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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)
Happyish Holidays: Festive Season Boundaries & What Feels Like Home
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Design a festive season that actually fits: clear, kind boundaries and small rituals that help you feel at home when “utterly joyful” feels like a stretch. In this short episode of A Grown Up’s Gap Year – The Podcast, we explore Happyish Holidays: how to set festive season boundaries that are clear and kind to you, and how to re-find what feels like home when traditions and family shapes have shifted. You’ll hear a candid story about home changing over time, three reflection questions to locate your version of home today, and a quick TRY THIS to create one small ritual just for you (a morning swim, a solo coffee, or a guilt-free no). We touch lightly on chosen family and low-stress gatherings, but the focus is practical boundaries and small, doable steps that protect your energy. Oh and we link to a fabulous episode on the topic with Glennon Doyle's "We Can Do Hard Things", and a meditation on "Home Away From Home" by author Pico Iyer.
Episode Resources & Links:
- Your SPACE Prescription
- Free Weekly Newsletter
- Dear Blokes Downloadable
- Setting Boundaries That Stick - checklist
- "Happyish Holidays" from the podcast "We Can Do Hard Things" with Glennon Doyle
- "Where Is Home" TED talk with author Pico Iyer
- Konfekt magazine
- Eir Women Trimmed
📚 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.