Today I am grateful to speak with Christina Weber about all the work she is doing to create something that hasn’t previously existed in the world. Christina has taken her personal journey to find love and uses it to help the world through her dating platform which aims to help us find love through a more conscious dating process.
In this episode, Christina explains how her programs are offering something new and she encourages each of us to study love and to ask ourselves who our relationship role models are. We also talk about the best dating apps and whether we should date within the confines of ‘our type’.
Listen in to learn how to bring depth, truth, and authenticity to your search for love.
You can Subscribe and Listen to the Podcast on Apple Podcasts. And be sure to leave us a Rating and Review!
Show Notes:
- How Christina’s dating journey led her to start WeDeepen
- Addressing the craving for relationship education
- Should you date ‘your type’
- Choosing the right dating app
- Christina’s favorite dating apps
- What does tantra speed dating look like
- How is WeDeepen different
- Creating a network of conscious daters
- What is Feminine Weapon
Important Links:
- Get a copy of Deeper Dating® by Ken Page
- Join the Coaching and Mentorship Intensive with Ken Page
- Connect with us on Instagram
- Connect with Christina Weber:
WeDeepen | Facebook | Instagram | WeDeepen Podcast: Deepen with Christina
Ken Page:
There’s a growing pool of amazing resources available for people who want to meet other single people in conscious, connected, respectful ways. Today, we’re going to speak with Christina Weber, the CEO of WeDeepen, which is an amazing network of these kinds of events to learn what’s out there and what’s possible. So stay tuned to this episode of the Deeper Dating® Podcast.
Ken Page:
Hello, everybody. And welcome to the Deeper Dating® Podcast. I’m Ken Page, the author of the bestselling book, Deeper Dating®, the host of this podcast, and the creator of the Deeper Dating® Intensive. And today I’ll be speaking with Christina Weber, the founder of WeDeepen and the visionary entrepreneur in the arena of bringing consciousness to the ways we meet.
In this episode and every episode, my commitment is to bring you the greatest tools and insights that I know to help you find healthy love and keep it flourishing and heal your life in the process because the skills of dating are nothing more than the skills of intimacy. And if you like what you’re learning here, I would love it if you could subscribe and leave me a review on iTunes or Spotify or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. So thank you so much for that. And let’s jump in and let me tell you about Christina Weber.
Ken Page:
So Christina is a visionary entrepreneur. She’s a pioneer, who’s creating an industry-shifting network of conscious ways for people to meet and connect. She’s also a certified professional relationship coach, a private matchmaker, and the host of Deepen with Christina podcast on Spotify and Apple. She’s the founder and the CEO of WeDeepen, wedeepen.com, a curated network of best-in-class social and transformational experiences to help people improve their relational lives and inspire meaningful human connection.
Ken Page:
Christina also advocates for every child to receive love and attention, a catalyst for WeDeepen raising over $74,000 for orphans and foster children to receive art and healing programs through the Annual Feminine Weapon Day Fundraiser on January 30th, which is an amazing event. And from 2014 to 2016, she ran the curated dating experience Underground Unattached in New York and LA attended by thousands of people seeking love.
She’s the co-creator of RelateFest and works closely with Tantra Speed Date, HumHum Conscious Dating Salon, Deeper Dating®, and The Great Love Debate. Fun fact, on August of 2021, she was featured on the reality TV show Ex-Rated with Andy Cohen and three of her ex-boyfriends. So let’s jump right in.
People like to be guided, and guided into connection. @christinaweber Click To Tweet
Ken Page:
Christina, I am so excited. So happy to have you here on the podcast. I think that the information that you have and the new understandings that you have about bringing depth and truth and authenticity to the search for love and to this entire industry are things that my audience and so many people in this world are just dying to hear.
So I would just love to start out by having you share anything you want about your vision of this space of bringing depth and authenticity to people’s search for love. Anything you want to share about what brought you here?
Christina Weber:
What brought me to what I consider the human connection industry? Well, truth be told it was out of my own desires for a healthy, meaningful, loving relationship to create family. I was living in New York City. This is about a decade ago and a typical ambitious New York City woman, I was really focused on my career.
And there was a period of time where I had produced three concerts and a crowdfunding campaign in eight-month period of time. And at the end of that stretch, my mother asked me if I was dating anybody. And I looked at her with this blank stare like, dating anybody, did you not see what I just did? Where do you think this man is hiding? And I realized within that question that we have to inject energy in our desires. And I was showing up nowhere in the universe to say I was open, willing, interested in a relationship.
