General:

 

"Launching my career in the tech industry after graduate school was a daunting process, and I was timid when it came to negotiating job offers. JD helped coach me to value my worth and negotiate in a way that felt authentic and true to my values. I love my job and appreciate JD for helping me tap into my confidence and advocate for myself!"

M.O., WA

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"It is my distinct pleasure to recommend JD as a parenting coach. We have leaned on her many a time and find her to be knowledgeable, offers sage advice and most importantly, knows the right person to put you in contact with. JD has an endless list of people she has helped. She has dedicated her life to helping parents of children with eating disorders. So much so, that I meet her from time to time at a conference in NY where I live even though she actually lives in San Diego. She was not paid to fly to New York but did so in her passion and zeal to learn everything there is to know in order to help others. JD is an incredible person and is great at what she puts her mind to."

Y. S., NY

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"JD is one of the smartest people I know.  When I needed career advice, she was one of the first I contacted and she gave me valuable guidance that is useful in any situation.  I highly recommend speaking to JD for any type of advice or coaching because she is honest and will recommend what to do, but more importantly, tell you why you should do it. After talking to her, you leave confident and ready for any challenge!"

C.I, CA, Former Coworker

 

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"My relationship with “Mrs.O” started as instructor and student and my first impression was that this broad is fierce and your spot in this program is earned. That precedence set the tone for our working relationship which prepared me well when it came time to leave the nest. Mrs.O stayed true throughout the education, preparation and employment process.

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Our relationship has evolved into more of a mentorship. I trust her with my privacy and personal business and has become my close family friend. What you will get from JD is an honorable and solutions-oriented professional. She is passionate about achieving your personal goals with you, not for you, and without passing judgement. Her large pool of resources and knowledge base make reaching objectives less intimidating and puts them within reach.

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We all get stuck, we all need a human approach in reaching our best selves, and living our best life and she can get you unstuck."

M.C., CA, Friend & Former Student

 

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"I met JD during an extremely difficult period in my life. Through her compassion and care as well as her ability to tell you honestly what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, I was able to start making the needed changes.  JD truly listens to what you are saying, and she hears and understands the things you can’t quite say yet. With her guidance and support, life now is very different."

D.R., South Africa

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"In the 3 and ½ years I have known JD, she has been a consistent ray of light in my life. She doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear, she tells you what she needs to hear, but in a compassionate and encouraging manner. Her altruism in this allows her to meet people where they are and treat everyone with respect."

Julia P., CA

 

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"I had the great fortune to meet JD while working under her supervision during my first year of teaching. As a boss JD exemplifies a compassionate and knowledgeable leader. JD counseled me during the transition to classroom education. JD has a gift for being insightful and being able to articulate things in the universally palatable way. Her guidance was and is always appreciated!"

Melissa B., CA

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Eating Disorders:
 

"JD is an amazing parent resource with a wealth of knowledge, experience, and passion. Consulting with her can provide reassurance from a parent perspective that is truly invaluable. I am grateful to be able to refer families to her to help guide them on a solid recovery path."

Bridget Whitlow, CA, LMFT

 

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"I first made contact with JD through an online support group designed for parents and caregivers of someone suffering from an eating disorder. She was instrumental in helping me use FBT and re-feed our daughter at home in the early days. She did this from across the world, as we live in New Zealand! JD has lived experience and is able to offer tips and suggestions from that personal experience, as well as sharing the knowledge she has gained from forging relationships in the ED world and attending numerous conferences on the topic. She is able to share the information in a relatable way that makes it easier to understand. I would not hesitate to recommend utilising her specialty skill and knowledge to help navigate your way through a scary and confusing eating disorder diagnosis. The scope of the information available is overwhelming and having a parent expert guide you to the information you need, is absolutely invaluable!"

Kelly Miller Mahuika, NZ, Parent

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"JD was an invaluable source of knowledge and resources when I was overwhelmed trying to navigate eating disorder programs for my 10 year-old daughter. She had vastly more knowledge than any of the so-called medical professionals we had encountered in our past 3 months before we found her. I credit her with getting us where we needed to be to help out daughter get well."

 

Kari Watts, OH, Parent

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"JD Ouellette has been an incredible source of support and education for many families facing eating disorders. I know that when I refer a family to her she will tell them the truth about what to expect and what is required of them and be there to hold their hands along the way."

