{"id":171,"date":"2025-08-28T16:31:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T16:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/?p=171"},"modified":"2025-08-28T16:36:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T16:36:24","slug":"emma-heming-willis-is-sharing-new-details-about-her-journey-as-caregiver-for-her-husband-actor-bruce-willis-who-was-diagnosed-more-than-two-years-ago-with-frontotemporal-dementia-known-as-ftd-hem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/?p=171","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Willis \u2014 the 70-year-old Hollywood legend \u2014 has reportedly been moved into a new home with 24\/7 care, away from his wife Emma and their children."},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Heming Willis<\/a>\u00a0is sharing new details about her journey as\u00a0caregiver<\/a>\u00a0for her husband, actor\u00a0Bruce Willis<\/a>, who was\u00a0diagnosed<\/a>\u00a0more than two years ago with frontotemporal dementia, known as FTD.<\/p>\n

Heming Willis, 49, is the author of a new book, “The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope and Yourself on the Caregiving Path,” out Sept. 9. She told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer she hopes the book helps give caregivers a roadmap and not feel as alone as she did when her husband was diagnosed with FTD, a type of dementia that impacts one’s personality and ability to communicate and may cause behavioral changes,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n

“I really felt like I was so alone, so isolated, felt like what we were going through as a family, what Bruce was going through, was so singular,” Heming Willis, who announced her husband’s diagnosis publicly in 2023, told Sawyer in the ABC special “Emma\u00a0& Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey.”<\/p>\n

Heming Willis, who shares two young daughters with Willis, said that after Willis’ diagnosis, she worked 24\/7 to care for him and keep him safe in their home, while also limiting activities like playdates and sleepovers for their daughters.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t know if parents would feel comfortable leaving their child at our home, so, again, not only was I isolated, I isolated our whole family. You know, the girls were isolated too, and that was by design, I was doing that,” Heming Willis said. “It was a hard time. It was a really hard time.”<\/p>\n

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Bruce Willis and wife Emma Heming Willis attend the “Motherless Brooklyn” arrivals during the 57th New York Film Festival, October 11, 2019, in New York City.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Theo Wargo\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The model and entrepreneur said it was only after her stepdaughter, one of Willis’\u00a0three daughters<\/a>\u00a0with ex-wife Demi Moore, told her she was concerned about her, that she reached out for help.<\/p>\n

One of the first caregiving resources Heming Willis said she found and connected with was Teepa Snow, the founder of Positive Approach to Care and an occupational therapist and dementia care expert.<\/p>\n

Snow told Sawyer that she advises people in situations like Heming Willis to do their best to take care of themselves.<\/p>\n

“One of the hardest things to do is to recognize you’re in shock. You had no idea this was going to be what you’re taking on,” Snow said. “Work on your own health and well-being for just a second.”<\/p>\n

Dementia — an umbrella term for a decline in mental abilities such as thinking, memory, and decision-making — impacts millions of Americans and their families.<\/p>\n

For loved ones of people with FTD, the cost of caregiving can be what Heming Willis described as “astronomical,” costing an average of nearly $120,000 per year, according to a 2017 estimate\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in the journal Neurology.<\/p>\n

Most patients with FTD live an average of five to eight years after diagnosis, with the disease eventually diminishing the muscles that control breathing, according to\u00a0Dr. Bruce Miller<\/a>, a California-based neurologist and leading researcher on FTD.<\/p>\n

“I think increasingly with the illness, people say less, move less and eventually become — we use the phrase ‘mute,'” Miller told Sawyer. “They stop talking all together.”<\/p>\n

Ciarra Holiday, a 29-year-old who shared her caregiving story with ABC News, said she struggles to accept that her mom, who has FTD, can no longer talk.<\/p>\n

“It’s so interesting because in the mornings, I forget. I wake up and I forget that she’s sick. I forget she can’t talk. I forget that most day[s] she outputs like a 2-year-old. I forget I can’t just call her and ask her for advice,” Holiday said. “I’m 29 years old and my mom is in frontotemporal dementia.”<\/p>\n

Heming Willis told Sawyer she hopes her book can be a roadmap for caregivers like Holiday and for people who may not yet know the journey they will go on caring for a loved one down the road.<\/p>\n

The number of people worldwide with dementia could triple by 2050,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0an estimate published in the medical journal The Lancet.<\/p>\n

“I get to connect with so many different people from all different walks of life,” Heming Willis said. “It doesn’t matter where we came from, who we’re married to, you know, that level of sadness, and grief, and anger, and the resentment. And all this, it is just — that is one common thread that we all share, and I think that there is something so beautiful in that.”<\/p>\n

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ABC News’ Diane Sawyer interviews Emma Hemming Willis in “Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey” airing Aug. 26, 2025, on ABC.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
ABC News<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Heming Willis also offers in her writing and public advocacy a roadmap for how caregivers can receive support, including by making a list of the small, practical things that could help them get through the day so they can hand it to people who offer to help.<\/p>\n

She also wants more people beyond caregivers to learn about FTD and other types of dementia so they can recognize signs and symptoms in loved ones and get help early on.<\/p>\n

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“That is the whole motivation for me to raise awareness about this disease, because we want families, we want people to be able to be diagnosed earlier, when they can participate in these trials,” Heming Willis said, referring to groundbreaking clinical trials underway to try to find ways to prevent, treat and cure dementia.<\/p>\n

The ABC News special “Emma\u00a0& Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey” is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emma Heming Willis\u00a0is sharing new details about her journey as\u00a0caregiver\u00a0for her husband, actor\u00a0Bruce Willis, who was\u00a0diagnosed\u00a0more than two years ago with frontotemporal dementia, known as FTD. Heming Willis, 49, is the author of a new book, “The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope and Yourself on the Caregiving Path,” out Sept. 9. She told ABC News’…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralitynews25.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}