In this episode of Angels and Awakening, Colleen shares how angels helped her uncover a life-changing family truth. After decades of feeling disconnected from her roots, divine signs—repeating numbers, the name “Otto,” and a miraculous roadside discovery—led her to a medium who revealed messages from her late grandfather. Discover how ancestral love and angelic guidance healed old wounds, redefined her identity, and brought profound clarity. Host Julie Jancius also delivers a special angelic message for Colleen and invites YOU to deepen your spiritual gifts through her Angel Reiki School and membership community. Ready to transform your life with angelic wisdom? Subscribe now and visit theangelmedium.com to begin your journey!

00:00 Introduction & Podcast Advertisements
01:35 Welcome to Angels and Awakening Podcast
02:07 Colleen’s Family Background and Disconnection
04:00 Life-Changing Call About Her Father’s Death
06:19 Angel Numbers and the Name “Otto”
10:19 Divine Sign at “Otto Smith” Mechanic Shop
10:52 Medium Session Confirming Grandfather’s Message
12:25 Embracing the Smith Family Identity
14:18 Healing Through Ancestral Connection
16:15 Julie’s Angelic Message for Colleen
17:00 Closing Remarks and Call for Stories
17:49 Final Ad for Angel Reiki School
19:24 Outro and Encouragement to Listeners

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Day 31 of 31 Miracles: Your soul is already perfect, just as it is. Today, your Spirit Team invites you to see yourself through the eyes of the divine—whole, complete, and worthy of love. Release the need to strive for perfection and embrace the beauty of who you are in this moment. You are a unique expression of divine love, and the world is better because you’re in it.

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Julie: Hello, beautiful souls. I’m thrilled you’re here to connect with the divine guidance of your angels. Imagine feeling the gentle, loving whispers of your angels guiding you every step of your life. If you’re ready to experience that profound connection, book a personal reading@theangelmedium.com. By clicking the readings tab for those eager to work daily with their angels.

[00:00:27] Join my membership. Every month we explore [00:00:30] a new facet of angel communication through live weekly meetings on Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PM central time. This isn’t just about learning, it’s experiencing healing and coming home to know your soul’s truest path. And if you’re ready to develop your spiritual gifts to the max, join my Angel Reiki school.

[00:00:51] You can go through the school in two ways, whether you choose our enlightening online eight week school starting on the first of each month, [00:01:00] or join our immersive in-person school in Oakbrook, Illinois from April 11th through the 13th, 2025. You’ll gain the skills to become an angel Messenger yourself.

[00:01:13] My school gives you the skills of mediumship, energy healing, and angel messages all at once. You can use these skills to start your own spiritual business or to grow your current career. Step into a life filled with angelic energy transformation [00:01:30] and unstoppable abundance. Sign up today@theangelmedium.com.

[00:01:35] Or check the show notes to book a call with me to chat about which program would be best for you. Your journey with the Angels begins now. Let’s see what messages they have for you in today’s show. Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to the Angels and Awakening podcast. Today we have on my friend Colleen.

[00:01:55] She is here today from Minneapolis, and she has some amazing angel [00:02:00] stories to share. Colleen, welcome to the show. Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Yay. Me too. Me too.

[00:02:07] Colleen: So I can’t wait to hear your first story. Wonderful. Well, I’m happy to tell ’cause it’s one of the, the my favorite thing that’s happened to me in years.

[00:02:17] Um, I’ll give you a little bit of background that will help the context for the story. So the background on me is that I didn’t know my grandfather or anybody on my dad’s side of the family [00:02:30] growing up. I grew up with my mom and my older sister who has a different dad. And my parents divorced when I was three and I just.

[00:02:37] Barely saw my dad after that and never saw his side of the family. I didn’t really know a whole lot about them or anything. I just knew that he had a daughter from a marriage prior to me. And then I found out, um, later that he had a son about 12 years after me. But I didn’t know either of them and I couldn’t really connect with my dad ’cause he wasn’t connected with them.

[00:02:59] I didn’t [00:03:00] know much more about that. And I knew a tiny bit about my dad’s side of the family. And the story was that he was born. To a man named Otto Smith and his mother and Otto died when he was only 36 and my dad was three. And um, his mother, and now this was in the thirties, so his mother got married quickly after, switched the last name of my dad and uncle and said, we’re at Welch’s now.

[00:03:29] That’s [00:03:30] our life. And so. The Welch name kind of just traveled down in history and, um, I didn’t really know much about the family aside from that. And everybody in my, you know, family went by Welch and that was my name till I got married. The other part of the background is growing up with my mom and my sister.

[00:03:49] It was not easy. It was, it was rough. There was some, there’s lots of neglect and some mental health issues and. I really just [00:04:00] did not feel like I was part of this family. I remember even as a little kid, I would ask, are you sure I’m not adopted? Because in my little kid brain, that would make sense why I felt like I was like not in the right family, and I just remember that the two of them, I mean all the way through adulthood, they would just kind of look at me with this sense of what I interpreted as the amusement and maybe a little judgment.