Lauren Muhlheim, Psy.D., FAED, CEDS-S | CA PSY #15045

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JD is a mentor's mentor. She delivers tough targeted advice while staying compassionate. She will help you understand your loved one's illness and find your inner strength to fight it. Her straight-shooting advice helped me stay focused through the depths of our family's journey.

Alec R., CA, Eating Disorder Parent, Advocate, Mentor

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"My 14 year old daughter was diagnosed with restrictive Anorexia 5 weeks ago. I was thrown into a state of complete and utter panic. It had all happened so fast. My daughter had lost 2 stones in 10 weeks, her weight was dangerously low and she was continuing to drop rapidly. She was on the verge of being removed from school and hospitalised.  I had to wait 10 days until the first CAMHs appt. I knew we couldn’t afford to wait and I had to take action fast, but I didn’t know how. I couldn’t read the books/ advice fast enough.

 

I’d heard about FEAST being a great resource for parents and carers of children with eating disorders and decided to write my first post urgently asking for help.

 

This is where I found JD! She quickly replied and offered to call me immediately. I couldn’t quite believe my luck.

 

On this call she built my confidence, describing her vast experience gained through battling her daughters anorexia and her involvement with FEAST. She calmly talked with me for over an hour, describing what I needed to do to take back control and fight my daughters anorexia.  She also sent me links with informative videos to watch/ documents to read. For the first time I had a smile on the face and felt confident I could beat this!

 

Since then JD has been my rock. I have so much more confidence with her support, experience and advice behind me.  I’ve never come across a more genuinely selfless, caring person in my life. Whenever I’m stuck I drop JD a message and she gets back to me with amazing advice. This is someone who understands how terrifying this journey is as a parent and wants to help. I can’t thank her enough. I know she provides this support to many others. She is quite literally saving lives around the world.

As a result I’ve taken back control, my daughter is now eating 3 meals and 3 snacks a day and is rapidly regaining weight. This is all due to the techniques JD taught me. I actually trust her opinion more than my CAMHs FBT therapist who often asks me where I’ve learned my techniques!! It’s not been easy by any means, but this journey would have been far more difficult without JD. Thank you!"

L.M., Scotland, Parent

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"JD's combination of personal experience and learned experience, from working with numerous families who are struggling to help their loved ones recover from eating disorders, makes her an invaluable resource to those seeking guidance and advice. JD knows a lot about what has worked for other people and what resources are available and because of this is able to be helpful in a wide variety of ways. In my opinion, having a great coach to help parents steer the ship is more important than having a great therapist, doctor, nutritionist or anyone else. JD has been extremely helpful to us. She is a great coach. I recommend making her a part of your treatment team."

 

Dave Dunn, NY, Parent

 

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"If I had to choose any one person for a parent of someone with anorexia to talk with, I would choose JD Ouellette. She has first-hand experience so understands the heart and mind of a parent dealing with anorexia in a child. She has successfully navigated her daughter’s anorexia to health and supported, encouraged and directed many other parents to get the effective help needed. She knows what must happen for recovery. She is very well educated in eating disorders and well-spoken. She has a warrior's heart. She will battle for the parents to be an integral part of therapy and then support them to find the road to success. She understands both the heart of the parent and the science behind recovery.  I will direct every parent who asks me how to get help with a child with anorexia to call JD and set up a meeting. I believe that first step will make the greatest difference between success and failure. It is analogous to getting the best GPS direction to an unknown place."

 

Lisa Sabey, CO, Parent; Director & Producer of
"Going Sane" and "Anorexia: What We Wish We Had Understood";
President of Parents to Parents, an organization supporting access
to evidence-based mental health services

 

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"What JD Ouellette offers is that perfect mix—knowledge of the latest hard science,  research and best practices in the treatment of eating disorders and the battle tested experience of loving a child into lasting recovery.”

 

Kathryn Ferguson, CA, Writer & Parent; Author of:
"She was 11, with an Eating Disorder.
It took her mom to figure it out."

 

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"JD's wisdom and sage advise helped us to save our child, along with our sanity! We have a blended family and when we were at our wits end with each other, JD gave us language and taught skills that diffused difficult situations and helped us all to restore balance in the chaos! Our family will be forever indebted to JD. Her no nonsense, practicality and realness make being supported by her a true gift. She tells it like it is, with warmth, validation, humor and kindness. Her knowledge in the most difficult of situations is life saving and this is one grateful family!"