Addressing the craving for relationship education: People like to be guided, and guided into connection.
Christina Weber:
And I thought, okay, okay, God, I’m in, I’m in, show me. And at the time, this is now the summer of 2014 and Tinder was the new hot thing. I had never done any online dating. I was sort of anti-online dating, but now I had friends who I highly respected, who were beautiful and they were swiping on this dating app. And I thought, okay, I’ll give it a shot.
And I did it for three weeks. And during that three weeks, I found it to be labor intensive and time-consuming. I thought there’s got to be a better way. Can we just get everyone into a room? So I did. I consulted with a social psychologist, Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh, who’s a colleague of Esther Perel’s, and we developed a series of activities designed to foster connection and accelerate closeness.
Christina Weber:
So from 2014 to 2016, I ran what was called Underground Unattached with also a colleague, Shaun Derik. And we would bring, this was mainly our first market was the heterosexual straight market. And we would bring 20 men, 20 women together, and we would facilitate these activities.
And that’s how my journey began into this space. And that’s where I began to learn like, oh, wow. Just getting into the room isn’t going to solve all the problems. I had thought at the time that we would all just go and live happily ever after. And that’s when I realized, oh, wow, there’s more to this.
Ken Page:
That’s so interesting because that’s such a parallel journey to what I was doing, creating these Deeper Dating® events for gay men in New York City. And I just want to acknowledge the point you’re making about the importance of saying, I really mean this. I really mean this, the power of saying, “I’m not screwing around.” This really matters to me. Tell us more about how this journey evolved to WeDeepen and what you’re doing now.
Christina Weber:
Yeah. So two years I ran that program and probably about a year in, I started to just, over the time I was learning so much. Underground Unattached, in order to join for the experience, people would complete a survey. It was five questions about themselves, five questions about their desired partner. I would read everyone’s survey response, and then I would do a one-on-one phone conversation with them. And if it seemed like a fit, I would give them a password for them to use, to register for the experience.
Those calls, I had planned to be eight minutes, five minutes to screen them, vet them. And I was on the phone with some of them for like 45 minutes, an hour. And at the time I was 33, my career had been in business development, marketing, sales. And now I was having these conversations around this super sensitive, tender topic while I was also navigating my own personal relationships as well.
Christina Weber:
And so I start to see this anxiety and pressure and expectations, and I would hear all these stories of heartbreak. And then, thank goodness around that time, TED Talks became really popular and we saw the rise, or I noticed the rise of thought leaders in this space.
I started Googling, trying to find anything that could help me and help them and discovering Esther Perel, Brené Brown, Gay and Katie Hendricks, Dr. John Gray, Helen Fisher, Alison Armstrong, and just studying all their work to figure out how can I better support me and better support them.
And two years into it, I realized, well, first off, the financial model just wasn’t working. I mean, each month I was pretty much on a hamster rail. I’d do one experience, it would be complete. The next person would be like, okay, I want to sign up for the next one. And they would sign up. And then all of a sudden I was now obligated to find 39 other people to join this one other person, because I had committed to the experience being 20 men and 20 women.
Addressing the craving for relationship education:
Christina Weber:
Over that period of time, I learned, well, bonds build best over time and I needed the people to see each other again and again, and again, not just at a one-off experience. Also, I saw that there was a craving for relationship education, me as well. I was so inclined, where do I go to learn the skills?
And at the time I was going to Google like, what should I text him back? I was trying to find the information that I was so needing. So relationship education. And then I realized that as my learning deepened, that we also need spaces for people to be in states of play and joy and fun, because when you’re feeling that ecstatic bliss, the radiance of dancing or doing improv or being silly, you’re more inclined to open up and attract your partner.
Ken Page:
Absolutely.
Christina Weber:
And relationship education too, I also saw… Because I’m a personal development junkie to some extent, so I would attend these programs like MITT, Landmark, Tony Robbins. And I would also see these spaces as they were; breeding grounds for relationships.
However, a lot of these couples would get together and then six months, eight months later, they would fall apart because there was no container to continue to hold them. So having all of that information, I entered a startup accelerator program in the fall of 2017.
Ken Page:
Christina, if I could just interrupt for a moment because I’m kind of exploding from all the things you said. That was so exciting and on target.
Christina Weber:
Totally.
