Episode 184: Going Through Their Belongings: 3 Common Roadblocks
10/7/26
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You are listening to the Life Reconstructed podcast with me, Teresa Amaral Beshwate, grief
expert, best-selling author and widow. I’m so glad you’re here because in this and every
episode, I shine a light on the widowed way forward.
Hello and welcome to episode 184. If you feel ready to go through your person’s belongings but
still find yourself getting stuck, that doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t ready. In this
episode, we’ll talk about three common roadblocks—what you make it mean, decision fatigue, and
fear of regret—and how to navigate each one while trusting yourself along the way.
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Last week, we talked about your person’s belongings.
And specifically, we talked about the fact that there is no timeline for going through them.
There’s no rule that says you should have cleaned out the closet by now. There’s no grief
police. Nobody is handing out grades.
If you never go through all of your person’s belongings, that means absolutely nothing about how
well you are grieving.
You get to decide.
So today, I want to talk to those of you who do want to go through your person’s belongings.
Maybe you’ve decided you’re ready.
Maybe you actually want the space.
Maybe you’ve been thinking about doing it for a while, but every time you start, you get stuck.
Because wanting to do it and finding it easy to do are two very different things.
You can be completely ready to go through your person’s belongings and still find the process
incredibly difficult.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t ready.
It might just mean you’ve run into one of the common roadblocks that makes this process harder
than it needs to be.
So today, let’s talk about three of them.
Roadblock #1: We make it mean we're letting them go
This is a big one.
We look at the shirt.
The shoes.
The tools.
The coffee mug.
The jacket they always wore.
And it doesn’t feel like we’re making a decision about an object.
It feels like we’re making a decision about them.
If I give this away, am I letting him go?
Am I leaving her behind?
Am I moving forward without them?
Am I somehow saying that part of my life is over?
Remember, your brain assigns meaning to things.
And after someone dies, their belongings can feel like tangible evidence that they were here.
They touched this.
They wore this.
They chose this.
They used this.
And when so much has already been taken from us without our permission, intentionally choosing
to part with something that belonged to them can feel like participating in another loss.
So I want you to separate the object from the meaning you’ve attached to it.
Their belongings are not your connection to your person.
Your love is not stored in their closet.
Your marriage is not contained in a pair of shoes.
Your memories do not disappear when you donate a shirt.
And you are not leaving your person in the past because you decided you no longer want to keep
an object they owned.
I still have Ted’s plaid shirts.
I probably always will.
I want them.
So I keep them.
But there are plenty of things of Ted’s that I no longer have.
And getting rid of those things did not get rid of Ted.
It didn’t change my love for him.
It didn’t erase our marriage.
It didn't change our connection.
I simply decided I didn't need those particular objects anymore.
That's it.
You get to decide what you want to keep.
And you also get to decide what you no longer want to keep.
Neither decision has to mean anything about your love.
Roadblock #2: Decision fatigue
The second roadblock is much more practical.
There are so many decisions.
Think about it.
You pick up one item and suddenly your brain has ten questions.
Do I keep this?
Do I donate it?
Should one of the kids have it?
Would his brother want it?
Could I sell it?
Is it worth selling?
Should I ask someone first?
Is this sentimental?
What if somebody wants it later?
What if I want it later?
And that's one item.
Now multiply that by an entire closet.
An office.
A garage.
A workshop.
A house.
No wonder we get overwhelmed.
We think we're making one decision—I'm going to go through his belongings—but we're actually
asking our brains to make hundreds or even thousands of individual decisions.
So make the decisions smaller.
Maybe you create a few categories:
Keep.
Give to family.
Donate.
Sell.
And my favorite category: not today.
Not today is a perfectly legitimate decision.
You do not have to know what to do with everything the first time you touch it.
And you don't have to tackle an entire room.
Maybe you go through one drawer.
Maybe you deal with the shoes.
Maybe today you make decisions about ten things.
I remember talking about this years ago on the podcast and using white socks as an example.
Maybe you don't clean out the closet.
Maybe today you just decide what to do with the white socks.
That's it.
You don't need to turn this into some enormous project that must be completed once you start.
You can make one decision.
And then another one.
And then stop.
You are allowed to stop.
You can come back tomorrow.
Or next week.
Or six months from now.
There is no prize for finishing quickly.
Make the project small enough that your brain can handle it.
Roadblock #3: Fear of regret
And then there's the one that can stop us completely:
What if I regret it?
What if I give this away and six months from now I desperately wish I still had it?
What if I donate his jacket and later wish I could hold it again?
What if I let something go and realize afterward that it mattered more than I thought?
We want certainty.
We want to know that we will never regret the decision we're making.
And I can't give you that.
You can't give yourself that.
There is no way to know what Future You will wish you had kept.
You can absolutely take your time.
You can take pictures of things.
You can keep the items you're uncertain about and revisit them later.
You can do all sorts of things to make thoughtful decisions.
But you cannot guarantee that you will never wish you'd made a different one.
So here's what I want to offer you instead:
Decide now how you're going to treat yourself if that happens.
Before you give anything away, decide.
What are you going to think about yourself if, six months from now, you wish you still had it?
Because regret isn't something that simply happens to us.
Regret comes from what we make our past decisions mean.
I shouldn't have done that.
That was a mistake.
Why did I get rid of it?
I should have known.
I can't believe I did that.
That's the part that's optional.
What if instead you decided right now:
I made the best decision I could with the information and feelings I had at the time.
Or:
Of course I wish I had it today. That doesn't mean I made the wrong decision then.
That's a really important distinction.
Wishing you still had something does not prove you shouldn't have let it go.
Maybe one day you will think, Gosh, I really wish I still had that.
Okay.
You're allowed to wish that.
You're allowed to feel sad about it.
You're allowed to miss the object.
But you don't have to use that feeling as evidence against the version of you who made the
decision.
You don't have to turn your past self into the villain.
You can say:
I wish I still had it. And I understand why I made the decision I made.
Both can be true.
This is what I mean when I talk about having your own back.
You don't demand that you make perfect decisions.
You don't demand that you accurately predict every feeling Future You will ever have.
You make the best decision you can today.
And then you decide ahead of time that you will not weaponize that decision against yourself
later.
That's self-trust.
So if you want to go through your person's belongings, and you feel ready, I want you to know
that you can.
It might still be emotional.
It might still be exhausting.
You might cry over something you never expected to cry over.
You might easily give away something you assumed would be impossible to part with.
You might keep something that makes absolutely no sense to anyone else.
Fine.
This is yours.
Last week I told you that you never have to go through your person's belongings on anyone else's
timeline.
You don't get extra credit for doing it.
And keeping everything doesn't mean you're stuck.
This week, I want to tell you something else:
If you want to do it, you can trust yourself to do it.
You can decide what their belongings mean.
You can make the decisions smaller.
And you can decide ahead of time that no matter what Future You thinks about a decision, you
will have your own back.
Some things you'll keep forever.
Some you'll give away.
Some you'll wonder why on earth you've kept them this long.
And maybe someday you'll wish you'd kept something you didn't.
None of it measures your love.
None of it determines your connection.
And none of it gets to be used against you.
You get to do this your way.
On your terms.
One decision at a time.
If this episode was helpful, please share it with a widowed friend. And remember that I believe
in you, and I’m here for you. Take care.
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If you’ve found this podcast helpful, check out my newest book, Time Doesn’t Heal, Why High
Achieving Widowed People Feel Stuck, and How to Rebuild a Meaningful Life. It’s now available
on Audible, in paperback and Kindle, plus there’s an accompanying journal to help you apply what you learn. And, join the free course so I can help you even more. Links are in the show notes.
