Hello and Happy New Year. During January, I'm replaying four of our most downloaded, most messaged about episodes. Think of them as a short series to ease you into the year and ask, what about me and what about right now? So we're going right back to the Foundations.

Season 1, episode 1:
What happens when you hit your limit - and run away instead of continuing to ‘run on empty?’ In this first episode of A Grown Up’s Gap Year – The Podcast, host Monique van Tulder (author of #1 amazon bestselling A Grown Up’s Gap Year - The Guidebook for mid Lifestyle. Wellbeing. Adventure) shares the real story behind her eight-month escape, why she left, what she discovered, and what it means to hit pause without burning your whole life down.

This is the beginning of a bold, heartfelt season - and a cultural reset for women everywhere who’ve been juggling it all.

👂 Plus: A book reading, a listener prompt, and a surprising note for ‘The Blokes’

• Free Resources

Additional Resources

• Your SPACE Prescription
• Free Weekly Newsletter
• Dear Blokes Downloadable
• Setting Boundaries That Stick - checklist

📚 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.

• Monique's LinkedIn
• Monique's Instagram

If you’ve ever looked around your life and thought, “Is this it?” while simultaneously being needed by everyone, this one’s for you.

In the final episode of Season Two, author and nutritionist Monique van Tulder looks at what actually happened when she stopped just writing about A Grown Up’s Gap Year and lived it – running away, coming home, writing the book, and then spending a year saying “yes” to things that made her mildly nauseous but curious: TV couches, radio interviews, speaking gigs and all.

Monique shares:

• how one “Mum got mad and took off” moment became a book, a podcast and a very public experiment in mid-life reinvigoration
• what readers and listeners have done with the ideas – from cruises and retreats to blunt conversations at home and long-service-leave experiments
• why the Sydney Morning Herald comments and Morning Show clips made her double down on solo women’s travel, money, and the mental load
• what changed in her 25-plus-year marriage when she stopped being the default setting and both partners decided to partner with purpose

You’ll also hear how her new Your SPACE Prescription quiz (the “anti-guilt calculator”) and the 52 Ideas for Your Version of a Grown Up’s Gap Year list fit into all of this – simple tools to help you put yourself back in the picture, whether your escape is a solo night in a hotel or something more adventurous.

No resolutions, no 75-day challenges, no pressure to be anyone else. Just one woman reporting back from the field so you can plot your own version, in a way that fits the life you have now.

Episode Resources & Links:

• Your SPACE Prescription - calculator
• Free Weekly Newsletter
• Dear Blokes Downloadable
• Setting Boundaries That Stick - checklist

📚 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.

• Monique's LinkedIn
• Monique's Instagram

If “New Year, New You” makes you want to throw your phone in the sea, this one’s for you. In this episode, Monique van Tulder – author of A Grown Up’s Gap Year – calls time on the standard New Year resolutions and 75-day “transformation” challenges. Instead of treating yourself like a renovation project, she invites you to treat yourself as the project and turn January into your own creative test kitchen. Monique shares how notebooks, scribbles, walks, paint, and “making something with no outcome attached” have pulled her through turbulent seasons – and why a cheap notebook can be more powerful than any 12-week program. She nods to Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way (Morning Pages and Artist Dates) and to research showing that everyday creativity is linked to better mood, more energy and clearer thinking. If you’re a midlife woman who’s done everything for everyone and is tired of being told to fix herself every January, this episode hands you a different brief. Perfect to listen to while you’re wrapping presents, hiding in the car with a hot coffee, or quietly planning what your January notebook might hold – with zero before-and-after photos required.

Episode Resources & Links:

• Your SPACE Prescription
• Free Weekly Newsletter
• Dear Blokes Downloadable
• Setting Boundaries That Stick - checklist
• Julia Cameron: Living The Artist's Way
• Wild With Sarah Wilson Podcast with Julia Cameron
• Remarkable People Podcast with Guy Kawasaki and Julia Cameron

📚 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.

• Monique's LinkedIn
• Monique's Instagram