Ken Page:
If I could just point out a few of them that I thought were so rich. I guess one thing I want to say is that you used your personal journey to help the world and that’s awesome. Awesome. Awesome. You turned it into your mission and a mission for the world and a business. I adore that.
The other piece is like how intensive, how labor intensive it was, how much care and love and attention needs to go into this and how little does really. And then the other piece is how things like Tinder and all these other platforms that then try to add a little bit of depth. You cannot graft authenticity onto a model that’s not based on authenticity. And what you’re describing is this passion for models that are based on authenticity.
Ken Page:
And then the other thing that you said that I adored and I think is huge and important and research-based is, if we choose based on our immediate scratch the itch type, it’s probably actually, and the research backs this up, not going to be the best match. Because over time, when you get to know someone and you see their smile, you see their warmth and you’re not just attracted to your archetypal scratch the itch type, but you start to see the humanity, a whole other circuitry of connection can open up.
Choosing the right dating app: Bonds build best over time.
And so what you’re saying about, we need more time, it’s not going to be one minute of looking at that picture. It’s not even going to be one event. When you keep connecting with people, something opens up, something happens. I just feel like that’s wisdom that this industry does not know and does not live. So, super exciting to me.
Christina Weber:
Yeah. Part of the reason why I believe that I stayed in this space, because I didn’t expect to be in, now I label it as the human connection industry, but in the beginning it was the dating industry or the matchmaking industry that I was circulating around.
And to be honest, Ken, I was so turned off of having these conversations at times with matchmakers and their strategies for like, you send them this person at first to warn them up, and then the second person is the one that you send them that’s really good. There were just all these just strategies and superficiality that were to gamify the process. And at the same time, I don’t… I’m on a dating app right now in the moment. And I’m enjoying it.
Ken Page:
Three cheers. Three cheers. Yes.
Choosing the right dating app:
Christina Weber:
And I’m enjoying my time there. However, it took a while to get to a place where I felt confident and secure in myself and also on the right dating app for me as well, because there are over 8,000 dating apps and websites.
Ken Page:
I absolutely believe that. And it turns out that with these billions and billions of matches that happen, like billions and billions and billions every year, there are more single people now than at the advent of online dating.
Who are your relationship role models? @christinaweber Click To Tweet
Christina Weber:
Yeah. Yet people are craving… What I’ll say is sort of what I look at as, not to jump tracks a little bit now where my quote, unquote business is with WeDeepen, it’s a curation of mainly in-person experiences that help people to have healthy, meaningful, loving relationships. And I sort of look at some of those programs as similar to how you go to a yoga class and your teacher tells you to do a downward dog.
At home, I could sit here and I could roll out my yoga mat and I could just do my downward dogs on my yoga mat at home. I know how to do the yoga moves. However, people like to be guided and guided into connection. And when you are in practice of that, and as we’ve just come out of COVID, and they’re not necessarily teaching these skills in our educational curriculums.
So yeah, that skillset to just smile at somebody in the grocery store and say hi to them in your everyday existence, instead we’re going to the dating apps form and we’re losing… A lot of people are just out of practice.
Study love: Who are your relationship role models?
Ken Page:
Very much so. Yeah, totally. It’s brave to do that. That’s a bravery muscle that really needs to be cultivated. It’s bravery. It’s generosity. Yeah, all of that is so true. We kind of hide behind the apps and all of that. So WeDeepen is an environment with all of these different options available for people. Is that right?
Christina Weber:
Yeah. So in that accelerator program in 2017, our teacher had us sit within the problem. And when I sat within the problem, it was okay. Most people didn’t grow up observing healthy relationships. There’s a lack of relationship role models. And the topic of relationships, I mean, pretty much even sex nowadays. Conflict resolution, communication, how to find and start a relationship, it’s all neglected in our educational curriculum.
So as I said, we needed this curation of experiences that help them meet all of these needs. Essentially I thought the initial idea was like, well, what if we built class pass? If you’re familiar with ClassPass, the company in 2013 that saw the rise of studio fitness and they then took all the studio, your bar class, your yoga class, your cycling class and they wrapped one membership around it.
And I said, huh, well, what if we do that for all of these experiences? And we provide access to them and wrap a membership around it and have one central location for people to discover all these experiences.
