Healing in the Himalayas: Motorcycle Therapy and Making Meaning After Sibling Loss with Ben Forman

When Ben Forman lost his brother Sam, his world shifted overnight, leaving him with survivor’s guilt, grief for what could have been, and a search for meaning. 

In this episode of Grief and Light, Ben shares how a 10-day motorcycle therapy trip through the Himalayas became a transformative journey of healing, reflection, and connection. Along the way, he immersed himself in nature, friendship, and mindful practices, and drew on conversations with monks and his heritage to navigate loss.

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This episode is also available in video here.

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Ben also discusses his deeply personal film, Higher Calling, which captures this journey and explores themes of adventure-based therapy, brotherhood, grief, and the power of storytelling to channel pain into meaning. 

Together, we explore how grief can reshape identity, open new paths for growth, and leave a lasting imprint of love.

Key Takeaways

• Grief can redefine identity and purpose. It reshapes who we are and invites us to find meaning in a changed world.
• Survivor’s guilt happens. Acknowledging it helps us honor both our life and the one we lost.
• Adventure therapy can help us move through grief. Physical journeys, like Ben’s 10-day ride through the Himalayas, can mirror emotional healing.
• Nature grounds and reflects us. In its stillness and vastness, we can find space to breathe and begin again.
• Pain reflects love’s depth. The intensity of grief feels like a measure of how deeply we’ve loved.
• Healing requires patience and self-compassion. Grief has no set timeline. Only gentle permission to mend at your own rhythm.
• Every grief journey is personal. Healing looks different for everyone; there’s no single path.
• Suffering can lead to growth. Turning toward pain opens the door to transformation and resilience.
• Art and storytelling heal. Creative expression helps us make meaning and carry love forward.
• Sibling bonds endure beyond death. The connection we share with those we’ve lost continues to shape, guide, and illuminate our lives.

Guest: Ben Forman

• Filmmaker, Producer
• Watch the Trailer
• highercallingmovie.com
• @thebenforman  and  @highercallingmovie

Hosted by: Nina Rodriguez

• Creator of Grief and Light, Grief Guide
• griefandlight.com
• @griefandlight
• Resting Grief Face on Substack

Grief Support Resources for the Road:

• Grief Tending Toolkit
• Access our online community

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro Song
• 0:47 Losing your only sibling
• 5:10 Loss of identity after sibling loss
• 13:29 Survivors Guilt
• 16:01 Post-traumatic growth and resilience
• 21:56 Friendship, Filmmaking, and Grief
• 24:37 Grieving in the Himalayas, Buddhism's Perspective
• 29:07 Grief lessons after 10 days in the mountains
• 35:00 The purpose of Higher Calling the film
• 39:18 Motorcycle and "adventure therapy"
• 44:37 Connecting with Ben Forman
• 45:35 Grief is personal
• 47:30 Final question

Transcript

What did I do? Is there something that I did that led to this tragedy? And if you're listening to this and you think, gee, this is completely irrational, I get it. But grief sometimes isn't rational. And you try to give yourself answers. That's why there are things that exist that try and explain the unexplainable. And we've been doing it as humans for

thousands and thousands of years and we still do it.

You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to Grief in Light. My name is Nina Rodriguez and I am your host. And today's guest is Ben Forman, a filmmaker whose life and work has been shaped by both storytelling and loss.

After nearly a decade in Los Angeles, directing, writing, producing projects with companies like Nickelodeon, Amazon, HGTV, Hulu, Netflix, and other renowned companies, the sudden loss of his brother Sam in 2022 shifted everything. He returned to Boston to create Higher Calling, a deeply personal film about love, loss, adventure therapy, and the ways we find healing through art, nature, and connection. Ben, welcome to Grief and Light.

Thank you so much for having me.

It is an absolute honor and I have been privy to this beautiful film that you have created called Higher Calling and we'll get to that. But first, I want to get to know more about you, about Sam. How did grief become a part of your story?

