actually the protocol causes this a little
(22:47):
bit because it does something with your bone marrow. So
once I spoke to my doctor and came clean about
sort of the pain that I was in, which wasn't
long by the way. It's not like I, you know,
went months without speaking to him about it. I speak
to my doctor basically every single day. But sure it
took away the fear that I was blowing through yet
(23:08):
another protocol. But it was through that that made me
make all of the decisions recently that I've made, Like
even with the Tennessee place, I'm like, thank God, thank God,
because I dodged a bullet of just spending a fortune
of trying to make some place great for what for me,
(23:32):
Like my hospital, my doctor's everything is right here in
Los Angeles. And and sure I love horses, and I
love to ride horses, and I love to save horses.
But I have a rescue an hour and a half
away from me that's run by my friend Netta that
(23:52):
it's called Return to Freedom, and I'm allowed there anytime
I want, and I can walk the thousands and thousands
of acres and take photos of these wild horses and
pet them and feed them the burrows. So I already
have that, I already. I don't know what I was
(24:14):
thinking at the time, So when I originally looked at
the property, it wasn't just for me, it was for uh.
I thought it was I thought it was for you know,
my relationship, and so it was a little different of
a decision that I made, but also mainly to live
(24:36):
out some sort of dream that I had. And I
know that I'm rambling, and I'm so sorry and thank
you for like putting up with the with the ramble,
it's again, I'm sort of talking through all of this
with you guys, And I think what I would really
love is we did a Q and A episode. It
(24:58):
would be cool to do an episode that is in
response to this, where maybe you share your stories with
me of how you're handling what you're going through in life.
And again, you don't have to have a disease. It's
any sort of hardship, right because life is hard, and
(25:23):
losing a job is hard, losing a parent, losing a
loved one, losing a friend is hard. Being diagnosed with anything,
even if it's not life threatening is hard, losing friendships,
all of it, like life just can be incredibly hard.
(25:46):
So what I would find interesting is to hear how
all of you deal with it. How do you deal
with the hardships? And is it your faith? Is that
your friends? Is it your husband, is that your wife
is that your kids like, what is it that gets
you through it? And what are your concerns? Because we all,
(26:12):
I think most of us at least worry about the
future in some way, shape or form. Worry about the
future as far as do I have enough money to survive?
Do I have enough money for my mortgage? Do I
have enough money for my rent? My parents, that's sick,
you know, how long do I have with them? We
(26:34):
all go through life. It's worrying about something, and even
if it's something as silly as how do others perceive us,
which in the grand scheme of things, by the way,
is an incredibly silly thing to worry about, because in
my opinion, as long as you can look yourself in
the mirror, that's all that matters. It doesn't matter what
(26:56):
some keyboard warrior says about you, it doesn't matter what
you know an ex friend is gossiping about you. All
that matters is that you're happy with who you are.
And I'm assuming that to be happy with who you
are that means that you're living a good life and
(27:18):
living by a karmic sort of law of you know,
do unto others. And as long as you're doing that,
it doesn't really matter what anybody else has to say
about you own your own truth. I am nothing but
(27:38):
raw and honest at this point in my life because
what do I have to lose. I have nothing to lose.
I do have a ticking time clock over me, So
I'm not interested in lies. I'm not interested in anything
but spreading my truth, being truthful to myself, being truthful
(28:05):
to the people around me, being truthful to the fans,
and just living like the most authentic life that I
possibly can while I'm still here. So what do you
guys worry about? What are your concerns? And let's use
(28:28):
the Let's Be Clear pod instagram to and my instagram
to really talk about that so that we can do
an episode where we address all of it. I think
that that would be a really important episode. And as
far as this episode in my life, I know it
(28:50):
seems incredibly heavy you guys, and it's felt heavy for
the last two weeks for me too. But I'm turning
a corner, and that corner is one of excitement, one
of planning, one of saying again, Wow, I get to
(29:14):
go do this and this and this now and have
all of these experiences and all of these memories, and
I remember I was watching, Uh, I was watching Afterlife.
Ricky Starvas is one of my absolute favorites. I love him.
Bucket list is to meet Ricky shar Face and go
to one of his comedy shows because he's just phenomenal.