Study love:
Ken Page:
What I hear from my audience so, so, so often is just the hunger for “what are the places people can meet in a more conscious, kind, safe way?” Which is why I created deeperdating.com®, which I’ll talk about a little bit later. But our paths are so similar, but you are this like maven. You are this networker. You know more about what’s out there for people who are hungry for that than probably almost anybody. So I would just love to have my audience hear from you anything you want to say for all these people that are hungry for something like this.
Christina Weber:
Oh, well, first thing I’ll say, it’s available. That’s one thing to know and it’s available outside of your door. And more experiences are being cultivated and coming soon. If you’re in a market, maybe not in one of the bigger cities, to know that there are retreats and festivals that you can travel to. And also, these types of experiences are spreading and they’re spreading fast. I can share a couple of them. A few of my favorites.
Ken Page:
I’d love that.
Christina Weber:
So first I’ll say is, Ken, for you and I, I mean, and how to speak about them even spreading rapidly is just the opportunity that the two of us will get in mid-September to facilitate a singles event, which is interesting. Dave Asprey, who is the self-proclaimed Father of Biohacking is hosting his 8th Annual Biohacking Conference in Beverly Hills.
Ken Page:
Which is this huge event, this huge important event. Yes, it’s a real happening.
Christina Weber:
2000 people in Beverly Hills. And Dave asked for a singles event. How revolutionary?
Ken Page:
I love that.
Christina Weber:
I think it’s revolutionary to have a singles event at what is, I’ll say a professional conference to some and an interest conference to others. Ken, you and I will be guiding 200 of the health nuts, experts and biohackers who are currently single through a series of activities to connect them. And also you’re going to be giving a talk to inspire them inside of their dating journey, to give some of the rich education. So, that also is a prime example of how these experiences are exploding.
Christina Weber:
One of the first ones that WeDeepen hosted, which was my favorite, we would do an experience called dating and meditating. This was in Venice, California every Tuesday evening. And we would have a group of people come together and we would meditate as a group for 20 minutes. And then we would hash out a dating-related topic.
Another one that we promote is Tantra Speed Date. Tantra Speed Date is produced by the Tantra Institute and it is growing rapidly. We have all the Tantra Speed Dates listed at wedeepen.com and they, very popular in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Miami, Boston, New York City. And now they have expanded to include Toronto, Amsterdam, London, Gainesville, Austin, Texas. Tantra Speed Date is popular and it’s such an interesting one. People always go, “Tantra, isn’t that about slowing down and you’re speeding up?”
Christina Weber:
But no, it’s an experience where they put people into a puja, which is essentially two circles and you are to rotate around the circle and with each person that you interact with, they will do different unique prompts. Sometimes it’s like, actually give the other person a massage if you’re open to touch, to mirror, mirroring each other. And other question-like activities. Some eye gazing as well. There is the magic of human connection.
Jessica Encell Coleman guides an amazing experience. She’s done this at South by Southwest, the Biohacking Conference as well, years before, Burning Man. And she does them about four times a year in the Los Angeles area. And that experience, it’s really, she’s created a series of unique activities to her and she guides people in a way that expands their state of joy.
And Jessica, one thing too, as being a phenomenal facilitator that she had said to me, she said, “People will go to therapy. They can go to therapy to work through a problem, or you can also go somewhere that allows you to expand more deeply into joy.”
Ken Page:
Beautiful. Beautiful. Can you say her name and her program or organization again?
Christina Weber:
Yeah, it’s Jessica Encell Coleman and it’s The Magic of Human Connection.
Ken Page:
And people can find that on WeDeepen. Is that right?
Christina Weber:
Yes. We’ll have all the updates of when The Magic of Human Connection is happening. Another one is RelateFest. I co-produced RelateFest at the top of 2022 in Miami. And it was three days of workshops, Tantra, speakers, interactive experiences that were all relationship focused. It was open to people who are currently single and also couples.
And anybody came, who cares about having healthy, meaningful, loving relationships. We actually had our tagline was for people who were endlessly curious about relationships, and that was in partnership with the Esther Perel discussion group and Leveled Up Love. Another one is Eden World and Eden World is unique because Eden World is a community for committed couples. And they do quarterly online, this is online, an online sanctuary couples weekend.
Ken Page:
How sweet.
Christina Weber:
Yes. It’s like a retreat that you can do from your home with your significant other. While it’s not therapy, it’s therapeutic. And it guides you into date night activities and you get to also commune with other committed couples because-
Ken Page:
Beautiful.
Christina Weber:
I’m sure your work also alludes to this of our relationships need to live inside of a larger social constructs and be supported by community. So to have a community of other people who are committed couples with you and supporting you.
