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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)
How to Plan Your Next Chapter When You Know What You DON'T Want (But Have No Idea What Comes Next)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
If you've cleared the decks, simplified your life, and still have no clue what comes next - this episode is for you.
Most planning advice gets it wrong. It starts with "what do you want to DO?" - jobs, trips, projects, hobbies. But that's putting the cart before the horse.
The better question? How do you want to FEEL?
In this episode, Monique van Tulder walks you through the PLAN stage of the SPACE framework - the essential Winter work that most women skip in their rush to get to the good bit.
You'll discover:
- Why planning is an act of self-respect, not control
- How to identify the three feelings that will shape your next chapter
- Why one picture on your mirror is more powerful than a ten-step plan
- The Dolly Parton quote that will change, how you think about change
- How to write your own version of A Grown Up's Gap Year
Plus: the "Dear Blokes" segment - what to say to your partner when you're suddenly talking about "purpose" and "your next act."
This is Winter work. Foundation work. The kind that doesn't look flashy but makes everything else possible.
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.