BY LYNNE KONSTANTIN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATHLEEN THOMPSON

ody Friedman has a
way with people —
some of them resid-
ing in the spirit world. But her
focus is on helping the living.

Friedman is both a psychic, who
uses her abilities to answer life's ques-
tions and provide guidance, and a
medium, who receives and shares
messages from the deceased to help
those left behind to grieve, heal and
receive comfort in the knowledge that
their loved ones are still with them.
She's also a wife, the mother of a sec-
ond-grader at Hillel Day School of
Metropolitan Detroit and a member
of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield.
And she knows that some people
might find it odd that, in between car-
pool duty and volunteering at the
Karmanos Cancer Institute office in
Southfield, she will pop in at a local
coffee shop to perform a psychic
reading for a client.
That's why it's taken her most
of her 40-something years to come
out of the psychic closet."
"I understand that what I do is
controversial," says the Commerce
Township resident. "I was scared of
the responsibility. And I feared the
powerfulness of a gift that might be
misunderstood by religious people
like my father, Joe Rose."
Growing up in Birmingham,
Friedman (her married name)
was aware she was different. "I

just knew things that other people
didn't know: on the news, business
matters, with friends or people I did-
n't want to be friends with. Even in
school, math was the worst," she
laughs. "I always knew the answers to
math problems, but I could never
show how I came to the conclusions. I
just thought I was a good guesser."
As a teenager, she met, for the only
time, a family friend named
Coleman Friedman. "I was
struck," she says. "I just
knew, almost like I remem-
bered, that one day my last
name would be
either

Coleman or Friedman."
She also always knew she wanted
to be of service. After considering
psychology and counseling, she gravi-
tated toward human resources, rapidly
moved up to management and was
successful at it for 11 years. "But I
still felt there was something miss-
ing," she says.
Soon after her mother passed away,
in 1987, Friedman began having
conversations with her. "I'd
talk to her in my mind,
and though I felt very at
peace with it, I told no
one," she says. "I

thought I was just imagining it."
Confused, she married a man,
named neither Coleman nor Friedman.
"Marrying him was another way of try-
ing to ignore what I felt compelled to
do. I loved him, but I knew we weren't
right together. He was not the person I
was meant to be with, but free will got
in the way" says Friedman, who
believes we have a contract with God
about what our divine purpose is here
on Earth and learn lessons along the
path. Eventually, the couple went their
separate ways, and Friedman met and
married Butch, the man whose last
name she now goes by, just as she had
foreseen.
In 2000, the Detroi Jewish News
published an article about Rebecca
Rosen, then Rebecca Perelman, a
young Jewish medium living in
Michigan at the time. "Bingo," says
Friedman.
Reading about Rosen's experience
prompted Friedman to contact her,
and from there, Friedman began to
come to terms with her abilities.
"Rebecca helped me understand that
it's not my job to convince people,
and that it's not about me. I just have
to relax and allow it," she says.
What she now allows is clairvoy-
ance (clear seeing), clairaudience
(clear hearing), clairsentience (clear
sensing, or feeling), and claircog-
nizance (clear knowing). When
clients first meet Friedman, who

Commerce Township's Jody Friedman relays messages from "the other side"
and provides loving guidance along life's path.

6 • JULY 2005 • JNPLATINUM

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