(29:36):
And his wife in the show died of cancer and
she leaves him a video sort of goodbye. That's an
incredibly long one and he sort of watches it every
single day and it's really her telling him, you know,
(29:59):
don't forget to fe the dog, or don't forget to
you know, embrace life. Still it was. It's such a
beautiful show. If you haven't seen it, you should really
watch it because it applies to sort of everybody. And
maybe I'm not going to do the video thing. I
might have contemplated it, contemplated writing letters. But what I
(30:21):
am going to do now is I am going to
focus on making solid memories with the people that I love,
with the people that have supported me, cherish me, been
loyal to me, that have just always always always been there.
And whether that's something as silly as going to dinner
(30:46):
with Christy at Christy's or you know, forcing Chris to
go to still City with me for a convention and
all of us hanging out and having a good time.
Whatever it is, that's what I'm going to now do
with my life. And maybe that's the video that I
leave behind is a video that people can play over
(31:10):
and over and over and over again in their heads
of just really poignant, special impactful moments. What are you
guys going to do? And have you already done? It?
Has a loved one left you behind a video? I
don't know. Bucket Lists are so interesting me. I bought
this book called bucket List, and it gives you ideas
(31:36):
for if you were to make a bucket list, all
these different ideas that are on it, and I sort
of went through it a little bit, and I think
it's interesting because what it does is that it gets
the creative juices flowing in your head where where you
think of ideas that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of before.
(31:59):
Or maybe it's not just a trip to Italy. Maybe
it's maybe it's going and staying at a house there
and getting one of the beautiful, wonderful nonahs to teach
you how to make the perfect pizza do or the
perfect bread. There's a chef chef Evan Funky, and I
(32:21):
watched him go and learn from a Nona. By the way,
his pizza is pretty much like the best pizza dough
I've ever had in my entire life. He has a
bunch of restaurants, and I was like, yeah, I want to.
I want to learn how to make the perfect pizza
do or perfect sour dough bread. And I want to,
(32:41):
you know, see killer whales in the wild the way
that you're supposed to, not not in an aquarium. So
this book is really interesting because it does give you ideas,
and even if you have a loved one who is
facing what I'm facing or something similar, it's kind of
a cool book for you to get and maybe not
(33:01):
necessarily give it to them, but it'll give you ideas
and suggestions of suggestions for them and then try to
fulfill those. Obviously, the most important thing is time. Time
spent with the person doesn't matter if you can afford
to go somewhere, not go somewhere. Time spent is the
(33:27):
most precious thing possible. All Right, I've rambled enough. I
don't want anybody to be worried. I am looking at
it from a very positive standpoint, and I really appreciate
you guys being here with me and your words of
(33:47):
encouragement when you post on my Instagram means a lot.
And I'm sure that this is going to continue. I'm
going to face a lot of different emotions throughout this
journey with cancer and sharing them with all of you,
because every day brings up something new. There's not a
(34:09):
day I don't wake up thinking a totally different new
thought that I hadn't thought of before. And we're just
gonna go through it together and talk about it some more.
So thank you again for listening and thank you for
being patient with me today as this was kind of
a hard one to talk through, but it's helped and
(34:33):
it's going to help a lot more because probably as
soon as I walk off, I'd be like, oh what
about this? And oh what about that? So thanks thank
you for listening to Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty
once again, and don't forget to leave your comments on
the Let's Be Clear pod or the Shando Instagram so
(34:58):
that we can dig deep for her into this and
let's just help one another get through it all, all right.
I love you guys. Thank you
This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty. Hi, everyone,
welcome to a new episode of Let's Be Clear with
Me Shannon Doherty. So, I've talked to you guys a
lot about my cancer journey, my divorce, life in general,
and I've broached the subject about obviously funeralists and trying
(00:29):
to make things clean for the people that you leave behind.
But I had an experienced very very very recently when
I was in Tennessee where I had decided that I
was going to get rid of a place there because
I just felt that even though I have a lot
(00:50):
of hopes and dreams and I'm a fighter, and I
believe in science, and I think that something will come
along that will keep on prolonging my life, like these
amazing protocols and the meds that I'm on, or chemo
or cart cell therapy. Just there's more options out there,
(01:16):
and I know that I still felt that I needed
to make things clean just in case. And listen, it
doesn't matter if you have a terminal disease or whatever.
