Kit Pappenheimer on Stuff and Stories: Who Gets Your Grandmother’s China?
Kit Pappenheimer in conversation with Les Morgan
In this conversation, Kit Pappenheimer will discuss her “Stuff and Story” work, which treats the thoughtful disposition of possessions as part of legacy planning.
The focus will be on how people and families face mortality and what they leave behind as a material legacy. This can be part of a person’s own legacy planning, and it can also help others when they inherit objects, papers, photographs, and household contents after a death.
Possessions are rarely just things. A set of dishes, a box of photographs, or a piano may carry strong attachments and memories of love, obligation, grief, and conflict. Kit helps people sort through what has meaning, what does not, and what the person leaving things behind truly cares about. The goal is to tell the story behind meaningful objects so others can understand why they were important to the person who kept them.
This work can be emotional, exhausting, and sometimes divisive. This is not an estate-planning session, though estate planning belongs in life’s final project plan. The focus is on the human work of sorting, remembering, deciding, and letting go.
Kit Pappenheimer (kitforliving.com) is a Bay Area life, loss, and legacy coach and end-of-life doula. She has worked in death work since 2014 and is listed in the directories of the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance (NEDA) and the International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA). Her training includes INELDA and Going with Grace with Alua Arthur and a background as a Five Wishes Advance Directive facilitator.