By Baz Porter — host of Rise From The Ashes. In proud partnership with C-Suite Network.
A woman who grew up in chaos chose, on purpose, to do something different.
Yarona Boster’s father was a Holocaust survivor. Her mother carried abuse from her own childhood. The house was loud. The rules changed by the hour. One moment her mother was the law. The next moment, nothing was.
Yarona grew up knowing what she didn’t want to repeat. That part was easy.
The hard part was figuring out what to do instead.
She didn’t fall back on the old way. She didn’t swing all the way to the opposite, either. She picked a third path. She learned a new way of being a person, on purpose. And she practiced it.
She practiced when nothing was wrong. When dinner was on the stove. When she was in the shower. When she was just driving. The boring moments. The quiet ones. Most of us never notice them.
She noticed them.
That practice is what shows up now when her eight-year-old son is on the floor crying about writing. She doesn’t bribe him. She doesn’t threaten. She sits next to him and stays there. She lets him be in the hard moment, because the hard moment is where most of his growth lives.
The other thing that shaped her is death.
Yarona is a death doula. She sits with people as they die. She listens to what they wish they had done. She has heard the regrets a thousand times. People who wanted to see the aurora borealis. People who waited for retirement. People who never got there.
Her own mother was one of them. She wanted to drive a Jeep through Alaska. She wanted to see the northern lights. She wanted to get back on a horse one more time.
By the end, she couldn’t even stand up. But Yarona found equine therapy. Her mother got back on a horse three or four times before she died.
That is the kind of moment Yarona lives for.
She says it plainly: life is finite. The number of breaths in your body is finite. You will leave this body. It is not an if. It is a when. And once you stop running from that, you start living differently.
Her takeaway is simple. Practice the new way when the stakes are low. Notice the small moments. Don’t wait for the hard moment to try to be a better parent, a better partner, a better leader. By then, the old way will take over.
Her book — Unspoken Signals: Essential Parenting Skills to Raise Emotionally Secure Children — is available now. Find her at yaronaboster.com and on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Questions listeners ask
Q: What does a death doula actually do? A death doula sits with people through the dying process. They help the person face it without fear. They help the family stay present. They listen to what the dying person wishes they had done — and sometimes, if there’s time, they help them do one last thing that matters.
Q: How do you parent without repeating what your parents did? You don’t just refuse the old way. You replace it. You learn a new way on purpose. You practice it in the small, quiet moments when nothing is wrong — making dinner, in the shower, in the car. By the time the hard moment comes, the new way is already in your hands.
Q: Why does sitting with a child’s hard moment matter more than fixing it? Children learn from the moments adults stay through, not the moments adults fix. When you don’t leave, you teach them they can stay too. You teach them hard feelings don’t break them. That lesson outlasts any quick fix you could have offered.
Watch the full conversation on Rise From The Ashes. Subscribe on YouTube so the next story finds you: https://www.youtube.com/@risefromtheashespodcast
Rise From The Ashes and Baz Porter — in proud partnership with C-Suite Network.
