What are people saying about the guidebook?

I found your characterization of the work as a “guide” rather than a textbook or workbook to be especially fitting—it truly leads the reader through both an inward and outward journey of community building. Your framing of “self-community” and “people-community” struck me as both conceptually rich and deeply humane...I was especially moved by your view that love is not merely an emotion but a foundational force for healing, and that dreaming becomes an act of liberation.  

The second half of the guide, with its scripts and reflections, beautifully demonstrates how theory and practice can merge...One line that resonated deeply was your observation that “healing has been commodified, placed behind walls and in bottles that require us to pay fees we may not always possess.”...Perhaps most striking was your deliberate use of first-person plural pronouns—“we,” “us”—to describe your own experiences. It blurred the line between self and other, between author and reader, and reflected a profound embodiment of communal practice. It felt as though you were walking with us through the text, creating the very kind of community your guide envisions.

I purchased and read Dr. Dawn X. Henderson's guidebook, We Get to Love, Heal, and Dream: A Guide to Building Community with Ourselves and Others, as required reading for a course (MPHN 680 – Community-Based Participatory Research). I found the guidebook offered alignment with concepts of participatory research grounded in liberatory and dialogic experiences. I was most inspired by the connections of personal experiences to community lived experiences and reconciling our collective trauma. This guidebook is relevant to my efforts as a professor by showing my students that healing and protection are critical to community-based research and collaboration. We must co-develop our research endeavors and seek to honor the stories of others.