Well, this journey for me, this chapter of my life began on January 8th, 2022. And it was around 7.30 AM California time. And I got a call from my mother and immediately I knew something terrible had happened. You could hear it in her voice from the beginning. said, Ben,

Sam's died. the emotion that you Nina, that folks who have experienced this sudden tragic loss, the first feeling is disbelief. And there's this...

thing that happened to my brain that makes that day in particular so much more memorable. Your nervous system is on 110 % and your brain is impressionable in a way that normal days it's not.

That day felt like a 40-hour day, getting on that flight without agency, being tortured, having to be passive in a time where all you wanted to do was be there for your family and feel like you could do as much as you could with what you were facing. And frankly speaking, I would probably would have preferred to drive.

from Los Angeles to Boston, just because it felt like I could do something as irrational as it was. And I know having listened to this podcast, your experience driving after getting that call about Joseph certainly has trace elements of what I went through. So getting back to Boston that night of the eighth and the

Absolute chaos that comes with the sudden loss of someone like my brother Pushes you forward and I am so grateful to have parents that have strength beyond what I can comprehend and show me what it's like to grieve immediately with grace and Show me what strength was and and when that chapter

started, everything changed. Your sense of purpose, your sense of relationships, your sense of identity are all brought into question in a new way because for us, we are brother or sister. And it took a while to realize that that is still the case.

even though I'm no longer, Sam is no longer living, my identity as brother and your identity as sister still is part of who we are. And for me, that was true for 25 years. But the other parts of my identity,

what I was creating, what I was producing, what I was working on, suddenly felt very different. And I don't want to say it's insignificant because it was just a matter of perspective, but...

waking up after losing Sam those few weeks became a really dark and heavy few weeks and months and now three and a half years removed. There's still elements of the mourning and reflection process that continue to resurface. And I think as you ask about the arc of this chapter and, and

where grief became a central character in this part of life, I was very fortunate in a sense to have not had this type of heartache or heartbreak until I was 28 years old. And my folks did a really intentional job, my parents did an intentional job shielding Sam, my brother and I from the loss of my grandfathers and not

seeing that side of their sadness to, I think, preserve a youthfulness in my brother and I. And I certainly feel now that there was a wonderful gift in how they navigated their grief of my mother and father, the grief around losing their fathers.

And at the same time, I can't help but have felt completely unprepared for loss in my brother because I was...

I had not grappled with those emotions when I was 13 years old and when my grandfathers passed, within a year of each other. So for this to not just happen, but happen tragically and suddenly and

inexplicably because, you know, your parents are supposed to die before your brothers. And not to sound callous, but the order of life felt completely upside down. So all of those things combined to really rock me to my core. And that's where it began.

Thank you for your honesty and for sharing all these different aspects. I love how you talk about the identity because in the film, I don't want to give too much away, but it opens up with these beautiful clips of your early childhood days with Sam and just that sibling bond being formed as children, which is the part that we miss. And if I understood correctly, he was your only sibling. So there's also that added layer of siblings in form.

who we are in the world, how we show up in the world, and losing that is incredibly disoriented. So talk to us about your identity shift before and after the loss of Sam.

The hardest part.

about the evolving identity was that we were never closer than we were.

when he died. And so much of that childhood rivalry, the sibling rivalry, we had been able to outgrow that and become more than brothers in our twenties and become, for me, he was my best friend. And to have someone without judgment

completely unconditionally pick up your phone calls and vice versa and talk and have such shared history that

It is just incredibly comfortable and

There is a willingness to just connect with someone like that, which I can't feel even with my parents, and to have that now gone.

means meant and still means that I now have to completely rebuild my toolkit for how I show up for friends, for family members, for myself, so that the...

hole in my heart that Sam occupied and still does is not a wait, but somehow a unlock for new growth because I hold a mirror to myself and realize I want to still be someone who

experiences life and pushes the boundaries of life and learns deeply and stays curious and doesn't totally close off and look inward at the hole in my heart, but try then to use it as a guiding hand to become a different and I think in some ways better, but

That's certainly different and that's certainly one of the more tortured parts of grief is trying to reconcile if life will ever be better than when you lived with Joseph or for me, Sam. And it feels very upside down or perverse to think that somehow, someday life will be better than when things were.

