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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)
Your 2nd Act: Saying “Why Not Me?” in Mid-life with Michelle Parsonage (Host of Your 2nd Act)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What if midlife isn’t the beginning of the end, but the start of your 2nd act?
In this episode of A Grown Up’s Gap Year – The Podcast, Monique sits down with Michelle Parsonage, host of the Your 2nd Act podcast and community for women navigating mid-life change and reinvention. Michelle’s message is all about “the power and beauty of women in their middle years” and the real stories of what happens when women pause, get curious and choose what’s next.
Together they talk about what it’s really like to be the capable one who copes – running the domestic corporation, holding the mental load, doing all the invisible work – and then suddenly find yourself asking, *“What now? What about me?”*
You’ll hear:
- how Michelle knew she was ready for her own 2nd act – and why she started a podcast in her 50s
- why everyday women’s stories are such powerful fuel for courage and change
- the difference between blowing everything up and making small, brave moves in your actual life
- practical ways to create space for your own next chapter when you’re still busy and needed
This isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about living a little louder as the woman you already are – with more agency, more curiosity, and a 2nd act that actually feels like yours.
Episode Resources:
YOUR 2ND ACT: INSTAGRAM
Events & Website: joamor.com
Additional Resources:
Your SPACE Prescription - Anti Guilt Calculator
Free Weekly Newsletter
Dear Blokes Downloadable
Setting Boundaries That Stick - checklist
52 Ideas for YOUR Version of A Grown Up's Gap Year
📚 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.