Art Show To Benefit “Energy Healing” Of Teen Recovering From Lightning Strike

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Alexia Kadish watches as energy healing therapist Penny Friedman works with Ethan. Photo by Rachel Kellerman

Artist and energy healing therapist Penny Friedman and Join Team Ethan will host an art show/benefit event September 12 and 21 at A. Maris Design to benefit Ethan Kadish, a teenager who was struck by lightning last summer at a summer camp outing.

Charitable Words’ Scholar Brittany York is working with Penny on her web site content. Here is a report based on her interviews with Penny and Ethan’s mother, Alexia.

Some excerpts also were published last week in Brittany’s story about the event for the For Good section of Soapbox Cincinnati.

By Brittany York and Tom Callinan

Penny Friedman has been a successful lawyer, real estate manager and founder of a philanthropic consulting firm.

Now, she’s found her life’s work as an energy healer and an artist.

“Art heals,” she said.

Penny’s energy healing practice stems from a long-time interest in energy healing and studies of the central nervous system.

For the past year Penny has donated hundreds of hours, delivering healing energy work to with Ethan Kadish, a Loveland middle school student seriously injured by lightning at a summer camp near Indianapolis. Since, Ethan, now 14, has seen ups and downs with frequent stays at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. His medical bills exceed 1 million dollars.  Ethan’s family has pursued traditional therapies such as physical, occupational and speech, but have also incorporated chiropractic, acupuncture – and Penny’s energy healing sessions.

“I didn’t know the Kadish family prior to working with them, but I felt compelled to help,” Penny said. “In the 1960s, I had attended the same camp where Ethan was — the same camp that both of my daughters attended.”

“Ethan experienced a central nervous system accident.  And in my own training as a healer, I spent a great deal of time working in the nervous system.  Somehow, out of a clear blue sky, a lightning bolt traveled under the ground and struck him, leaving him severely brain damaged. Providing energy healing for him and his family just seemed like something I was meant to do, ” Penny said. “His parents wanted to do everything possible for Ethan.  After meeting and interviewing me I became a part of Team Ethan.”

I would visit Ethan in the hospital, and often he was crying in pain,” Penny said. “What I know from my training is that when a person’s energy field isn’t intact, medical healing is more difficult.  So for the first two months I sat at his feet, held them and attempted to pull the energy of the lightning strike out of his body.  After that initial period, the work of rebuilding Ethan’s energy field and the hands-on energetic work to support the healing of all of his body systems could begin.”

Thankfully, Ethan is now home with his family and is gradually showing more and more signs of improvement.

“I have continued to provide Ethan with energy treatment to help facilitate his rehabilitation in physical, occupational and speech therapy,” Penny said. “Ethan now also receives chiropractic and acupuncture treatments which improve his recovery.  And his parents are grateful energy healing clients also.  They have experienced first hand the power of hands on healing to support them during this period since Ethan’s injury.”

“Ethan’s story is just one of the testaments that speaks to the power hands-on energy healing offers, but it’s particularly meaningful to me, as I’ve witnessed firsthand the benefits provided to both him and his family during a year of recovery.”

To his mother, Alexia, Penny’s healing touch has been an important guide to his recovery. Penny and her husband Ron have become family, although they did not know one another before Penny called and offered to help.

“We had no way to reach him. When Penny started, there was some connection I cannot explain,” Alexia said. “An energetic connection where he would start calming down upon hearing her voice and feeling her touch.”

“I have learned from my teachers and from doing this work for many years that often progress builds slowly from the inside out.  I went to the hospital daily when I was in town. He couldn’t hold himself together energetically,” Penny said. “But over time, little by little, he started making small amounts of progress.”

“Now if you see him, he’s definitely at home in himself. He responds very appropriately to what you say. If you say something like, ‘Can you believe what your mother did?,’ he laughs. He’s connected. He will look you in the eye, and he’s being reborn—kind of like a newborn baby.

He’s going to speak,” Penny said. “It’s going to be in the next six months, I can tell you.”

Alexia shares that faith.  “It’s going to take a long, long time to know where we are going,” she said. “We continue to push forward every single day.”

ART AND HEALING: “A VIRTUOUS CIRCLE”

This poster for the September 12 Fine Art Show/benefit features Penny Friedman’s art

Penny said having an art exhibit to benefit Ethan and other energy healers pulls together art and healing in a “virtuous circle.”

The work she has done with Ethan has influenced her art – and her motivation to raise funds to help other healers do their work.

“I do the healing,” she said.  “Because I’m in that space, it opens up for me the potential to do the art…and then the art donates back to that healing.”

“I never attended school to receive formal training,” Penny said.  “And to be honest, I never expected to begin a chapter in life where I would devote my talents to painting. But I’ve come to realize that I’ve actually embodied the qualities of an artist my entire life.” Penny painted in high school, her designed and sewed her own clothes.  For years, she was an entrepreneur and ran a philanthropic consulting business and realized that was healing work also.

A few years ago, it dawned on Penny that her artistic passions resonated with others. She was never one to share my artwork, but posted some photos of her paintings on Facebook, and a woman she went to high school with whom she hadn’t seen or spoken to in years, contacted Penny because she was lifted and moved byher work’s healing power.

It was then that Penny realized she needed to share her gift.

“It was a responsibility”.

FINE ART SHOW

An art show/bites and beverages to benefit Ethan Kadish will be September 12

Hosted by Join Team Ethan

A Maris Design

2550 Woodburn Ave.

Cincinnati OH 45206

5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

A second event will be September 21

10% of Art Purchases Donated to the Great Lakes Catastrophic Injury Fund at HelpHOPELive in honor of Ethan Kadish.

For each painting purchased, Penny will donate one healing treatment—provided by herself or another certified healer—to an individual in need.

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