[00:04:24] So. That was just kind of home life. And even as an adult, it didn’t, [00:04:30] I just, it just didn’t feel right. And the other thing that never felt right was my last name. It was like, it’s just a name and it’s no big deal. But I hated it. I hated the way it sounded. It felt like wearing somebody else’s sweater that was too small, and I just never liked it.

[00:04:48] Whatever reason, it just didn’t feel like me. So flash forward to the year 2000. I get a phone call from a man who claimed to be a private detective, and he said. Your father asked [00:05:00] me to contact all of his children and let them know he’s dying. And um, it turned out it was his cousin, but that’s really not beside the point.

[00:05:07] I just think it’s funny. Um, so it was at my dad’s funeral that year where I met my sister, my older sister, and my younger brother for the first time. And the entire, um, everybody that was still remaining on my dad’s side of the family for I, for the first time it was. It was life changing. It was affirming.

[00:05:28] It was powerful. It was [00:05:30] so full of love. And right then and there, my older sister and my younger brother, my dad’s three kids said. We will never let anything separate us again. And we have worked since then, 25 years to foster and invest in these relationships. And we are, we are so close and we just love each other so much.

[00:05:53] Over the last 20 plus years, we’ve gone to each other’s weddings. We’ve had, we’ve had holidays together, [00:06:00] we’ve traveled together, we’ve just, we’re siblings, we are family, and we just. Love it. So that’s the background that sort of matters. So right about the beginning of 2023, I started getting what I would call nudges from spirit.

[00:06:19] I was like, I don’t know what this is. And it really started a me just almost like a light going on. Me seeing angel numbers everywhere. Everywhere, multiple times a [00:06:30] day, every day. And I would write ’em all down and look ’em up and it was just. I was just like, okay, so Spirit wants to get my attention. You’ve got it.

[00:06:38] What are you trying to tell me? Then those angel numbers started. Becoming 0 2, 2 0. When you see it on a digital clock, it has the zero in front and in my brain, I immediately read that as oh two, two oh, which reminded me of OTTO. And I was like, oh, interesting. My dad’s father was named Otto Smith.

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[00:07:38] This course is designed to help you understand what type of healer you might become and how you could use your gifts to make this world a better place. Then in April, we’re diving into a new membership topic called Be Your Own Angel Messenger. I’ll be teaching you how to receive angel messages for [00:08:00] yourself on demand anytime, anywhere, so you can navigate your life with a clear divine roadmap always at hand.

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[00:09:08] Sign up today@theangelmedium.com and for more details, check the show notes to book a call with me, Julie, to talk about how this program can unleash your hidden gifts and transform your path into one of soulful abundance.

[00:09:26] Colleen: Then I started hearing the name Otto everywhere. [00:09:30] Like I, you just, I would hear it on the radio, I would hear it on the tv.

[00:09:33] I would hear somebody at work talking about it, and I was just like, and somebody I knew had got a dog and named it Otto. And I just thought, wow, I wonder if these nudges are my grandfather coming through and like many of us do. I immediately said, no, that’s dumb. Of course it isn’t. It was before I started listening to your podcast or I wouldn’t have done such a terrible thing.

[00:09:55] I still would see the signs and nudges, and I [00:10:00] even started seeing a series of hand prints on my mirror in our bedroom. And my husband to this day swears it wasn’t him, and it’s super high up where I can’t even reach. And I was just like, I don’t. That seems connected. So we were on our way that summer to, um, Northern Minnesota for a family fishing trip.

[00:10:19] Tiny, small town, barely any, you know, any buildings or anything. And we come upon this teeny little one building mechanic shop, [00:10:30] and I look at the sign and it says Otto Smith. And I laughed out loud and I was like, okay. I’m not making it up. This seems pretty serious and direct. So as soon as I got home, I made an appointment with a medium and she immediately confirmed, absolutely, this is your grandfather auto coming through.

[00:10:52] And he was doing all of that to get your attention. And so I was just like, okay, and here’s the gift. So what he immediately [00:11:00] said through this medium was that he was so grateful for all the work that I and my siblings had done. To remain together. And what he said was, it’s the people. These people are so the people that are important to me, you’ve done a lot of work around keeping them together.

[00:11:15] And I see that and um, oh boy, I was just like, wow, that’s really cool. He was describing his own grandchildren that he is never met. And um, she also described him, you know, he died 30 years before I was born and she said he [00:11:30] had a big personality. He was super funny and people often didn’t know if he was joking and.

[00:11:36] And also the sentiment of, he really thought he would have more time, which of course he was so young. He died of, I think, stomach cancer. Back then, there wasn’t a whole lot of treatment for that as she was describing him, I just got the most overwhelming feeling that we would have really liked each other and that we were a lot alike.

[00:11:59] And [00:12:00] I just thought, boy, that’s a nice gift. And then it was like another light bulb went on that he came to tell me. You are a Smith. This name you grew up with, it’s not yours. It isn’t your dad’s, so you’re not that person. You’re a Smith, and I’m here to tell you, you’re my granddaughter and this is our DNA, and here’s where you belong.

