Real people. Real stories. Real Angels.
What if your Angels activated you... placed you in exactly the right location, at exactly the right moment, without you knowing why until you were already there?
On the latest episode of Winging It with Wendy, I sit down with my dear friend Stephanie Staples, Canada's newest inductee into the Speaking Hall of Fame, entrepreneur, podcaster, author of When Enlightening Strikes: Creating a Mindset for Uncommon Success, mother, grandmother, and one of the most genuinely alive people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
I will be honest with you. When I first described Stephanie to our audience, I said her Angels must go: oh my goodness, she's awake. And I meant it. She keeps them on their toes, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And they, in turn, keep her in exactly the places she needs to be.
Now, I should tell you, Stephanie was not always a believer. When I gave her a copy of Amy and the Angels, she read it to support me as a friend. That was her honest admission, and I love her for it. But she couldn't put it down. And by the time she finished, something had already found her.
A Sign Before We Even Begin
When readers finish Amy and the Angels, many of them send me a photo of their feather. It happens all over the world, in the most unexpected ways. And Stephanie had been watching for hers the whole way through.
She never got one.
Near the end of the book, she took it down to the ocean. We live very close to the water here in our little hamlet by the sea in Sidney. She sat there and thought: I wonder why I didn't get a feather.
And then she looked down.
There on her shoe, a shoe she had been wearing for years and never once noticed, was a name printed right on the sole.
George.
Now, those of you who have read Amy and the Angels will know that George is the name of Tilly's sidekick. One of the Angels in the story. Stephanie took a photo and sent it to me immediately. She said: I got my message from my Angels.
I want you to know that I was moved to my core by that. Because it wasn't a feather. It was something so specific to her, so quietly placed, that it could only have been meant for her to find. That's how they work. They know you. They know exactly what will make you stop and say: okay. I see you.
And if you need any more evidence that something is going on in this little studio of mine: I walked in one morning not long ago and there, sitting on the floor, was a dime. Out of nowhere. Right there in the middle of the room.
Look at you, I said.
They're everywhere, you guys. They are everywhere.
The Angel on the Beach
Now. Get comfortable. Pour yourself something warm. Because this first story from Stephanie is one I have not been able to stop thinking about since the moment she first told it to me.
It starts with a promise.
Stephanie's mom, at ninety years old, received a manila envelope in the mail. Inside was a four-page, typewritten love letter from a man she had known since she was four years old. A long-distance reconnection. A whole love story in itself. He was from California, and Stephanie's dying promise to her mother was that when COVID was over, she would go and meet him.
The first job she booked after COVID was in California. She had never spoken there before in her career. She took that as something right there.
She arrived a day early. She went for a walk along a quiet stretch of beach.
There was a man there. Stephanie says hello to everyone, it's just who she is. So she said hello.
He asked her a question she had never been asked before in her life: What's your mission here?
She told him she actually did have a mission. She was there to meet a man who had loved her mother since he was four years old. She told him a little of the story.
And then she asked: What's your mission?
He said: Do you really want to know?
She said yes.
He said: I'm here to end my life.
Everything changed in that moment.
Stephanie had never been in a situation like this before. She is a motivational speaker, not a crisis counsellor. But she didn't run and she didn't panic. She simply said: I'm just here for a walk. Would you like to come along and we could chat?
He asked if she had a phone. He said he would come, as long as she didn't call anyone. And then (and I find this so tender) he gave her his name and told her to look him up on LinkedIn, so she wouldn't be afraid to walk with a stranger. He was thinking of her safety. In the middle of his own worst moment, he was thinking of her safety.
She looked him up. He was a prominent, award-winning medical specialist with every kind of accolade imaginable. Everything on the outside said: this man has it all.
They walked and they talked for a long time.
He was drawn to the story of her mother and the love letter. Stephanie didn't fully understand why at the time, she wanted to hear about him. But the story of a love that had waited decades, that had found its way back through a single envelope at ninety years old... she thinks now that it gave him something he needed desperately in that moment.
Hope.
At some point he said: I'm okay. I'm not going to do anything. Thank you.
They hugged. They parted.
And Stephanie went through the rest of that trip carrying the weight of it, hoping she had said the right things, wondering if she had done enough, seeing him everywhere she went. She posted something vague on Facebook, not even knowing why. A colleague she barely knew, a trauma worker, reached out and offered to talk her through it.
Another Angel, arriving exactly when she was needed.
