A Grown Up's Gap Year

About A Grown Up's Gap Year

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.

Publisher

Monique van Tulder

Category

health & fitness · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

31 Jul 2024

Latest episode

27 Apr 2026

Latest episodes

39 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 Apr 2026

   How Busy Midlife Women Find Time to Travel

   Why do midlife women stop trying things? Not the big rebellious things — the small ones. The new café, the different route home, the conversation with the woman next to you on the plane. This episode is the final part of the SPACE method — a five-step framework Monique developed for midlife women drowning in everyone else's needs. E is for Explore: how to put novelty back into a brain that has stopped expecting it. You'll hear: • Why life satisfaction follows a U-shaped curve through your for...

2. 

   20 Apr 2026

   Solo Travel Over 50: How to Put Guilt-Free Time Out in Your Calendar (And Actually Go)

   THIS EPISODE WAS RECORDED PRIOR TO THE CURRENT FUEL CRISIS ETC Monitor Travel Advisories: Check your home country's official travel advice for the most up-to-date information You've simplified. You've planned. You've acted. You've connected. Now — what if you actually went somewhere? Did something? Said yes to the thing that's been quietly calling you? Research shows that novelty literally slows down time perception — meaning the antidote to the feeling that life is rushing past you might...

3. 

   13 Apr 2026

   Hiroko Yoda on Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Finding Hidden Meaning in Everyday Life the Japanese Way

   If you've ever felt drawn to Japan - its quiet beauty, its rituals, its unhurried way of moving through the world - this conversation is for you. Today I'm speaking with Hiroko Yoda, Tokyo-based author, translator, folklorist, and certified kimono consultant. Her book Eight Million Ways to Happiness is the culmination of more than a decade of research, exploration, and living in Japan. It's a cultural history of the Japanese spiritual landscape - and a roadmap for anyone questing for meaning...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Contact A Grown Up's Gap Year

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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