Lisa Burns, Canada, Parent & Eating Disorders Advocate/Activist

 

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"When a child or loved has an eating disorder, it affects the entire family in so many ways. Every moment of life becomes consumed by worry and angst that you may lose your child to the horrors of this insidious illness. Everything you must do, especially in the beginning, is counterintuitive to what you have done as a parent. You want to just appease them, not cause "more stress". You want to scoop them up and tell them they can try again later when they cannot eat. Eat they must. It is overwhelming and terrifying and no-one is prepared for what has to happen to save their loved one.

 

Friends and loved ones try to comfort you and understand and offer advice, but unless you have lived this through experience, that advice is almost always wrong. It is not based on current evidence based medicine on eating disorders. The general public, as well as many health care professionals have antiquated views on what Eds are. They think it is about control when it is about losing control to the eating disorder.

 

We used our own version of FBT at home to save our daughter. She was diagnosed at ten (2010) and is now 19 and living a life in full recovery.

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There is NO WAY we could have done it without the help of other parents, specifically from F.E.A.S.T. People who have walked in your shoes or are currently fighting for their child are the best resource possible for us in our fight to save them. Professional therapists, healthcare providers etc. of course play an important role, but they do not sit at the table day in and day out with ED. They do not hold a child at night while they weep. They do not have to stop obsessive behaviors and self harm from happening. They do not live with this entity known as ED omnipresent in their homes and minds. They do not have to balance other children, jobs, finances all while fighting for their loved ones life.

 

The most beneficial and useful advice comes from people like JD. JD has years of experience with her own recovered daughter and so much knowledge under her belt. She has been a fierce advocate for change in the bigger ED system at large, as well as helping people every single day with their own situations. She is kind and compassionate and empathetic, but she also will tell the truth. She will challenge people when they need challenging because at points along this journey we ALL need a push. When I have a question, JD is the first person I will ask. She just may be the key person on your team to help you save your loved one."

Katie Maki, MI, Parent
 

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"When I realized my 13-yr old daughter had anorexia, JD Ouellette gave me the guidance and information I needed to get our treatment plan started. JD is an expert in this field--both because of her lived experiences with her own family and because of her extensive research, activism, and involvement with activism around eating disorders. JD gave me readings that explained all the latest research on anorexia and showed that it is a genetically-linked, neurobiological illness. None of this was my fault! Or even my daughter's fault! JD guided me to the best, evidence-based treatment models and gave me tons of resources to begin interventions at home right away, as we waited for appointments with therapists.

 

With JD's recommendation on the type of therapist to look for, I was able to find an excellent psychologist and a dietitian who specializes in eating disorders. (Believe it or not, MOST dietitians do NOT know much about this area!) I've relied on JD's expertise tremendously over the last two years as my daughter has made her way through the ups and downs of recovery from anorexia. Whenever I reach out to her, she responds to me quickly with relevant information, advice, and--almost more importantly--SUPPORT. Eating disorders affect the entire family. Everyone in the family, including parents and siblings, needs to understand the eating disorder and to support the feeding plan and recovery. JD can also advise on how to interact with the school system, doctors who aren't EDucated, and other people who run your kids' activities.

 

Supporting my daughter through her recovery has been one of the hardest thing I've ever done. I honestly don't know if I could have done it without JD. She supports your journey and she pushes you to do the hard work."

S.S., USA, Parent

 

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"JD gave me the courage to do what I needed to do to save my daughter’s life. I learned more from her than I did in several years of ineffective treatment by the 'experts'.

 

You simply cannot go wrong with JD on your team. She knows her stuff and is not beholden to anyone. She is not afraid to speak her mind and will teach YOU how to become your child’s biggest advocate. Having her on your team is like having an independent financial adviser—she works for you, not the treatment team. She’ll tell it to you straight and help you become the most important member of your child’s team.

 

JD has the skills and knowledge to help you protect your child from their eating disorder, whether they are a child or an adult. Her methods work, because she uses science, not simply opinion."

M.H., WA,  Parent

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"The peer support JD offers is hard to come by in our current eating disorder treatment system. She challenges you, she supports you and all the while recognizing how hard change can be and how utterly worth it it is."

M.C, CA, Parent

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