ActivatEE is sharing platform designed by the Association for Experiential Education for its members and conference attendees during the International Conference. ActivatEE is designed to facilitate the process of creating one’s story, inspiring the use of one’s voice, and launching an idea – all on stage during a conference keynote. While leading a canoeing expedition in the Rangeley Lakes region in Maine, Jake received the call he’d been dreading: his best friend had died of cancer—he was 26. This talk is part of Jake’s effort not to make sense of this death, nor to find meaning in it, but to make meaning with it.