A Grown Up’s Gap Year – WellBeing Escapes
Sydney day sessions and carefully curated wellbeing trips to places like Kyoto and the Whitsundays. Think circuit breakers, not life detours.
Useful conversations for the next bit of life. Books | Podcast | Handy Hints
Welcome.
I’m Monique van Tulder.
If life feels full, slightly (totally) over-managed. If you’re juggling ageing parents, kidults, a long-term relationship, your own health and wellbeing, and the question of what the next bit is meant to look like, you’re in the right place.
I’m a clinical nutritionist, bestselling author, and host of the How To Run Away podcast. I write Grown Up Guidebooks: grounded in lived experience, practical wellbeing, and useful conversations about what comes next.
Handy hints, really.
A Grown Up’s Gap Year – the first guidebook – is already out. How To Avoid An Expensive Divorce: Dear Blokes, A Love Letter From Us arrives in September 2026.
The first written for women. The second to bring the blokes into the conversation too. Relationship refresh. Less wellness wankery. More actual living. And yes, travel often counts as a health prescription.
Real tools to help you reclaim your place in your own life.
The 90-year-old version of you is watching. What would she wish you started today?
– AS FEATURED IN –
Listen to Monique’s Guest Appearance on the ABC Brisbane Drive Show with Ellen Fanning.
Yellowshelf Podcast Appearance
How To Run Away (& other handy hints for your next bit)
A podcast for the next bit of life – wellbeing, long-term relationships, ageing parents, kidults, community, purpose, and the conversations we’re not having enough of.
Formerly A Grown Up’s Gap Year – The Podcast, the new season is a slow read-aloud of the Grown Up Guidebooks, chapter by chapter, with occasional interesting expert guest conversations when a topic calls for it.
Minus the wellness wankery. Always grounded in evidence.
How To Run Away (& other handy hints
The fortnightly Substack, a voice essay, what’s worth your time, what’s worth skipping, and a writing prompt for your own next bit.
Wellbeing Travel Guides
A Grown Up’s Gap Year – Kyoto
Reinvigoration. Real-life escape. A four-day circuit breaker for women ready to put themselves back in the picture – this time under paper lanterns, amid temple bells, and sitting for a very good hot coffee.
A Grown Up’s Gap Year – Sydney Day Sessions
Register your interest in Small-group, in-person days (harbour beach location) in Sydney that feel like a cross between a strategy session, a wellbeing consult and very honest conversation with women who get it.
A Grown Up’s Gap Year Retreat – The Whitsundays 2026
Reinvigoration. Real-life escape. And a three-day/four-night circuit breaker for women ready to put themselves back in the picture.
Don’t Know What To Eat?
Sign up to the fortnightly note and I'll send you my mini food guide as a welcome.