I believe, yes, obviously you should live life to its
fullest and embrace life while you're alive. But I guess
(01:39):
it's the cancer for me. That has really made me
take stock of my life and shift my priorities. And
my priority at the moment is my mom and about
making things. I know it's going to be hard on
her if I pass away before her, but so sorry,
(02:01):
this is a hard one for me. But because it's
going to be so hard on her, I want other
things to be a lot easier, meaning that 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, because yeah, I have a furniture obsession. Some girls,
(02:23):
you know, obsess over buying purses or shoes or clothes.
I buy furniture. It's my thing. I love furniture and
I love rugs. So I have storage units filled with stuff.
And I have a really good friend Julie who's starting
to like help me go through my storage and get
(02:45):
rid of stuff and donate stuff and sell stuff. But
there's bigger things, like houses that I have to worry about.
And so we were in Tennessee and I was packing
up one of the places there and it was really hard,
(03:09):
and it was really emotional because to certain extent I
felt like I was giving up on this dream. I
was giving up on this stream of you know, building
this property out and putting a house for me and
a house for my mom, and then extending the barn
and rescuing horses and having a sanctuary for you know,
(03:34):
hopefully enough land eventually that I would keep buying to
help rescue all these horses that are abandoned by their
owners because they're too old, or they get broken down
because they work them too hard, and or what BLM
is doing with the wild horse roundups in California and
(03:57):
Arizona and Wyoming and Colorado. Oh, and it's horrifying to me.
And I see these bands, these families of horses just
being rounded up, and lots of dusts in the roundups
because of helicopters and everything else. So I thought, you know,
that was one of my dreams of starting to help
(04:20):
rescue and take some relief off of all these other
amazing rescues like Return to Freedom and all seated in
the barn. And so I was packing up, and I
started crying because again I felt like I was giving
up on a dream. And what did that mean for me?
(04:46):
Didn't mean that I was giving up on life. Didn't
mean that I was like throwing in the towel, and
you know, my mom was there and she was like,
don't you know, don't get rid of this place like
it's and you don't have to and you can keep going,
and so yeah, absolutely I can. The funny thing is
(05:08):
is that a week and a half later, when I
went back to throw it all in a uh and
have my friend Zach drive it back to California, I
started noticing all the things wrong with the place and
like how much money it would cost me, and how
it was kind of a stupid idea anyway. So you know,
I think somehow the brain works in mysterious ways where
(05:33):
even though you're incredibly sad about something and it feels
like you're giving up on something that was very special
and important to you, you know that it is the
right thing to do, and you know that it's it's
going to give you a sense of peace and a
(05:54):
sense of calm, and because you are helping the people
that you leave behind just have a cleaner, easier transition,
which brought me into a whole other area about like
possessions I have. I've accumulated so much crap and it's
(06:18):
sitting in a storage and I'm not enjoying it and
others aren't enjoying it, And do I really need any
of it? Do I need? Do I need to have,
you know, three dining room tables? I know it's so
sad in storage just because they were you know, antiques
(06:38):
that I found. It's an amazing price at you know,
some antique mart or or flea market. And the answer
is no, Like, none of us really need all the
stuff that we have, and we can all, you know,
do with a little bit of downsizing and not be
(06:59):
a hoarder, which I was becoming with all of my furniture.
And you can still I gut still live my dream
of helping horses buy and dogs and cows and sheeps
and pigs and goats. I guess to live that dream
by really participating with rescues that are far more capable
(07:25):
than me of doing it. But it was Listen, it
was hard. And I talked to you guys at some
point or at least touched on a will and what
you leave behind and how you do it and trying
to make it as easy as possible, to keep on
(07:46):
saying that word easy. And again, I know it's never
going to be easy. For the people in my life.
But maybe it's more about ease for myself. Maybe it's
and I'm talking this out with you guys because I
have so many thoughts and so many emotions about it,
and I have found this podcast to be really cathartic,
(08:09):
So I guess I'm using it as a therapy session.
