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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)
If You Have Stopped Acting On Your Dreams In Mid-Life: These Ideas Will Help You
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
You've made the plan. You can feel what you're chasing. But you still can't quite see the shape of what comes next - and that fog is exactly what's keeping you stuck.
This episode is about closing the gap between knowing and doing - and why the clarity you're waiting for won't arrive until you actually start moving.
In this episode, Monique van Tulder walks you through the ACT stage of the SPACE roadmap - the part where you stop waiting for the perfect moment (spoiler: it doesn't exist) and start designing your next act in real life.
You'll discover:
- Why action creates clarity - not the other way around
- The Atomic Habits framework that makes new habits stupidly easy to stick
- Why your 15-minute walk is more powerful than a ten-step plan
- The "running away from home account" trick that one listener used to fund her airfare
- Why "I'm too old" is the most expensive story you're telling yourself
- How to stop living passively and start living actively - even in small ways
Plus: the "Dear Blokes" segment - what to say to your partner when you're suddenly just... doing things.
Clarity doesn't come before action. It comes because of it. And your next act is not a someday dream. It's a decision you're making today.
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.