Meet Denique Boxhill
Learn more about RRC founding member Denique Boxhill, who her friends are, what she’s listening to these days, and her mission to support people of color in finding healing within and returning home to themselves.
Denique Boxhill
Culturally Attuned Therapist.
Empathic Visionary.
Radiant Gem.
Denique, which fictional character would you want to be your best friend and why?
This is such a wonderful question and also so difficult for me to answer because I love to read and I’m a total cinephile! It makes me think of qualities: like Dumbledore’s quintessential voice of reason in Harry Potter; like the benefit of the doubt and fierce steadfastness in James’ response to Doug in the movie, The Town, when Doug tells him he needs his help and he can’t ask any questions about the shenanigans they’re about to get into; James takes a moment to think and replies, “Whose car are we gonna take?” – I’m not proclaiming mischief here but you catch my drift! :) It’s the vivid imagination of author Randall Robinson’s Makeda, whose eponymous main character was born blind but has always dreamed in color.
My best friends see me and meet me in the depths of life because they’re also committed to seeing and meeting themselves. We’re a hilarious, imperfect, authentic, and loving bunch!
What’s your current soundtrack?
Listening to jazz during the week has been SUSTAINING me! Jazz is depth and complexity - I can give all of my emotions to it, from the classics of Coltrane to Ethiopian Jazz to Bossa Nova. Sundays, my favorite day of the week, have always been about Reggae; Roots, Rock, Reggae to be specific. It’s what my Dad played on weekend mornings growing up in Jamaica when I was a little girl. There are many artists I love, but Dennis Brown is heavy in my rotation.
Photo by Lakeisha Bennett
What does healing after rupture look like/sound like/feel like to you?
For me, it feels like giving the benefit of the doubt in all directions. My posture feels softer and open. It feels like accountability, radical honesty, and commitment to relationship. It feels like engaging in discomfort, because it is uncomfortable most of the time.
It sounds like a thoughtful silence or a reflective pause.
It looks like showing up in messiness and uncertainty.
After rupture, the conditions in which the rupture happened often need to shift. While facilitating a recent RRC partnership with a small arts-based nonprofit organization, we learned that their organization’s rupture was connected to salient parts of people’s identity, as rupture often is, which usually activates our default responses for self-preservation. That cycle can prevent listening and learning, so we worked to honor these folks, ensuring they felt heard and seen while designing spaces that supported reflection and growth toward shared values.
As facilitators, we slowed the pace to help people locate themselves in the process, sometimes that location is one of privilege and power which can be difficult to accept. Other times that location is one of being marginalized. We compassionately invited leaders, with thoughtful capacity and skill building, into a real reckoning with whose voice is usually centered and whose is typically left out. We offered space to hold challenging questions, like “Can I listen deeply, beyond the need to respond or defend?” and skills to determine what their default practices are, how these practices show up without even trying or thinking, and whether these practices are in alignment with their values. We created frameworks for them to challenge those defaults and enter conversations with a different pace, posture, and intention. When conditions — external and internal— move toward possibility, then we can start to have deep and honest conversations about rupture and how to move toward healing and repair together.
Writer, thinker, activist, and doula, adrienne maree brown has been a significant influence on Radicle Root Collective. In their book, Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown writes about actively practicing both generosity and vulnerability to make connections with others “clear, open, available, and durable”
Denique, what wisdom would you share with someone who is finding it challenging to practice generosity and vulnerability at the same time?
In our day-to-day lives, practicing generosity and vulnerability can feel diametrically opposed. Sometimes we feel like we can only be generous and vulnerable if we know the other person will meet us halfway with openness, compassion, or whatever we need in that moment to feel seen. Not having that certainty can feel like a real risk.
I have found that a deep reverence for our common humanity supports me in feeling safer and more equipped to do both in relationship. I am because you are, the South African philosophy of Ubuntu, reminds me that I am connected to you, so I try to take the risk.
The wisdom I would share is guided by Ubuntu. I would remind them to trust in the communal nourishment around them, in their own wisdom, and the safety they have created within. I believe that trusting in that intention and enoughness will hold and guide you to see what beauty can emerge.
In 2024, you founded Tend Therapy & Wellness with the mission to offer healing spaces to people of the global majority to reconnect with their true selves. Tell us more about culturally attuned therapy and how we can get connected with Tend’s offerings.
I really want folks of color to feel a sense of home at Tend and I want to support them on their journeys to find “home” within themselves. It’s hard to engage in healing work, it asks you to be courageous, incredibly open, and honest – that’s what I want Tend to represent. For me, providing culturally attuned therapy for people of the global majority means honoring how Black and Brown people move through the world in their unique context. At Tend, our invitation is to show up as you are, and express yourself in whatever way is uniquely you, to create space for healing and true self-discovery. All of you and the most authentic expression of your emotions are welcome. Which never has to be polished or perfect, it doesn’t even have to be English. In whatever ways you need to meet yourself, we want to guide you there.
We also partner with organizations with authentic commitments to deep transformational work to co-create tailored approaches that drive meaningful change, a value we share with RRC, which is why I have always been honored to be part of the RRC family.