But I've given myself permission through time and through, you know, expression through film and constant confrontation around my brother and the loss that maybe, maybe things will one day be better somehow. I don't know how, but just keeping that perspective.

allows for some of the things that were very present in part of my relationship when Sam was alive and with him to come back a little bit in a different permutation, in a different way. That allows me to, I think, keep Sam really close nonetheless without having him on the other side of the phone.

Thank you, and I love that you addressed the part about giving yourself permission, giving ourselves permission to not necessarily say, yes, for sure, my life is going to be better, just to leave the door open to possibility of what that may look like and extend that grace to ourselves in terms of it may not feel like that right now. I may not even understand it right now, but I leave the door open for that possibility because in

lost in general, but also in sibling loss, especially when you lose an only sibling, the survivor's guilt is so real and it's something you addressed in the film. And I'm curious how that has evolved for you. And I love how you say that you can now relate to Sam, even though he's not physically here. I had a guest who said, we get to carry their love light forward. So you are carrying Sam's love light forward through your work, but

Talk to us about that survivor's guilt in the early days and how maybe that has shifted in 2022.

Totally. Yeah, well you use the word possibility. And I think the possibility of what could be is really the root of my heartache, perhaps to the biggest extent, because that is this mystery. It's a beautiful mystery. It also could be a really haunting mystery, but it's still something that is ripe with possibility. And you just don't know what...

it would become and now we'll never know. And I think that sense of guilt is connected to the possibility because I am Sam's older brother. I'll always be... Excuse me.

I'll always be his older brother and...

there is a duty that comes with being an older brother that you're your younger brother's keeper. And there was and there still is a sense of failure that

at first was incredibly intense that I had let him down and

You combine that with questions of what if, what if I had just called him that morning or the night before, or what if, and you trace all of those things and you start to really put yourself in a dark corner because sometimes it's not connected to anything you could have done. And I still hold those feelings three and a half years later and I might for the rest of my life.

And as I was in that spiral thinking about what if.

You start to trace your karma. And if there is such thing, which is what this film confronts in a way, is what did I do? Is there something that I did that led to this tragedy? And if you're listening to this and you think, gee, this is completely irrational, I get it. But grief sometimes isn't rational.

And you try to give yourself answers. That's why there are things that exist that try and explain the unexplainable. And we've been doing it as humans for thousands and thousands of years and we still do it. And that's because it feels good. And I tried to explain something unimaginable through conversations with monks.

And that was one of the central themes that led me to create this film, Higher Calling. So.

The question was, how does my identity change? How has it changed? It has changed massively in terms of my perspective on what's important about me, who I want to become because of what's occurred in my life and how I want to spend my time, what I want to think about. There's a beauty that comes from tragedy.

people come together and at least from my perspective, I was able to really hold myself to a different standard of what I want to be focusing on. I feel grateful to the people around me and in a weird way to Sam for giving me this opportunity, even though he's no longer with us, there is some...

post-traumatic growth that has occurred and I still feel icky saying something like that. Because how can it be a gift to lose someone like this suddenly, tragically, and far too soon?

yet somehow there is a blessing because I still remember Sam and keep him close.

I'm sitting here nodding my head. I don't know if you're listening or watching, but if you're listening, I'm just sitting here nodding my head. Yes, yes, yes. Because as my sister heart just understands on such a profound level, every word that you have said, the inner conflict and also the pain and also the love, all the things at once. I completely agree for the longest time, words resilience, post-traumatic growth, meaning, all these things felt sharp against my heart. I was angry at.

people who brought that up, honestly, with some distance, I realized the loss wasn't, in my opinion, the loss wasn't for any particular reason. It was more, what do we decide to make of this through how we live our lives? And that differs person to person and how we do that and what we choose to do or not is extremely personal. But if you're listening and for some reason these words,

feel sharp against your heart, against your loss, please don't absorb that. Just understand that this is something that may or may not come with time and that's perfectly okay. What you decide to do afterwards is completely personal. you touched on the conversations with the monks and talking about karma, but for context, the film is essentially a documentary of a trip you and two of your chosen brothers

embarked on and the Himalayas. mean, it just sounds so epic, but it was so much more than that because in my understanding, you have had motorcycle therapy before. So please share with our audience, A, what is motorcycle therapy and B, how did this trip to the Himalayas come about?

