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Reviewed by C.R. Hurst for Readers' Favorite
The Communal Heart: A Return to Belonging in a World Pulling Us Apart by Claudia Dommaschk offers hope for our fragmented world. Using her knowledge and experience as a marriage and family therapist, Dommaschk presents a multi-faceted look at what prevents us from creating community spirit and what methods might help us rediscover the communal heart that once sustained us. She begins by telling us what we already know: that we are continually being pulled apart by our individual wants and needs. She then analyzes how those wants and needs drive us apart, and why they will never offer us the sense of belonging we need. Finally, she provides not-so-easy answers on how to find new belonging in community, based on her training as a therapist in Gestalt principles, where “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
I found The Communal Heart a thoughtful read with a crucial agenda –- to remind us that human beings are only part of the world, not the whole of it. This message has a fine messenger in author Claudia Dommaschk, whose phrasing and rhythms are soothing and heartfelt, a therapist’s voice that suggests how change is still possible, though work is required. And although at times I thought her discussions of the finer points of Gestalt therapy were unnecessary, I now better understand how our psychological needs are not being met by our fragmented approach to life, though we try to convince ourselves otherwise. To her credit, Dommaschk simply invites her reader to “relate differently and, in doing so, to remember that belonging has always been there, waiting to welcome us home.” Whether we accept the invitation is up to us.