Ken Page:
That sounds wonderful. And just to ask, is it queer inclusive? There are same sex couples and queer couples and all of that in the community?
Christina Weber:
That’s a great question. I’m inclined to say yes. However, I imagine that it’s probably a small percentage at this moment in time, but there’s an openness because I know the people who run it, there’s an openness to yes, come. But what they do have a requirement is, is that the couple has been together for at least nine months to a year.
Ken Page:
Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, I’m happy to speak to them too, and help bring in more queer population into this beautiful work. Yeah.
Christina Weber:
Some others, HumHum Conscious Dating Salon. That one is-
Ken Page:
Tell about that one. Yes.
Christina Weber:
That one is online and offline. It started offline pre-COVID and then they improvised and brought it into a Zoom-like space. There will generally be about 18 to 22 people. They do have them locationally separated. So while it can be online for New York City or for San Francisco, also, if you tend to travel, you’re open to go to those specific locations. And they send attendees into breakout rooms with prompts, question prompts and activity prompts.
Ken Page:
Love that.
Christina Weber:
It’s sort of like an intricate speed dating experience and they really breathe into the… And the Ethos of the whole thing is grounding and pausing. And so they bring a lot of mindfulness activities into HumHum Conscious Dating Salon.
Ken Page:
Love that. And when we slow down like that, when we pause, we notice things about the people around us that we just wouldn’t notice otherwise. So I love that. I mean, these are all just such exciting, wonderful things. And some of them are online. Some of them are in person. It sounds like a bunch are in California, but others are in other states as well. These things all, I mean, it just sounds like a beautiful banquet.
And I imagine that that banquet’s growing because this is what you’re doing is, and if you could speak about this a little bit, you’re kind of creating a network for the world of these kind of conscious events. And I’d love you to speak about that.
Christina Weber:
Yeah, totally. The growing network, yes, it definitely is growing. And before I jump into that, I definitely want to make sure that I share about one other experience, which is Unleash. Unleash began as a four-hour guided dance journey in Los Angeles in 2018. And it has grown to become a three-day sober transformational festival.
Ken Page:
Oh, how I’d love that.
Christina Weber:
Right?
Ken Page:
Oh, I love that.
Christina Weber:
Each time it has a theme. The next one coming up is Lyfe Reinvented. Lyfe Reinvented, it’s in Austin, Texas in September. And they have asked Yarixa who produces this event has asked me to facilitate The Dating Dojo at the festival the week after we do it at the Biohacking Conference. And I also see that as such a sign of the times, this willingness to bring this work.
Even in this moment, I see Esther Perel in the room with us, because I remember her South by Southwest talk in 2018 that she did to entrepreneurs and she said, “Hey, guys. You’re coming here each year and I go to all these conferences and there is the food sector section, there’s innovation and technology, there’s wellness, and you are completely neglecting relationships. So please, entrepreneurs, do something about this.” And I can see how-
Ken Page:
And you listened.
Christina Weber:
Oh my god, I was already listening. I was like, yes, preach, preach. One day, I can’t wait to be in the room with her and get to share with her what has been created.
Christina Weber:
So WeDeepen from a growth perspective and a journey perspective is that we pretty much launched what I consider 2019 and we were building traction in the Los Angeles area as being a solo founder and bootstrapping this for quite some time with this idea and piecing together preexisting technologies to make it work.
Finally, in January of 2020, we had reached $17,000 in revenue, which was meaning investors were interested in us. And we raised around a seed funding, had an office in Beverly Hills that a co-working space cross campus had given to us, a team of eight, and then COVID happens. The bomb went off. I went on unemployment. I retreated to Maryland.
Then became a 40-year-old single woman and we can get… Didn’t touch my dating journey. I’m still on my journey. I will tell you, anybody who’s listening, there are hundreds of amazing, amazing men out there. So that’s not just because Christina is currently single. I’m definitely having relationships and having beautiful experiences.
Christina Weber:
However, yes, I was then catapulted into living at home with my parents in Maryland at the age of 40 and thinking, what am I going do? Like, how? This was not the plan. And only in the past, probably three months, I have rewoven together WeDeepen.
Anybody out there who knows some entrepreneur lingo, we have rebuilt our tech stack and now have online community system that is supporting the people who are getting out and going to these activities in person, which is something that our advisors and investors have asked for in the beginning.