Well, thank you for contextualizing what I just said. And you're so right. Three and a half years removed from loss is so very different. And mapping that genesis of feelings versus the immediacy and that sharpness of pain.

just sharing the perspective of where I am right now. And if it's helpful, I'm glad it is. And this film likewise is just my personal experience. And I'm just the messenger. And if then my experience of grief and adventure and confrontation.

with these hard questions, spiritual and other help audiences or listeners carry their broken heart just 1 % easier than, Nina, we've done our job as creators. And when this film started to become real,

I was still very much in an emotional rut a deep deep depression and I didn't know it was that Because I'd never experienced it and I Think my friends who are in the film Kurt Myers and Kyle Tevlin I Think they sensed that and Kurt as he talks about in the film lost his father too soon

in 2019.

And.

That's what friends do. They show up for you in ways that might be self-evident, but are difficult. And even if they don't know how to, simply showing the love and support is exactly sometimes what you need to just find one morsel of strength.

in your day to get you through. And when they reached out and said, Ben, do you want to go? Do you want to go to the Himalayas? Should we do it? Are you up for it?

I said, yeah, because that's the type of person I am.

But I also knew that it would have to be different from previous motorbike trips. It would have to be more connected to the feelings of what was going on. And I thought maybe this is something where if we capture it, it can be a powerful tool to help other people pull through their grief in a slightly more graceful way or a slightly more

thoughtful way when it comes to how they walk through their grief.

I considered bringing a film crew up and networking to find some of the most brilliant film filmmakers I've ever worked with in Mumbai, India, and worked with them to get them up to the northernmost part of India in the state of Ladakh. And it was there where I knew in the cradle of the Himalayas, Buddhism was native. And

My heritage, very different, does not include Buddhism. And I didn't want to go there thinking I was suddenly going to learn everything about Buddhism or adopt the monastic lifestyle. I wasn't trying to do that. I knew that I had a strong foundation, but it just wasn't helping me in this moment of heartache.

So I went and started in met with a monk on the first night of being in India. And he said,

Suffering is a creation of your own mind.

And if you just eliminate these negative thoughts and negative feelings, then there is no more suffering.

That was really hard to hear because as I extrapolate and abstract away from that and put myself into my upbringing, think, gosh, is it my fault that I'm feeling this way? Because that's how it landed on me. And whether or not that's what he meant is a different conversation. But to me, it made it seem like, my goodness, my heartache is because

Loved my brother and if I only hadn't loved him, I wouldn't feel this way and that initial conversation Launched me for the next two weeks riding motorbikes through the mountains through snow and rain and heat up to 18,000 feet down to 6,000 feet and everything in the middle with this thread of if Love and attachment as

Buddhist perspective would say, if attachment is the root of suffering, how then can I live a life full of love and meaning? over the course of the film, as you saw, that central question revealed to me that the suffering, the pain is really just a ledger for how much you let yourself care.

And the pain is something as twisted as it might sound, is something that you should celebrate because it signifies that in fact, you risked your heartache to love this person and to care deeply and stick your neck out and do the things and be vulnerable. Because when those things occur, the pain is sharp.

and it hurts. And the deeper the pain, the more you let yourself love. And once that occurred to me, it became clear that

I shouldn't, I should not reject the suffering. I should find a way to embrace it because in a way it brings me even closer to Sam. And through art and through this creative process, I've been able to channel that pain in a productive way, in an artful way, in a way that hopefully can be a resource for folks who have experienced what you and I have been through.

