Our Story
How Portals Retreat was born
It started with a rooftop in Playa del Carmen and a dream about Jupiter.
How Debbie and Shannon met
Shannon was living in Kingston, Ontario. One day a friend told her about a shaman in Mexico who holds deeply powerful Ayahuasca ceremonies, and said Shannon had to experience it for herself. Shannon followed the call and flew down to Playa del Carmen.
At the same time, Debbie had just left Los Angeles after three years of chasing an idea of success. It had left her depleted, and her growth had plateaued. She flew to Mexico before heading home to Taiwan, hoping some time there would give her clarity.
Then a small coincidence happened. Shannon needed a laptop, and she bought one from a guy called Leroy. Leroy turned out to be one of Debbie’s friends, visiting her in Playa del Carmen.
He went straight back to Debbie that day: “You have to meet this woman. She’s INCREDIBLE.”
Not long after, Leroy DJ’d on the rooftop at Debbie’s place and invited Shannon along.
They met, and the friendship began. They set intentions together on a new moon, met up to play music, caught the sunrise, and jammed on the beach with friends.
Shannon and Debbie’s first event: An Ecstatic Dance
Soon after, a local gallery invited Shannon to host something. She and Debbie held an ecstatic dance there.
Many people came, and the dance spilled out of the gallery and into the street. Strangers walking past joined in. It was the kind of moment that reminds you what life is actually about.
When the dancing wound down, everyone moved inside and lay down on the gallery floor, and Shannon closed the night with a soundbath. In the quiet, some people began to cry. They left lighter than they came, telling Shannon and Debbie how much they had let go of.
Debbie left knowing she had met someone special: a woman powerful enough to hold a room and tender enough to touch everyone’s heart.
The birth of Portals Retreat
Months later, back in Taiwan, Debbie had a vivid dream about Jupiter. She woke up with the message to do what her heart was calling her to do: bring women together, and create experiences that make us feel alive, where women expand and elevate one another.
Shannon was the first person she thought of to co-host a retreat like this. Without knowing it, Shannon had also been thinking about creating a retreat.
The two came together. Their first retreat happened in 2022, and the intention behind it hasn’t changed since: to bring women together in a space where they feel alive, and where women expand and elevate one another.
