A Grown Up's Gap Year

A Grown Up’s Gap Year, From “I Can’t” to “Of Course I Can": My Year of Choosing Yes

• Monique van Tulder • Season 2 • Episode 8

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If you’ve ever looked around your life and thought, “Is this it?” while simultaneously being needed by everyone, this one’s for you.

In the final episode of Season Two, author and nutritionist Monique van Tulder looks at what actually happened when she stopped just writing about A Grown Up’s Gap Year and lived it – running away, coming home, writing the book, and then spending a year saying “yes” to things that made her mildly nauseous but curious: TV couches, radio interviews, speaking gigs and all.

Monique shares:

  • how one “Mum got mad and took off” moment became a book, a podcast and a very public experiment in mid-life reinvigoration
  • what readers and listeners have done with the ideas – from cruises and retreats to blunt conversations at home and long-service-leave experiments
  • why the Sydney Morning Herald comments and Morning Show clips made her double down on solo women’s travel, money, and the mental load
  • what changed in her 25-plus-year marriage when she stopped being the default setting and both partners decided to partner with purpose

You’ll also hear how her new Your SPACE Prescription quiz (the “anti-guilt calculator”) and the 52 Ideas for Your Version of a Grown Up’s Gap Year list fit into all of this – simple tools to help you put yourself back in the picture, whether your escape is a solo night in a hotel or something more adventurous.

No resolutions, no 75-day challenges, no pressure to be anyone else. Just one woman reporting back from the field so you can plot your own version, in a way that fits the life you have now.


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📚 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.