About Monique

Monique van Tulder is a clinical nutritionist, wellbeing coach, bestselling author, and podcast host. She writes, speaks, and curates conversations about the next bit of life: wellbeing, long-term relationships, ageing parents, kidults, travel as a health prescription, purpose, and how we stay properly engaged with it all.

She is the creator of Grown Up Guidebooks, bringing together her books, podcast, and practical ideas for what comes next.

At 54, she did what many women quietly fantasise about and unexpectedly ran away. She left behind her husband, two adult sons, and a very full life, and took off solo.

Not a breakdown. Not a crisis. An opportunity.

Less Eat Pray Love, more Shirley Valentine. Minus the Greek love affair.

The book that came out of it, A Grown Up’s Gap Year, became an Amazon #1 bestseller. She was 57 when it was published, which she considers useful evidence that it is never too late.

Her second book, How To Avoid An Expensive Divorce: Dear Blokes, A Love Letter From Us, explores long-term relationships, shared load, reciprocity, and what happens when women start asking for more space, more partnership, and more life.

She also hosts How To Run Away (& Other Handy Hints for Your Next Bit), a podcast about the emotional logistics of adult life, minus the wellness wankery and grounded in evidence. The conversations often begin with women, but increasingly include blokes too.

Before writing full-time, Monique spent decades across tourism, hotels, airlines, events, PR, and brand strategy, including work connected to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. She later qualified as a clinical nutritionist and wellbeing coach, which means she brings both evidence and lived experience to the table.
She also sees travel as more than a luxury. Often, it is a health prescription.

She lives between a full house in Sydney, husband, two adult sons, and a great deal of laundry, and a family shack in the Whitsundays, where she does some of her best thinking. She is an early adopter of LAT, Living Apart Together, and often travels solo, particularly in Japan, where she writes and golfs, each with varying degrees of success.

From late 2026, Monique returns to running her own practice with The Clinic Sessions – a half-day workshop series taking this work into rooms around Australia. Built first for women, and extended to the blokes who want in too.

The question sitting beneath all of it is simple: what do we want the next decades to look like, and how do we begin now?

The 90-year-old version of us is watching.