The seen-it-all-attendant manning the receiving dock waddled over wearily and helped me first. With brisk, irreverent movements, we transferred my eclectic wares into industrial sorting bins: vacuum cleaners (2 of them), fried cable boxes, punctured basket balls, VHS tapes, rusty wok, broken hockey stick, jammed desk chairs, Paleolithic printer, Neolithic computer… With every hurled piece of junk came unexpected physical elation. Next stop: the local salvation army, where the earnest staff (all former convicts) whisked salvageable items (toys, bicycle, skates, aerosol machine for toddlers…) out of my car, thanking me enthusiastically as if their life depended on these random donations (later sold for peanuts), when I should have been thanking them, so amazing did it feel to be rid of the stuff.

In this season of plenty where compulsion to buy comes at us from all sides, where supermarket shelves heave with Pannetone, blinis and foie gras in every variation, where we’re constantly tripping over Christmas trees piled on the sidewalk or pyramids of champagne cases at the end of aisles, I’ve become a proponent of dumping vs. acquiring. Chances are, I too will ultimately succumb to the latter to some extent (gifts, inevitably), but I’m convinced that year-end naturally beckons a purge. Why else would I get such a high from clearing out the garage and offloading at the dump and local charity?

As we round the 2011 corner, what, might I ask, have you got rid of this year?

In my immediate circle, I have witnessed male and female friends successfully dump (in no particular order):

• Guilt-driven behavior
• Victim-like attitudes
• Petty resentments (the ones that cost more to self than to the person being resented)
• Attempts to “fix” a spouse
• The drive to analyse or rationalise everything
• The exhausting striving for incremental improvements
• Relentless attempts to control everything
• Over-committing tendencies
• Relationships that were poisoning their existence
• People that were sucking away their soul or their bank account
• And many combinations thereof

Among my amazing clients I have also seen people get rid of:

• Old grudges
• Needing to be right all costs
• Wanting to have the last word at every meeting
• Needing to be in the limelight at all times
• Pleasing others all the time
• Craving validation
• Needing to win
• Needing to be perfect

I have watched them dump all sorts of fears and shed limiting beliefs, and I have enjoyed best-seat-in-the-house vantage point over what unfurls (personally and professionally) when such “stuff” is cleared out.

The New Year, invariably, is all about starting afresh—new resolve, new exercise regimens, new commitments, and all sorts of new beginnings. I will argue that, in order to increase the chances of all this newness actually sticking, we owe it to ourselves to ditch some of the old. Not all of it of course—some of our old trappings have and will continue to hold us in good stead—but certainly the dysfunctional bits. The desk chair that won’t rise or pivot properly, the ball that won’t bounce, the printer that will only ever semi-print, the VHS tapes that no one will ever convert to DVD.

I returned from my drop-off mission with filthy hands and a spring in my step, feeling inexplicably lighter, energized yet serene. Definitely something to do more often.

In their bras.

By moonlight.

For 42 kilometers.

You don’t have to imagine much longer, here’s a clip from last year’s event.

I had the great privilege of sitting next to a fabulous Danish woman (I am lucky: this happens to me a lot, meeting fabulous women) at an all gals’ dinner (to celebrate a friend’s divorce signing, but that’s another story), who told me about the Moonwalk which she and her sister are walking this June 19^th in Edinburgh.

With thousands of others, Henriette is collecting funds for breast cancer research. A breast cancer survivor herself, she lights up from the inside when telling me about the Moonwalk. I was so humbled and impressed, I couldn’t fall asleep that night. By 7am, I’d already harassed journalist friends to cover the Moonwalk, in some form.

In keeping with its name, the Moonwalk starts at midnight. To prepare for the 42km march, Henriette has been walking through Brussels streets and parks for an average 4 hours a day since December. Last Sunday, for the first time, she walked a full 30km, her daughter biking enthusiastically alongside. At her current pace, given the days left to go and the training program she downloaded “and more or less followed,” Henriette reckons she’ll get in at just under 7 hours.