So when you go to wedeepen.com, you can click on the calendar and become a member, and RSVP for experiences. And there will be interest groups that are developed around specific topics that can help you through your journey. Inclusive of men’s work to women’s circles, to information for all types of genders and sexualities, and being able to support you in your relationship journey. There’s a member directory, you can direct message each other. And there’s also features for group chats and whatnot.
Christina Weber:
So that is now the new online WeDeepen system. It’s definitely a prototype. It’s pre beta, but you can get in there early and check it out. And we would love to have you and welcome you with open arms.
And that also just brings me to, because one of the things I’m so grateful because for you, Ken, I view you as an OG in the space. I’m so honored to be co-facilitating The Dating Dojo with you and for you to say yes, and I would love to be supporting Deeper Dating® within this ecosystem. So I’m curious of how is that possible and what’s up with Deeper Dating®?
Ken Page:
Well, I love that you asked, I love everything that you’re saying and I thank you. I mean, you were invited to do this Biohacking Conference and you invited me to join you, which I’m so grateful for. So Deeper Dating® is… So I adopted my baby a long, long time ago, 21 years ago. And I came home with my baby and I thought, how am I going to meet a guy? How am I ever going to meet anybody? And I thought, but it’s not just me. It’s so many people. What would be my dream event?
So I created this event in person for gay men and it had an explosive response. It grew to the lesbian community, the heterosexual community. It was in Oprah, the New York Times, got tons and tons of excited recognition, but it was a lot of work for me. And I was a single dad and I went to writing instead, but always dreamed of creating this online.
Ken Page:
And turns out my husband is this emerging technology expert. And he said, “Honey, we could build this.” And we built it. We built a prototype for it. We’ve got a few thousand people on it. And it’s a rich, wonderful environment with online events for people to meet in a way that brings out the best in them with mutual respect, with inspiration, with connection. And behind it is an entire website where people can create profiles and interact with each other in a whole bunch of different ways and a gorgeous, gorgeous algorithm, which allows us actually to run multiple events around the country all at the same time.
Ken Page:
So it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous piece, but I’ve paused with it because I need to, at this point, build a team and I need to pull back from that work because of personal issues, like family members that really need my support, and my deep need to have a lot of peace, a lot of meditation, and to do the teaching I’m doing. So I’m at a place where I am waiting for a community of super talented people to come to me and say, let’s make this happen.
Ken Page:
So hearing you say this, Christina, is very exciting to me, because it’s kind of what I’ve been waiting for. So we will talk, we will talk. But I just want to acknowledge the pioneeriness of what you’re doing and the work involved in building something that has not really existed in the world.
And just to say that there are hordes of conscious single people aching for something like this. Hordes, like countless, millions of people around the world aching for something like this. So I’m just so excited about what you’re doing. Also, can I ask you to just say something about your beautiful Feminine Weapon Day and what that is?
Christina Weber:
Yes, of course. And thank you so much for asking that question. Well, prior to… When I share that story about Underground Unattached and that it came out of this question that my mother had asked because I had produced three concerts and a crowdfunding campaign in an eight-month period of time, well, those efforts were focused on a woman-centric brand called Feminine Weapon.
And Feminine Weapon, it’s a superhero is what I’ll say. It’s like the characteristics of a human being. It can be any gender. It doesn’t make a difference, but somebody who really resonates with feminine energy and they see that as it’s like your inner goddess, your rockstar, the peak expression of you.
And it built up into, became an organization that essentially now, because I put that aside when I started focusing on the dating space and how it continues to live is January 30th. January 30th is Feminine Weapon Day. And it’s the day that we gather and we battle the ills of the world through love.
Christina Weber:
So beautiful that you asked this question, thank you. January of 2023 will be the 10th Annual Feminine Weapon Day. And we do a concert, human connection activities, an exhibit. Each year has a different theme and 100% of the net proceeds go to support children in underprivileged communities to receive art and healing programs. We’ve worked with the Orphaned Starfish Foundation, ARTEAMOR, and Tiffany Haddish’s She Ready Foundation. And so far we’ve raised over $74,000 combined to bring these activities to the kids.
Ken Page:
So beautiful.
Christina Weber:
And part of the reason why I do it is because there’s 150 million orphans worldwide. There are 80 million children living without a single parent. And everything that I feel like I do a little of the work of injecting deeper consciousness into grownup relating, love relating, intimate relating is because what we’ve learned is that if a child does not experience love at those ripe early stages, how are we actually going to really forward the world? It has to be a yes end to including these children. And we, as the current grownups have to step up. I believe there’s a need to step up and say, we are the parents of the universe.
