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How To Run Away (& Other Handy Hints for Your Next Bit)
Formerly A Grown Up's Gap Year.
How To Run Away (& Other Handy Hints for Your Next Bit) is a podcast about the next bit of life: health, long marriages, ageing parents, young adult children (kidults), friendship, community, travel, purpose, and how midlife women stay properly engaged with it all.
Hosted by bestselling Australian author, clinical nutritionist and wellbeing coach Monique van Tulder, the show explores the emotional logistics of adult life: mental load, caregiving, solo travel, brain health, longevity, healthspan, perimenopause and menopause, financial wellbeing, long-term relationships, healthy ageing, empty nest, reinvigoration, and what the next decades might actually look like.
Through expert interviews, storytelling, cultural observation, and useful conversations, Monique asks:
What kind of woman do we want to become, how would we like her to age, and how do we start designing her life now?
The 90-year-old version of you? She is watching.
Part conversation. Part perspective shift. Part useful nudge.
There will occasionally be hotels (Monique loves a hotel stay), golf (happy place for her and The Bloke), emotional admin, hearing aids, resentment, cold-water swims, and discussions about wearing the good dress on a Tuesday.
Nothing is off the table if it means our epitaph will never read, "F**k, I forgot to live my life."
New episodes weekly. For midlife women, sandwich generation carers, and anyone asking what comes next.
How To Run Away (& Other Handy Hints for Your Next Bit)
Decluttering in Midlife: How to Create SPACE for the Life You Actually Want
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Feeling better starts with space — physical first, mental next.
In this candid, useful episode, Monique reads from her book A Grown Up's Gap Year on the beauty of simplicity, then gets real about the sandwich-generation juggle. A kitchen-table chat about Mum's future. A surprise moment of the Bloke stepping in with calm, practical wisdom. A reminder that streamlining isn't about perfect cupboards — it's about buying back time and energy for the life you actually want.
You'll hear:
• The S in S.P.A.C.E. — Simplify, and how it actually feels when you start • A reading from A Grown Up's Gap Year on simplicity for midlife women • A real-life sandwich-generation moment — what gets said at the kitchen table when a parent starts needing more • Why the Bloke's quiet practical wisdom was the unexpected gift of that week • Why decluttering isn't about cupboards — it's about reclaiming time, energy, and attention
A useful conversation for midlife women drowning in everyone else's needs.
Episode Resources & Links:
📚 Get your copy of A Grown Up’s Gap Year the book, from Amazon, moniquevantulder.com, bookshops and libraries, subscribe to the podcast, and take the first step toward your own A Grown Up’s Gap Year.