So thank you for digging in with me and listening.
And again, I'd love to hear your comments and everything else,
So feel free after you listen to this to let
me know your thoughts on it. But I think it's
easy for myself. It's again that peace of mind. It's
(08:30):
the looking at what you've accumulated over a lifetime. I'm
fifty two years old. I think I'm fifty two and
I've accumulated a lot of stuff, and some of it
is gorgeous and valuable, and it's time to start selling
that stuff off. It allows me to take more trips
(08:51):
because I'm making money. I'm selling it, so then I
get to build different memories, and I get to build
memories with the people that I love. I get to
take my mom on vacations because I have all this
extra sort of play money laying around and I'm not
digging into the money that's in my state that's going
to make sure that everybody in my life is taken
care of once I'm dead. So, yeah, do I need
(09:14):
an armchair that I can sell for money? Do I
need any of this stuff that doesn't bring that much enjoyment.
After a while, you walk into your house or you
walk into your storage unit, and it's just stuff. Especially
when it's been years and years and years since you've
looked at it, You're like, Yeah, I don't need this.
(09:36):
It doesn't really bring me any great joy. What does
bring me a lot of joy is, you know, taking
my mom to the places that she's always wanted to
go to and building those memories with her. I took her.
She had always wanted to go to Italy, So years
ago I did this amazing trip to Italy with my
(09:59):
mother and took her to you know, Positano and Rome
and Tuscany and Florence, and we wanted to go to Venice,
but it was kind of flooded at the moment. And
that's something that she still talks about all the time.
She talks about that experience and what it was like
(10:21):
to be with me, And I just remember getting out
of the car with my mom as we were driving
to Positano, and she looked out from the cliff over
and she started crying. She had tears pouring down her
face because she never really thought that she would see that,
and she certainly didn't think that she was going to
be able to see it with me. And those are
(10:42):
the memories, and that those are the things that matter
the most, not your possessions, not what you have. It's
all about building memories. And I have, you know, a handful,
maybe more than a handful, but not more than two
handsful of really really really good friends, friends that like
(11:03):
I cherish and I love, And I was with two
of them, actually four of them last night and we
were talking about, you know, another trip that we're planning
and to keep building those memories. And I took my
mom with my best friend Chris and my best friend
(11:23):
Julie and her husband Honors and Hona, Ray and Kirby
and we all went to Croatia on we rented a
boat and we went to Croatia and we traveled all
throughout Croatia. Again, my mom still talks about that trip,
we all do, and so as I was so sad
(11:45):
about giving something up. I'm also now reminded of the
freedom giving that up has given me to then provide
memories not only for myself, not only treasured moments for myself,
but for the people that I love. And you know,
(12:08):
I'll touch on this in a different episode. I'll get
into it a lot more in another episode. But in life,
you know, well, we all go we want to find
our person. We just want to find our person. And
I've had a couple of moments where I thought I'd
found my person as far as a partner goes, and
(12:29):
recently I lost my person. And as hard as that was,
it gave me a couple of realizations. So one is, yeah,
it's really hard to lose your person, and it's really traumatic,
and particularly when you're facing cancer or any disease, any
(12:50):
life altering event, you are so used to going to
your person and being able to have a conversation and
being able to say, you know, that's it's your person.
So all of your fears you get to share with them,
and because they're your person, they're comforting, they know how
to help you through it, or you cry together, you
(13:12):
laugh through it together. And I had to feel sorry
for me a moment, you know, self pity moment where
I was like, wow, like I don't sure it would
be nice to have my person, Like I don't have
a person anymore. And then I kind of like slapped
(13:32):
myself in the face and said, what are you talking about, Shannon?
You lost one person, But because you lost that one person,
you put your trust and love and faith in so
many others that I gained like six persons. I know
(13:54):
that's incorrect grammar, because now instead of only turning to
one person, I turned to a lot of others. And
what ends up happening is I get a completely different
love and support and caring and advice from each one
(14:17):
of them. And I love. Yes, it's a different kind
of a love, but my love for these people in
my life is so deep and so rich, and I
know how much they love my mother, and I know
how much they're going to take care of her when
I'm gone, and how important that is to me. It
(14:52):
also really bonded my brother and I together a lot more.
