What a Summer!

As the cooler temps and shorter days set in, reflections on the beautiful experiences that came with Summer are helping ease me into this transitional season.

Lessons To Blessings Family Field Day Potato Sack Race

I'm grateful for everyone who came out to play this past season. We started the Summer off with our Feeling Good series in June. I was honored to witness everyone trying our different fitness formats and discovering new ways to enjoy moving their bodies. We all had a rejuvenating time connecting our wits through games and taking in the grounding energy of Hudson Yards' gardens and fountains. It truly is a blessing to have such a beautiful resource available to us for free. 

Lessons To Blessings Founder, Omari Cannon at the Family Field Day

Connecting to a broader community in Lessons To Blessings' Family Field Day was also a welcome lift this past August. I took the playful opportunity to celebrate my birthday with youthful activity. They had some really fun games (tug of war, and potato sack races to name a couple) and in exchange I was honored to contribute a complimentary 30min Zumba class. This fun experience reminded me of the restoration that is possible when a community comes together, and emboldened me to push forward with my own community project coming this Autumn!

Closing the season out with our Summer Games event at Squarrel Cafe was just the connection we needed to end August with laughs, good times, and hearty camaraderie.

I'm carrying all that joy and inspiration into this next season, as we transition into one of the most festive times of the year. With gratitude for a lifted Summer, and excitement for the project that's brewing behind the scenes here at Talitha Dance, cheers to Autumn!

Portal Unlocked

I have to tell this story. It's not the beginning, per se, but it is a critical plot twist point. 

The Unapologetically Bronx Social Crawl hosted by Ideas42 that happened this past March (2025) was incredible and it inspired me to want to tell the world about it. I recorded a video the day afterwards to share my thoughts (you can see it here) and I really wanted to write about it also. I drafted a beautiful blog post about it a couple months later that got accidentally deleted before it went live, but I realize that just created space for this moment. A moment where I'm starting to truly see what that event did for me beyond my initial experience of feeling supported and excited at what my home borough has to offer. This is a moment of witnessing a bigger play at hand.

Welcome To The South Bronx Street Art Mural, Mott Haven in the Bronx

That social crawl experience of seeing my home borough through renewed lenses led me to explore some of the businesses in the South Bronx Mott Haven area. On a rainy day this past June, I decided to adventure to one business in particular that I had walked by on the crawl and had previously heard about from a friend, The Lit Bar, pausing to enjoy a magical experience at the neighborhood Maria Sola Community Greenspace on the way. The Lit Bar is a black owned book store and wine bar with a refreshingly restorative relaxed vibe and healing for the social and intellectual body. The way the books are displayed invites hands and eyes to explore the shelves, and in doing so I found From Generosity To Justice by Darren Walker. This book spoke to me, so much so that after enjoying the sensory experience of holding it in my hands I found myself walking around the store with it. Clearly my spirit chose this one. Unable to afford it at the moment, I vowed to get it from the library, and when I did, its pages were a portal.

Maria Sola Green Space, Bronx NY

So my friend thus far you have been led on a journey to understand how I got to the place I'm about to describe to you. The journey is as important as the revelation, you needed to walk it with me so that now, when I describe the picture that has been clarified for me, you also understand the impact of each step along the way.

Darren Walker's From Generosity To Justice posits a spectrum of philanthropy encouraging those who would like to give to consider not just the legacy of a charitable donation as extolled by The Gospel On Wealth by Andrew Carnegie, but the other root-focused, bigger picture, solution-based justice end of the spectrum as well. In reading this narrative, my own perspective opened as "what to do with all this much money?" has never been a question for me and it was a strange conundrum to me. The conversations Walker has with various philanthropists expounding what justice based giving looks like sparked a conversation within myself about my own philanthropy. Where is my privilege? What do I have to give? How do I give it?

All answers point to Talitha Dance. My privilege is not financial but rather spiritual and energetic. I was hatched and grown in an environment full of sacrificial unconditional love. That allows me to more easily connect with, and be authentically, who I am - without apology or fear. I can build a life that acknowledges, respects, and supports my natural way of being. I am creating the freedom that allows me to devote my life to following my purpose. I know my calling is to help nurture and restore people. All of this is a privilege, fought for with sweat and tears but a privilege nonetheless. 

Talitha Dance is what I am doing with that hard earned gift. This is my love, my energy, and my ability to create safe healing spaces put to work to lift my community. What started as a desire to bring lifted fitness to others like me who were financially low and looking for wellness spaces, revealed what the world needed my contribution to become. Processing the concepts in From Generosity To Justice opened up how Talitha Dance can evolve to better fill that need. I am still working to understand the scope of this expanded vision, but I now see that Talitha Dance is not just a boutique fitness studio. It's not just a mobile wellness center. It is a multi-faceted community center home-based in the Bronx, serving our tribe throughout NYC. 

This new clarity and direction has me so excited. My soul is on fire and I'm bringing all of this light straight to you. So prepare yourself, we ain’t seen nothin yet.