A friend of Stephanie's found the man through the information she had shared. He called Stephanie out of the blue one day. He was doing well. He had changed jobs. He had reached out to someone from his past, a childhood sweetheart, in fact, which is perhaps why the story of Stephanie's mother and her long-distance love had landed so deeply with him.
He wanted Stephanie to meet her.
A few months later, he called again. He asked where she would be in November.
He said: We're getting married. We want you to come.
From I'm here to end my life to finding his childhood sweetheart to a wedding invitation for the woman who walked with him on a beach in California.
Stephanie showed us the bombonietta from their wedding on screen, a small favour with the couple's names and their date on it. She held it carefully, and her whole face changed telling that part of the story.
I believe she was placed on that beach. I believe her Angels got her to California early for a reason. I believe the story she was carrying, the story of a love that found its way back at ninety, was exactly the story that man needed to hear in that exact moment.
That's how our Angels work through us. Not always in the ways we expect. But always with a precision that takes your breath away when you look back at it.
The Story of Reciprocity
Stephanie had one more story to share. And I want to name it, because I think naming things helps us hold them.
This one is about reciprocity.
Years ago, when Stephanie was working as a community health nurse, she had an elderly client, a vibrant, warm man in his eighties with a lot of life still ahead of him. One day he said something to her that surprised him as much as it surprised her: I have lots of life to live and love to give. I just need someone to share it with. He looked at her, baffled at himself, and said he had no idea why he had just told her that. He had never told anyone.
Stephanie felt something. A name came into her mind immediately, along with all the reasons these two people would be perfect for each other.
She called the woman. Suggested a blind date. Got a hard no. Kept gently at it. Three weeks later, the woman called back: I'll go. But only if you come with me.
So off the three of them went.
And then Stephanie told him how she knew this woman.
She had been Stephanie's home nursing client as well, a retired teacher from Winnipeg, Manitoba. When Stephanie mentioned she was from Windsor Park, the woman said she had taught at the school there. She said her last name was Gregoire.
And Stephanie started to cry.
Mrs. Gregoire had been her Grade 1 teacher. Her favourite teacher. The teacher who had made a shy, quiet, scared little girl feel completely and unconditionally loved. Stephanie doesn't remember the lessons or the bulletin boards. She remembers the feeling. And forty years later, the moment she heard that name, the feeling came right back.
Six weeks of silence after that blind date. Then a phone call: About that man... he is the most wonderful man. A year later, a wedding. Small, just family. And Stephanie.
She got to be the matchmaker. She got to play Cupid. And she got to tell Mrs. Gregoire, face to face, exactly what she had meant to that little girl in Grade 1.
But the story doesn't end there.
Stephanie moved away. They lost touch. Then one day her phone rang, caller ID said Gregoire. She answered.
It was Mrs. Gregoire's son, calling to say his mother had passed.
A little while after that, a lumpy package arrived. A letter from Mrs. Gregoire's granddaughter, who had been going through her belongings from forty years of teaching. She said the only personal item they found from her entire career was a card.
A handmade card.
From Stephanie.
Mrs. Gregoire had kept it for forty years. Through every classroom, every move, every change. That card was what she had saved.
I cried when Stephanie told me this. It takes a lot to make me cry. But this got me.
You do good. You give love. And it comes back. Not always in the way you expect, not always in the timing you want, not always in the form you imagined. But it comes back. Somehow, somewhere, in a lumpy package at exactly the right moment.
Your Turn
I genuinely believe that sometimes our Angels don't just walk beside us. Sometimes they work through us. They place us on a beach in California at exactly the right time. They nudge us to call someone, to introduce two people, to knock on a door we had no logical reason to knock on. They make sure we have the capacity to be present for someone who needs us, which, by the way, is one of the best reasons I know to take good care of yourself. You cannot show up fully for someone else when you are running on empty.
When you feel that nudge to connect two people, listen to it. When you feel pulled toward a stranger, stay a little longer. When someone tells you something they have never told anyone else... that might be your moment.
You might be exactly the Angel someone else needs today.
Stephanie's books, podcast, and website are linked below. I cannot recommend her enough. And if her stories stirred something in you, please share this episode. It might do for someone else exactly what a walk on a beach did for a stranger in California.
And if you have an Angel story of your own, I want to hear it. No story is too small. No coincidence is too ordinary. Send it to me.
Because we might not be winging it alone.
Connect with Stephanie Staples: stephaniestaples.ca | Books | Podcast | Instagram | LinkedIn
Have a story to share? Send it here.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.
Follow Wendy S. Burton on Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn.