And if that's the case, then all the sacrifice and all the effort was worth it.

Absolutely, and I remember first of all the film is stunning visually visually stunning and You really truly feel like you're on the journey. I felt like I was on the journey with you almost to the point where I was like how Logistically did they film this because you're going you know up and down these terrains in crazy weather barely paved roads if any and these

stunning scenic shots and aerial shots, shots from what felt like a bike in front of you just taking the scenery and of the three of you riding your motorcycles. And I was like, how did they even do this? But I want to ask you, you kind of touched on this just now, but maybe amplify. At the beginning of the film, you ask, what could these 10 days teach me to help me carry my broken heart?

What could these 10 days teach me to help me carry my broken heart? So how would you answer that question today without maybe any spoilers because you do have to watch the film for the full answer. Maybe today what would an answer sound like?

These mountains, these Himalayan mountains, though part of this journey and a character in this journey, could be replaced with any mountain or any backwoods or any place because if you allow yourself to get away, to be in nature, to get uncomfortable,

Because I have to tell you, when it's snowing and you're at 16,000 feet, the crew from Mumbai had never seen snow before. I grew up in the Boston area, so I've seen snow, but these filmmakers had not, which should give you an indication of just how much we were, how far we were outside our comfort zone. And I think whenever there's that sense of uncertainty,

Can we do it? And you're tested. Are we going to push our boundaries, whether that's a five mile hike or a 1500 kilometer motorbike ride? It doesn't matter because you're confronting something uncomfortable. And in doing that, it reminded me that I can still do things. I can still push myself even without Sam.

I can still be uncomfortable. can still grow, even if it's something as simple as, I got up, I put my pants on, I rode my motorbike down the road. And the harder the thing is that we face in the wake of loss, the more we can remind ourselves of that inner strength. And that's hard. That was really hard. And it still is. Immediately after losing Sam Gott, it felt like anything was impossible.

And everything was meaningless. And as you start to rebuild yourself, those 10 days in the mountains gave me such a gift because it reminded me of what I'm capable of, even in the most simple sense. And then as the process, you know, rippled out, I'm capable of making films. I'm capable of writing. I'm capable of

doing all sorts of things that go into the filmmaking process. And you build yourself up through being out in the world and being a little uncomfortable. Because I think that's where you, you do a few things, but you remind yourself of who you are and what you're capable of. And sometimes you lose yourself in the loss. And I certainly did. And one thing I want to underscore is

the contrast that I was able to feel in those 10 days in the mountains. And I think when I say pain in the suffering is the inverse of how much you let yourself love whoever it is you lost. Likewise, going through in grief is really intense in the contrast, the ups and downs, the intense laughter with the intense sadness in short order of one another.

really, really fast. And then over time, it slowly becomes less and less sporadic. And I think being compressed in 10 days in those mountains, suddenly I'm smiling, I'm riding, the sun is out, everything's good. And because of the climate of those mountains, in the afternoon, it's 42 degrees and raining and freezing, and we're going through glacial rivers. And the contrast

of the environment impacted the contrast of what was going on in my head and in my heart because I felt sad and rudderless when things were going bad. And I felt unstoppable when things were going good. And I think that became a metaphor for the experience and for life. And our guide, his name was Ashish, and he said in the film, he said,

Hey guys, there's, you know, thunder is rolling over the ridge line and, and we're in a, a, a sort of stop point, a checkpoint, a police checkpoint. And he's encouraging us. He says, guys, it's not rain. And we're hearing like the rolling thunder coming over. I guess it certainly sounds like rain. says, guys, but seriously, anybody can ride in the sun. And that became our mantra because it's true when things are good, anybody can ride in the sun.

And it's easy and it's downhill and the wind's at your back. But when things are hard and you do experience loss, which we all do, and that's something universal about this film, as personal of a journey as it is, it is for everybody.

That notion that when it's raining out, can you still ride is something I got from those mountains in a really powerful way. And I want to just dovetail into one more thought, Nina, if it's okay.