I mean, I've always loved my brother and his family,
but I just felt like I could open up to
him more and not protect him from what I was
going through because I tend to do that. I tend
to protect the people around me, and I try not
(15:12):
to share so much stuff so that they're not perpetually
in fear mode with me. And I've stopped doing that recently.
I now call my brother and say, hey, I'm having
a really bad day. And I woke up really scared
(15:35):
and really contemplating not being here anymore because I don't
want to die. I'm I'm so not the person who
wants to die. I mean, nobody wants to die. But
I have so many like hopes, and I have so
much left to accomplish, and I can't imagine not being
(16:01):
able to do that. And you know, my brother, My
brother has a very very very strong belief system and
he he you know, they go to church all the
time and they pray all the time, and he's just,
(16:24):
you know, a great human being. And I, you know,
thoroughly believe in God and I I definitely have faith
and I believe, you know, that we're walking the path
that we're supposed to. But he, I think his faith
(16:44):
gave me what I needed at that moment when I
called him in a weak state, His faith renewed sort
of my faith and made me stronger in my faith,
which was really a great thing. And maybe that wasn't
something I would have gotten from my person before, whatever
person that was. And you know, then I can call
(17:08):
Chris and we'll cry together on the phone and we'll
laugh together about it. Or I'll call Julie and you know,
she'll be like, let's go here, let's go there, let's
do it, like everything that you want to do, let's
do it, like do your bucket list, like, let's do it.
So I guess my point is is that if you're
going through something difficult, and if you have a disease
(17:30):
like I do, and everybody tells you, the internet tells
you when you look it up, that there's a timeline
on you, and you don't have a person, like it's
okay to not have a person in the romantic sense.
Just your friends are your person. And I'm so glad
(17:59):
that the last week and a half two weeks has
brought a lot of different emotions to the surface, from
giving up a home to what that led me to
emotionally and coming to the realization that the material things
(18:22):
don't matter, that it's the time that I spend with people,
it's the memories that I build with them. It's you know,
the road trip from Kentucky to Tennessee with you know,
Holly and Drew. It's showing my mom leapers Fork in
Tennessee for the first time and realizing that she connected
with it as much as I connected with it, going
(18:46):
on those trips with friends, planning things, downsizing, selling things off,
and putting it in a you know, I now have
what I call it bucket fund, and that bucket fund
goes along with a list that I made that it
is all about the things that I want to do
with certain people, all the places I want to take
(19:09):
my mom, all the things that I still have yet
to see and do, and the impact that I still
want to make. So now I'm looking at it in
a very positive sense and saying, I'm cleaning stuff up
so that I can have a better quality of life.
It's not even yes, ease for everybody else, but it's
(19:30):
my quality of life is going to be so much
better because I get to just take a lot of
adventures and live out a good majority of my dreams
that way. Obviously, this comes with you know, ups and downs.
There's going to be times when I feel great about
(19:52):
the decisions that I'm now making and there's going to
be times and I'm really really sad about it, But
those are the moments that I think that you have
to draw a lot of strength from your friends and
your family, and a lot of strength from God and
just try to dig deep and try to be positive
(20:14):
and try to believe that you know, there's a lot
more life in you. You know, I had talked about
a protocol that I said the word it's. My statement
on the podcast was that, you know, I'm a I'm
on a protocol that's it's like a miracle to me
(20:36):
because it's it's it's working. It's not a miracle protocol.
It's just a protocol like that's you know, they're just
if they last a really long time like some of
mine have. That's a miracle to me because I watched
one of my best friends blow through protocols so quickly,
(20:57):
and you know, she didn't she didn't cancer for long
before she died because she just kept on blowing through protocols.
Her body wasn't responding to them, versus mine that has
responded really well to protocols. And I recently switched protocols again,
and I guess part of this whole emotional thing was
(21:20):
that I switched protocols and I have had like a
lot of back pain and hit pain and knee pain.
