Amid Hollywood actor Bruce Willis’s worsening condition with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) since his diagnosis in February 2023, his wife Emma Heming Willis reveals one of her personal reasons for changing his care.
In late August, she told Diane Sawyer of ABC News that they made the difficult decision to move the actor away from their family home.
The decision was for the sake of their two daughters, and being able to live in a home where they could be themselves. The couple shares two daughters, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11. Instead, Willis lives in a home fitted to his medical needs.
In a recent interview with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America on Tuesday, September 9, Emma further revealed the “wakeup call” she had that also led her to change her husband’s living situation.
What else changed? Willis’s neurologist shared with Emma a statistic where “sometimes caregivers die before their loved ones.”
“I think that was my wakeup call to realize that I need to get help, and I’m not a failure because I need help. It’s okay for me to raise my hand. I didn’t realize that,” she explained. “I really needed permission for someone to tell me that it’s okay to get help.”
She further promotes her upcoming new book, The Unexpected Journey, hoping it inspires caregivers to look after themselves, explaining, “how will they be able to show up and continue to care for the person that they love?”
She told Strahan that every case of dementia is different for each family, and she did what felt right to keep their young children and the actor safe. Due to Willis’s form of dementia it requires a quieter environment and calm, with their “second home” giving him and her peace of mind for his health. Willis is also surrounded by round-the-clock care.