Absolutely.

This film is about resilience. It's about what you do once hardship and tragedy has impacted you. And what I'm working on now to create is a film about resistance. And resistance in the sense that how do you fortify yourself? How do you defend against something inevitable? What are those tools that allow you to become resistant?

to become proofed of things that will ultimately impact you. I think there are so many interesting topics because anthropologically and historically going to a different region of the world and looking at a culture from the lens of life and loss and bringing it into a conversation around grief to enable a more nuanced conversation.

that's geared towards healing and growth and not sadness all the time is something that I frankly admire you immensely for taking this charge and creating this podcast because this is the path towards a society where we're not so focused on the short term. We're not just focused on, my God, I feel sad today.

this sad thing happened to me, but you can actually give yourself grace to zoom out and say, then if I'm able to confront this tragedy, my medium and long term will be hopefully wonderful.

Thank you for highlighting that because it absolutely is. We're conditioned to expect instant gratification, instant answers, everything at our arms reach. Grief thrusts us into living in the both end of life, in the living with the questions. You addressed that earlier, that sometimes we won't have the answers. And we do sometimes fall into what if spirals and we do have to live with more questions sometimes.

something like an answer comes in how we choose to live our lives afterwards. It's so beautiful that you said that this invites nuance and the film itself now as you were talking I was remembering some scenes and I remember, my gosh, the entire journey is grief, right? The ups, the downs, the joy, the sorrow, the disappointment, the...

brotherhood, the support, and even your guide who I love. You're not even in the same country. You're not even of the same culture or background or life experiences. And yet there was a sensitivity that he understood deeply what you were going through. I'm getting chill saying this, but like I love the way that your friends, you I'm saying like your chosen brothers, like your friends supported you through mere presence, less words, more presence.

And even at one point where I could feel there was a scene where you had to decide whether or not you're camping out in this one area, but the weather was horrible. And they're like, yeah, no, we're not doing that. You're like, I say we go. And I could relate to you because in grief, just, your perspective on what maybe you would have done had you not been grieving would have been different. But in that moment, I could totally be like, yeah, I get why he would have wanted this decision. So anyway, it's,

kind of speaking abstractly here because you have to watch the film for context, but it's so beautiful how you took the viewer on this journey with you. And it's one of the most effective films that I've seen do it with very little words because you are writing most of the time. Most of the film is the journey. And that is incredibly powerful. So thank you for taking us there.

And for showcasing so many aspects of it in such an honest light without being over the top, like there was no drama. It was very honest and I absolutely love it. So I'll stop there. I do want to ask about motorcycle therapy and, you know, allowing nature to nurture you. think I touched on it before, but one thing really stood out. You, I'm paraphrasing here, but in one scene you say riding your motorcycle.

means you have to be in the present because you never know what's around the corner. Would you say that's a metaphor for how you live life or navigate life after loss?

I think there's no question. And thank you so much for those kind words about the film. The fact that it was able to immerse you in the experience means so much. was the goal. And it is hard to say no to certain Hollywood storytelling elements. And how can we make this more dramatic? And how can we do things to give it that extra twist at the end? And this doesn't.

subscribe to those things. This film doesn't subscribe to that and I'm so glad that it connected with you nonetheless and I hope it does for audiences too. And with adventure therapy and being present on the bike, it's quite literally a forced choice because if you start to wander, your brain starts to go somewhere else, you quite literally run the risk of peril because you're not

where your two wheels are. And it is, like many action sports, there's a forced sense of mindfulness and thoughtfulness and awareness that whether you're doing the activity for that reason or not, you get this experience of meditation because in your brain, just it cools off just a little bit and you get to sort your thoughts a little bit easier. And adventure therapy could be

one foot in front of the other trying to get to the summit or one foot in front of the other just getting through your daily walk, but doing it in an intentional way where you have no choice but to focus is something unique to motorbikes. And of course the irony and the tragedy is that you experience something similar on skis and to snowboard, which is how

Sam passed, it's how Sam's accident happened. And we'll get too far into that because I think we've covered it already, but the adventure therapy is something.

that the moto therapy specifically was something that I kind of discovered while on the road. You you can't quite articulate what it feels like, but that's sort of the point, which is when you've been on your bike, for me, it's about 60 minutes. All of a sudden, everything gets quiet and you can think about, this is, know, one, two, three, four, five, all thoughts are in order.