Ken Page:
I love it. I love it. This is so beautiful and so in line with all that you’re doing. And as an adoptive dad, that touches my heart particularly deeply. So Christina, you are a force of nature. You’re an impresario for a new industry and a renaissance of people being able to connect in a new way. And I’m just so grateful for the work that you do. Do you have any closing thought that you want to share with this community of people who is passionate about growing in their relationship to love?
Christina Weber:
I do, but there’s one question that’s blocking me. Can I ask one question real quick before?
Ken Page:
Sure.
Christina Weber:
So you had mentioned in your story that with Deeper Dating® that you had adopted a child and you were a single father, and then you met your partner and your husband and he developed tech. And what I’ve missed is the skip over of where he came from.
Ken Page:
Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I created Deeper Dating®. I stopped doing the in-person events and I started writing about what I was learning and teaching. And I was single and it was pretty weird being this teacher about dating and not having a partner, but I believed in what I was teaching and what I was learning. And ultimately I met my husband Greg 14 years ago. Actually in a few days, it’s going to be 14 years. And turns out he’s an emerging technology guy and we have a wonderful relationship. We have three kids together.
Ken Page:
And Greg was in the financial services technology world for decades. And his dream has been to become a financial advisor and work with people who have children with disabilities, with the queer population and with seniors. That’s his dream. So, that’s what he’s doing. And I said to him, “Honey, thank you for building this for me, but I know you got to go do your own thing now. You did this for me.”
So he is now doing that kind of work. And we are at this point where Deeper Dating® kind of needs a new world and a new community. Greg is doing the work that he dreams of and I’m supporting him in every way I can. And that’s like the super short version of that. And I love you. And thank you for asking.
Christina Weber:
Thank you. Thank you for sharing. 14 years, congratulations. And three children. It’s so beautiful. You two are definitely role models. You’re the role models that we lacked. And it’s beautiful because that’s actually, when you’re asked that question of last words and that’s one thing that I think is really important to consider, who are your relationship role models? Where do you go to be loved, see love, to learn love, to study love? There’s a beautiful Leo Baskelli, Baskellali?
Ken Page:
Buscaglia, I think. Yeah.
Christina Weber:
Buscaglia. Thank you. Thank you. Buscaglia quote, and I’m not going to share it because I don’t have the exact quote and it’s a little bit long, but the premise of the quote is that he says something. If you want to be a mechanic, you go out and you study cars. If you want to be a chef, you go and you study how to be a cook and all the ingredients and the food. And similar to love, if you want to be in love and have a healthy love, study love.
Christina Weber:
So that’s what I would love to inject and encourage people is to… And if anybody’s listened to the podcast, I’m sure, I imagine that they get this and invite other people in to study love and also invest in this industry. I will say a little bit of the excitement that I can see. A lot of the experiences that I mentioned are all small businesses on their own. When a new industry emerges similar like yoga in the United States in the late ’90s, early 2000s, it was hard for a yoga teacher to maintain financial stability. So just, invest in love, invest in your growth, and have fun.
Ken Page:
Christina, you are amazing. This was just an absolute joy. Now I’m actually going to be on your amazing podcast too. So please tell about all the different ways that people can learn more about your work.
Christina Weber:
Thank you. Yes. I can’t wait to have you on the show. That’s Deepen with Christina. You can find that on Spotify, Apple, wherever you’re listening to this podcast, you can go into the search and put in Deepen with Christina. And go to wedeepen.com, you can see everything there. Click on the calendar, become a member, sign up, create a profile and we can all hang out there.
And come and meet me in person. If you happen to be listening to this before the Biohacking Conference, you can be with both Ken and I in person, and that would be so much fun to meet you. And that’s what I’m most excited about why you can hear us online and be in the digital space. Find a time where you can come out and we can actually be together.
Ken Page:
Sounds wonderful. Christina, you are awesome. You are a joy. You are changing the world and changing the industry. And thank you so much for being with us.
Christina Weber:
Thank you so much, Ken. It’s such an honor to be working with you and collaborating.
Ken Page:
Vice versa. Thank you all. And we look forward to seeing you and connecting on the next episode of the Deeper Dating® Podcast. Bye for now.
Christina Weber:
Bye.
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