Nina Jolly

When a child develops an eating disorder, parents often feel terrified, alone, and completely unsure how to help. Nina Jolly gives families what she once needed most: a steady, knowledgeable, heart-forward companion who truly understands what this journey demands.

Nina is an eating disorder caregiver peer mentor who supports parents through the real, daily work of helping a child recover from an eating disorder. She provides guidance rooted in lived experience, evidence-based principles, and advanced mentorship from JD Ouellette, one of the most respected caregiver advocates and lived-experience experts in the eating disorder field.

Nina helped her own adolescent recover from anorexia through Family-Based Treatment (FBT). The process required courage, structure, emotional stamina, and, most of all, a willingness to keep going when things felt impossible. Nina remembers the exhaustion, the tears, the small victories, and the turning points that slowly built their way toward a healthy, thriving child. Her child’s recovery is the foundation of the hope she now brings to other families.

Nina understands this work at its rawest level. She knows:

• the explosive meal refusals
• the screaming, bargaining, and slammed doors
• the hours-long meals and emotional breakdowns
• the overwhelming fear that you’re doing it “wrong”
• the moment you realize your child needs far more food (sometimes thousands of calories more) than you ever imagined possible
• the shock of how disruptive malnutrition-driven behavior can become
• and the fierce, parental love required to stand steady through all of it

Nina learned how to stay grounded during emotional storms, how to maintain structure when everything felt chaotic, and how to choose compassion without collapsing into accommodation. These are the skills she now passes on to other caregivers, gently, clearly, and with deep respect for what they’re carrying.

While Nina is not a therapist and does not provide clinical treatment, she offers something profoundly complementary to the clinical team: the wisdom, steadiness, and lived experience of a parent who has walked this road and watched her child achieve advanced recovery.

Her message to caregivers is simple, sincere, and earned the hard way: "Parents are human life support systems until our loved ones can feed themselves".