And to me, traditionally in the past, that has meant
that the protocol isn't working. And I think, because in
(21:42):
my head, I said, oh my god, the protocol is
not working. I need to I need to, you know,
settle things off. I need to make sure my will
is and I've now double checked it five times and
I keep on making changes to it and just making
(22:03):
sure that it's ironclad and that everybody is taken care of.
So when these pains started coming back, I was like, Okay,
(22:26):
that's I. Yes, I'm getting rid of the place in Tennessee,
as much as it hurts me to get rid of it. Yes,
I'm I'm going to start selling off my furniture and
my storage unit. But you're doing it with a little
with a lot of fear behind it. By the way,
I'm fine. It's actually the protocol causes this a little
(22:47):
bit because it does something with your bone marrow. So
once I spoke to my doctor and came clean about
sort of the pain that I was in, which wasn't
long by the way. It's not like I, you know,
went months without speaking to him about it. I speak
to my doctor basically every single day. But sure it
took away the fear that I was blowing through yet
(23:08):
another protocol. But it was through that that made me
make all of the decisions recently that I've made, Like
even with the Tennessee place, I'm like, thank God, thank God,
because I dodged a bullet of just spending a fortune
of trying to make some place great for what for me,
(23:32):
Like my hospital, my doctor's everything is right here in
Los Angeles. And and sure I love horses, and I
love to ride horses, and I love to save horses.
But I have a rescue an hour and a half
away from me that's run by my friend Netta that
(23:52):
it's called Return to Freedom, and I'm allowed there anytime
I want, and I can walk the thousands and thousands
of acres and take photos of these wild horses and
pet them and feed them the burrows. So I already
have that, I already. I don't know what I was
(24:14):
thinking at the time, So when I originally looked at
the property, it wasn't just for me, it was for uh.
I thought it was I thought it was for you know,
my relationship, and so it was a little different of
a decision that I made, but also mainly to live
(24:36):
out some sort of dream that I had. And I
know that I'm rambling, and I'm so sorry and thank
you for like putting up with the with the ramble,
it's again, I'm sort of talking through all of this
with you guys, And I think what I would really
love is we did a Q and A episode. It
(24:58):
would be cool to do an episode that is in
response to this, where maybe you share your stories with
me of how you're handling what you're going through in life.
And again, you don't have to have a disease. It's
any sort of hardship, right because life is hard, and
(25:23):
losing a job is hard, losing a parent, losing a
loved one, losing a friend is hard. Being diagnosed with anything,
even if it's not life threatening is hard, losing friendships,
all of it, like life just can be incredibly hard.
(25:46):
So what I would find interesting is to hear how
all of you deal with it. How do you deal
with the hardships? And is it your faith? Is that
your friends? Is it your husband, is that your wife
is that your kids like, what is it that gets
you through it? And what are your concerns? Because we all,
(26:12):
I think most of us at least worry about the
future in some way, shape or form. Worry about the
future as far as do I have enough money to survive?
Do I have enough money for my mortgage? Do I
have enough money for my rent? My parents, that's sick,
you know, how long do I have with them? We
(26:34):
all go through life. It's worrying about something, and even
if it's something as silly as how do others perceive us,
which in the grand scheme of things, by the way,
is an incredibly silly thing to worry about, because in
my opinion, as long as you can look yourself in
the mirror, that's all that matters. It doesn't matter what
(26:56):
some keyboard warrior says about you, it doesn't matter what
you know an ex friend is gossiping about you. All
that matters is that you're happy with who you are.
And I'm assuming that to be happy with who you
are that means that you're living a good life and
(27:18):
living by a karmic sort of law of you know,
do unto others. And as long as you're doing that,
it doesn't really matter what anybody else has to say
about you own your own truth. I am nothing but
(27:38):
raw and honest at this point in my life because
what do I have to lose. I have nothing to lose.