And it's not the usual scrubbing through the radio channels like it usually is. And it's static and chaos. So forgive that metaphor. Some people don't even listen to the radio anymore, but I do. And I would encourage, I'm not going to encourage people to go on a motorcycle, but I would encourage people to try to find ways to...

to just be in their body in grief. quick anecdote. My brother was a state champion wrestler. He was a ferocious competitor and a really, really hard worker. And in the days after Sam passed, I remember going to exercise and having this extra strength, this extra...

And I talked to my friend Kurt and he said, yeah, after my, I ran six minute miles consecutively for five miles. I had never done that in my life. And I think there is something when you are in pain to just get out of your head and get into your body. And I think that's connected to the mototherapy and the adventure therapy and the nature-based part of it too. So.

I think that that did a lot for me because my head was spinning and all of our heads were spinning. It was a simple thing to just put your foot in front of the other and run.

Absolutely, and I can definitely relate. A loss disconnects us, has that ability to disconnect us from our lives and our bodies and everything and returning is such a part of the healing process. Absolutely. maybe I don't know if I'll ride a bike myself, but I'll definitely find other ways to connect and enjoy the incredible scenery from your film, Higher Calling. And, you know, I want to be mindful of our time together here. I know we're reaching the end. I could definitely

you know, talk more about this for a lot longer. But what do you hope audiences take away from Higher Calling and where can they find more information about the film if they wanted to watch it?

I could talk with you about this all day, Nina. Right now the film is in the festival circuit, so a lot of that means we have to wait for our premiere to occur. And once it's out there, we're exploring all the possibilities from public television to local television to streaming services and beyond to find ways to reach people because that's what this is about.

and that's why you do Grief and Light. And that's why I created this film is because if we can reach people and it doesn't have to be a full scale, I want to take everything from this podcast, I wanna take everything from this film and bring it to... That's not what this is intended to do because grief is personal and your loss

I don't in fact want people to compare grief. I don't think that's healthy. But I do want people to recognize that there are things that you can do to get yourself a little bit stronger, a little bit less stuck. And this was my experience doing that. And in this film, whether it's the spirituality, whether it's the adventure, or whether it's some of the meditations,

on grief and on the questions that I grappled with. That audiences walk away and hopefully look at that and remember maybe that is something I can do or I can think about that will get me just 1 % better for tomorrow or the day after when that sharp pain hits me in my chest.

It's coming, the film's coming and hopefully, knock on wood, that a sequel will be coming too. So exciting things. But so, so grateful to connect with you, Nina. So glad to be a part of this really important project that you've built and I look forward to meeting you and sharing this film with you, whether it's...

in Miami at a festival down there or elsewhere. thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

Likewise, it has been an absolute honor and absolutely let me know if you're ever in Miami and we can promote the film and the sequel. We'll stay tuned for that one. Let's go higher calling first and then we could have a follow-up conversation thereafter. Final question, short answer if you like. What would Ben today say to Ben after getting that call in 2022?

That's a great question. That's a hard question.

My instinct is to say that it does get better with time. And that is a cliche for a reason.

I think.

If I was able to tell Ben right after he got that call, anything in the world I would say.

Listen, listen to Sam. He's still with you. You can still hear his voice.

and use that to guide you. Because it's going to hurt to listen to him, but you can still hear his voice.

Don't be afraid to do that.

Thank you, Ben. It has been an absolute honor. Thank you, Sam, for sharing your voice and your light in life and in the way you continue to ripple forward. Thank you. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight.

or can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember, you are not alone.