If you’ve ever had breast cancer, known anyone who has, or lost someone to breast cancer you might want to have a look—or a walk (and/or pledge money, of course!). And even if you haven’t, for God’s sake, look anyway!

I remembered a Turkish bath my friend Diana had recommended, so I packed up towel and shampoo, programmed my GPS and set out. As I drove deeper and deeper into a neighborhood I’d never been in (after FIFTEEN YEARS in Brussels!) I felt myself surrendering to the unknown. I mused that, in my quest for experimenting with uncertainty (something I’d been challenged to do by well-meaning friends) relinquishing control in this way would probably count. But that was only the beginning. From the minute I walked into the hammam, it became clear I no longer had any control—real or imagined.

I was handed a little pot, flip-flops, a large oriental bath cloth, a tiny container of clay, another one of mud, and a key to a locker, where I left clothes, keys and phone and, as it turned out, my thinking brain.

I wound my way down the tiled stairs to the steam rooms where the semi-darkness, the hushed voices and the gently moving figures of naked women in all shapes and sizes were… mesmerizing. In minutes, I’d been transplanted into another world. I spread the cloth on one of the marble ledges in the main steam room, sat down, and waited.

I leaned heavily against the mosaic-covered wall and inhaled deeply, picking up wisps of conversations in French or Arabic. Through half-closed eyes, I watched women drift in an out of the steam. Some young, some old, some sagging, some perky, all rounded and curvy and imminently, wonderfully unselfconscious. These were women who, only minutes earlier had been swathed from head to toe in abayas and assorted scarves, women whose shape walking down the street was non-descript at best. And yet, here, in this otherworldly place, of human complicity and unabashed physicality, these figures were magnificently feminine. Not magazine knockouts just…real women.

For the first time in a week, I began to breath more easily. I shifted positions as space became available, and spread out more fully on the upper deck, and propped my legs up fully against a wall. In this new 90-degree angle, I began to drift off gently to the rhythm of the door swishing open and shut and the ambient chatter.

It suddenly realized that the token I’d been handed upon entry was a massage number that would be called out at some point. In the adjoining room, four in-charge-looking-women in bathing suits were scrubbing visitors on high marble blocks.

When my number was called, I did as I was told and lay down on the marble, handing the masseuse (who was singing in Arabic) my little containers. This is when it became clear that if, I hadn’t shut off my brain, (and inner critic and run-on judgment and intellectual chatter) by now, I’d better do so fast. This “massage” was a far cry from the beauty and wellness spas of East Hampton, Evian or even Brussels. This was not a situation where skin information or soothing, sensual relief were provided. It became clear that there was nothing to ask or say or share. I’m proud to say that, against all odds, my head did switch off as I let the sloughing begin.

Thank G-d for the steel handles (a la handicapped bathroom) on the wall, without them, one would immediately fly right off the marble top from the vigorous sloughing. The woman used the little Turkish Kesse towel I’d purchased upon arrival and ordered me to turn or lie on my side, as she mercilessly rid me of my dead skin. “Go back and steam” she ordered, as I wrapped my cloth obediently around me and returned to the steam room for 10 more minutes, and then back to her for round 2. “Now go shower, we’re done,” she announced a bit abruptly. Then again, the abruptness had been with us from the start so it felt consistent with the moment. By now, I was so removed from myself that I hardly winced at the cold shower I put myself through.

I made my way back up to the dressing room, stumbled to my locker and slowly dressed alongside other women who, I now realized, were moving a lot faster than me. In no time, everyone had whipped on some long, formless sweater, dress or tunic and the feminine curves were all hidden away. I was the only one in jeans and the only one to walk out bareheaded. Mint tea and oriental pastries were on offer near the makeshift hair salon but it was getting late. The street was dark when I stepped outside and the air icy, but I felt so warm and at peace and, best of all, I could breath again. I’d been “gone” for 3 hours, in what felt like another century, another world. I turned the key in the ignition and was home in 15 minutes.