[00:12:25] And it was like slipping into a warm bath. I was just [00:12:30] like, here is a man who reached through time and space to remind me of who I really am and. That the weird feelings that like wearing, you know, she was on the wrong side of the feet. That’s because that wasn’t my name and that wasn’t my family. Those weren’t my people and that wasn’t my history.

[00:12:50] But that he is, and I have to tell you, Julie, I feel from that day forward, I feel soak grounded and connected to the Smith [00:13:00] side of the family. And I just, I haven’t had that weird feeling since like. Oh, that’s who I am. And so my, my sister has been doing a lot of ancestry searching to try to, you know, round out our family story.

[00:13:15] And everything I learned about the Smiths just feels right. It just feels like me. And I feel like he came, Otto came to me to remind me. [00:13:30] No, no, no. This is who we are. Not just you, but we. And ugh, to have to have him. You know, having my, my dad has also passed and bless his heart, I hold no resentment. He had, there was a lot of context to his story, why he abandoned his children and it’s bless his heart, right?

[00:13:51] I wish him nothing but peace, but for his dad to make all that effort to come to me. After feeling like, you [00:14:00] know, his son didn’t make much effort. It was just so meaningful and I feel like what it gave me was a current and ongoing relationship with my grandfather, even though he was 36 when he passed, and I’m a few years past 36.

[00:14:18] He still feels like a grandpa to me. And so every time I get a nudge or I see, oh, if I see zero two, two zero on my phone, I’ll screenshot it every time and talk to him and [00:14:30] invite him in, and, oh, I just, I, I mean, I just, that’s my story. He brought me so much joy and so much connection, and I just feel like I have this active relationship with my grandpa now.

[00:14:42] Julie: I love that. And can I tell you something too? I did not like the previews for a man named Otto with Tom Hanks. It just didn’t look good. And for some reason my husband and I ended up turning it on and I was like, oh, Blake doesn’t like sad [00:15:00] movies. This isn’t gonna be good. And we watched it and it was just the sweetest Uhhuh.

[00:15:05] Movie in the whole wide world. So I said, spirit, if you want me to talk about that show on the podcast, that movie, bring it through in some way. Well, here it is.

[00:15:17] Colleen: Wow. Yeah. And what’s funny is I read that book, but the original title was a man called UVA because it was written in Swedish, I think. And similarly, I loved [00:15:30] the book so much, and when the movie came out, I thought.

[00:15:32] No way. They’re not gonna do it justice. It’s better. Wow. It’s so good. And also, I think this might have been around the same time as all of this going on for me and yeah. It’s just, it’s just such a beautiful book. I mean movie. And I think that I would love my grandpa Otto to tell you Yes. Talk about it.

[00:15:51] Julie: I know.

[00:15:52] And um, I feel like the energy in that movie is all just breaking down walls and breaking down [00:16:00] barriers and finding your place again within this world, which is just the story that you just. Told, so, oh, I’m so grateful that you came on, Colleen. And I have to tell you, you have a very large angel team with you.

[00:16:15] Oh. And they said that sometimes you get in your own way where you think that like, what could I do? Like what good could I do? Or you kind of minimize your own worth. Or [00:16:30] the way in which that you help and you serve others, and your angels say, please tell you that you have so much to do in this world.

[00:16:38] You’ve done so much already. They’re so proud of you. But not to minimize your worth and not to minimize your potential in this next chapter of life, because there’s just so much good coming your way. And they said, just follow your heart, follow your joy, and you can’t go wrong.

[00:16:58] Colleen: Oh, thank you. [00:17:00] Thank you for telling me that.

[00:17:01] Julie: Of course, of course. Thank you, Colleen, so much for being on the show. And to everybody listening, if you have an angel story that you wanna share, we would love, love, love to have you on the show. Go over to the THE angel medium.com, go to the contact me page of the website, submit your angel story over there, and we would just love, love, love to have you on the show.

[00:17:25] Thank you, Colleen. Thank you, Julie. Oh, you too. Have a [00:17:30] beautiful blessed day friend. Thank you. You too. You too. Bye bye. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you’re feeling a renewed sense of clarity and a deep connection to the angelic guidance that surrounds you right here, right now. If you need help hearing and working with your angels.

[00:17:49] Join me in the membership for an experience unlike any other. If you’re seeking personal insights, book a reading with me. Each reading brings you the loving, positive [00:18:00] messages. Your angels and loved ones in heaven need you to hear right now. And if you’re ready to unleash your hidden gifts and transform your path into one of soulful abundance, develop all your spiritual gifts to the max and my angel Reiki school.

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[00:19:24] For more details, please visit the angel medium.com and go to the [00:19:30] Angel Reiki school tab. I’m Julie and I can’t wait to guide you on this remarkable journey. Until next time, keep radiating your unique, beautiful energy into this world and listening to your angels. I love you friends.