Meet the steward behind Casa Tortuga
Casa Tortuga is lovingly stewarded by Chemay—facilitator, retreat host, intuitive guide, family constellator, and visionary creating spaces for healing, transformation, and meaningful connection.
Casa Tortuga is more than a beautiful retreat space. It is a deeply personal offering rooted in love, ancestral remembrance, and the courage to live differently.
Born in New York to Boricua parents, Chemay spent her childhood summers in Puerto Rico, where her grandmother and beloved aunt, Titi Bell, kept her connected to her ancestral roots.
Titi Bell was a woman who loved fiercely, gave generously, and worked tirelessly. Like so many women before her, she learned to measure her worth through how much she could accomplish, carry, and give to others, often at the expense of her own well-being.
After losing her aunt to cancer and later experiencing her own body's calls for change, Chemay chose a different path. One of slowing down, listening inward, and reclaiming ancestral ways of healing rooted
A deeply personal return…
in intuition, community, spirit, and connection with the earth.
Casa Tortuga is, in many ways, an ode to Titi Bela and to all who have spent their lives caring for others while forgetting themselves.
Like the turtle, a symbol of patience, ancestral wisdom, and the bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, this sanctuary invites us to move at a different rhythm. To release the urgency of doing and rediscover the sacredness of being.
Together with her family, Chemay is stewarding this land as a place for those who feel called to pause, heal, and remember who they were before the world taught them who they needed to become.
A place to return home. To the land. To the body. To the wisdom within.
A lifetime of holding meaningful spaces
For years, Chemay has created and facilitated spaces centered around healing, transformation, community, and human connection.
Her journey began as a special education teacher and later expanded through nearly a decade of work with New York University’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. There, she developed and facilitated equity-centered learning experiences for educators, leaders, and school communities, guiding sensitive conversations around identity, inequity, culture, and belonging.
Chemay’s gift is in helping people move beyond defensiveness and division into reflection, accountability, and more harmonious ways of learning and being together.
That gift continued through My Reflection Matters Village, a virtual community supporting over a thousand families seeking more liberatory ways of learning and relating, and now through intimate in-person retreats rooted in healing, ancestral connection, and personal transformation.
Across every chapter, Chemay has created spaces where people can exhale, reconnect, and remember themselves.
More than a venue coordinator
Chemay understands the process of gathering community from the inside.
As a facilitator and host herself, she knows that meaningful experiences are shaped not only by thoughtful logistics, but by how a space feels—emotionally, energetically, and spiritually.
That understanding shapes how Casa Tortuga is held. Guided by her artistic love of intentional interior design, Chemay weaves together natural elements, cultural pieces, and beauty to create an energy flow that supports rest, healing, and deep reflection.
Casa Tortuga is more than a retreat space. It is part of a larger vision rooted in stewardship, reciprocity, and meaningful connection with community, spirit, and land.