Curiosity is the practice of exploring what is happening within us and around us. Instead of controlling outcomes, we wonder together. Curiosity shares power; inviting risk, imperfection, and discovery as part of mutual growth.

Curiosity is not interrogation, surveillance, or a demand that another person explain themselves. It does not require neutrality in the face of harm. Relational curiosity turns in several directions: toward the other person, our own responses, the relationship between us, and the cultural conditions shaping what is happening

Curiosity has not always appeared as a headline term in Relational-Cultural Theory. More often, it has been connective tissue: a quality that helps people remain open to mutuality and loosen certainty, allowing the possibility of creating something new together.

In 1999, Judith V. Jordan named "enjoying relational curiosity" as one of six elements of relational competence in Toward Competence and Connection. She placed it alongside movement toward mutuality and mutual empathy, anticipatory empathy, openness to being influenced, vulnerability as a place of potential growth, and the creation of connection rather than power-over. In this framing, curiosity is relational rather than part of an individual's quest for knowledge.

Stephen J. Bergman and Janet L. Surrey connected relational curiosity to power: whose experience receives attention, and who is expected to do the asking, shapes possibility in relationship

As RCT continued to develop, Jordan returned to curiosity as part of how change happens. In Relational-Cultural Therapy she offered a mantra for uncertainty in clinical work: "listening with engaged curiosity rather than reaching for certainty." Curiosity becomes a practice of staying responsive when mastery and control are not available.

Maureen Walker's work on Disruptive Empathy makes the cultural and ethical dimensions of curiosity more visible. In her book, When Getting Along is Not Enough, She describes meeting encounters shaped by racialized power, with a tell-me-more stance and asks us to meet multiple truths with thoughtful vulnerability, cultural humility, and active curiosity. This is not curiosity as polite interest. It is a willingness to loosen our grip on being right, on  our certainty It asks us to notice the stories we carry about self and other, and remain accountable (and curious!) to what the encounter reveals.

Through BCC's relational work, community conversations, and summits, curiosity has proven to be essential enough to name directly. The term may be familiar, but its relational meaning is demanding: curiosity asks us to share power, risk imperfection, and discover together. The BCC definition gathers these longstanding RCT threads into a practice for therapy, community, and everyday relationship.