I do have a ticking time clock over me, So
I'm not interested in lies. I'm not interested in anything
but spreading my truth, being truthful to myself, being truthful
(28:05):
to the people around me, being truthful to the fans,
and just living like the most authentic life that I
possibly can while I'm still here. So what do you
guys worry about? What are your concerns? And let's use
(28:28):
the Let's Be Clear pod instagram to and my instagram
to really talk about that so that we can do
an episode where we address all of it. I think
that that would be a really important episode. And as
far as this episode in my life, I know it
(28:50):
seems incredibly heavy you guys, and it's felt heavy for
the last two weeks for me too. But I'm turning
a corner, and that corner is one of excitement, one
of planning, one of saying again, Wow, I get to
(29:14):
go do this and this and this now and have
all of these experiences and all of these memories, and
I remember I was watching, Uh, I was watching Afterlife.
Ricky Starvas is one of my absolute favorites. I love him.
Bucket list is to meet Ricky shar Face and go
to one of his comedy shows because he's just phenomenal.
(29:36):
And his wife in the show died of cancer and
she leaves him a video sort of goodbye. That's an
incredibly long one and he sort of watches it every
single day and it's really her telling him, you know,
(29:59):
don't forget to fe the dog, or don't forget to
you know, embrace life. Still it was. It's such a
beautiful show. If you haven't seen it, you should really
watch it because it applies to sort of everybody. And
maybe I'm not going to do the video thing. I
might have contemplated it, contemplated writing letters. But what I
(30:21):
am going to do now is I am going to
focus on making solid memories with the people that I love,
with the people that have supported me, cherish me, been
loyal to me, that have just always always always been there.
And whether that's something as silly as going to dinner
(30:46):
with Christy at Christy's or you know, forcing Chris to
go to still City with me for a convention and
all of us hanging out and having a good time.
Whatever it is, that's what I'm going to now do
with my life. And maybe that's the video that I
leave behind is a video that people can play over
(31:10):
and over and over and over again in their heads
of just really poignant, special impactful moments. What are you
guys going to do? And have you already done? It?
Has a loved one left you behind a video? I
don't know. Bucket Lists are so interesting me. I bought
this book called bucket List, and it gives you ideas
(31:36):
for if you were to make a bucket list, all
these different ideas that are on it, and I sort
of went through it a little bit, and I think
it's interesting because what it does is that it gets
the creative juices flowing in your head where where you
think of ideas that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of before.
(31:59):
Or maybe it's not just a trip to Italy. Maybe
it's maybe it's going and staying at a house there
and getting one of the beautiful, wonderful nonahs to teach
you how to make the perfect pizza do or the
perfect bread. There's a chef chef Evan Funky, and I
(32:21):
watched him go and learn from a Nona. By the way,
his pizza is pretty much like the best pizza dough
I've ever had in my entire life. He has a
bunch of restaurants, and I was like, yeah, I want to.
I want to learn how to make the perfect pizza
do or perfect sour dough bread. And I want to,
(32:41):
you know, see killer whales in the wild the way
that you're supposed to, not not in an aquarium. So
this book is really interesting because it does give you ideas,
and even if you have a loved one who is
facing what I'm facing or something similar, it's kind of
a cool book for you to get and maybe not
(33:01):
necessarily give it to them, but it'll give you ideas
and suggestions of suggestions for them and then try to
fulfill those. Obviously, the most important thing is time. Time
spent with the person doesn't matter if you can afford
to go somewhere, not go somewhere. Time spent is the
(33:27):
most precious thing possible. All Right, I've rambled enough. I
don't want anybody to be worried. I am looking at
it from a very positive standpoint, and I really appreciate
you guys being here with me and your words of
(33:47):
encouragement when you post on my Instagram means a lot.
And I'm sure that this is going to continue. I'm
going to face a lot of different emotions throughout this
journey with cancer and sharing them with all of you,
because every day brings up something new. There's not a
(34:09):
day I don't wake up thinking a totally different new
thought that I hadn't thought of before. And we're just
gonna go through it together and talk about it some more.
So thank you again for listening and thank you for
being patient with me today as this was kind of
a hard one to talk through, but it's helped and
(34:33):
it's going to help a lot more because probably as
soon as I walk off, I'd be like, oh what
about this? And oh what about that? So thanks thank
you for listening to Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty
once again, and don't forget to leave your comments on
the Let's Be Clear pod or the Shando Instagram so
(34:58):
that we can dig deep for her into this and
let's just help one another get through it all, all right.
I love you guys. Thank you
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