Bruce Willis' Wife Emma Reveals When She Suspected Something Was Wrong With His Health

When Die Hard star Bruce Willis retired from acting in 2022, it came with the shocking news that it was due to aphasia, a degenerative condition that impacts one’s ability to communicate and understand language. That was followed, a few months later, by the official diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (known as FTD), and has meant a lot of major changes for his wife, Emma Heming Willis, their two daughters, and his children with ex-wife Demi Moore. Now, Heming Willis is opening up about when she first realized something was wrong with her husband.

What Did Emma Heming Say About Suspecting Something Was Wrong With Bruce Willis?

As Emma Heming and Bruce Willis get further into his post-FTD diagnosis life (along with their daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11) the family has had to make a lot of serious adjustments. It was just a few days ago that Heming Willis revealed that not only is the Moonlighting actor’s “language going,” leading to the family having to find new ways to communicate with him, but he’s also been moved to another home nearby the family’s original residence, so that he can have full-time caretakers with minimal interruptions to daily life for their daughters.

The former model spoke to People about what this journey has been like, and noted that by the time the 12 Monkeys star received his first diagnosis, she was already acting as his sole caretaker, but without understanding what was going on. As she said:

I have some experience with realizing that something is very wrong with a loved one but not knowing exactly what, and it’s an incredibly scary, stressful situation that can pretty quickly lead to every other negative emotion under the sun and take everyone involved into overwhelm. In the early days of The Sixth Sense star’s diagnosis, Heming Willis talked about how hard it was to take on the caregiver role, and attempt to care for her husband, young daughters and also still give much needed time to herself, revealing that the delicate and imperfect balancing act had already “taken a toll” on her “mental health and overall health.”

When a diagnosis finally came, however, she says she was able to mentally put some distance between her husband and the condition that was slowly taking the man she knew away from their family:

That “relief” helped her take control of the feeling of being “isolated” she had early on, because she was “too scared to say anything to anyone” about what was happening with the action star. Heming Willis began thoroughly researching not only her husband’s condition, but how those caring for loved ones with it were able to cope, and then decided to open up about what was going on and her own process with handling the difficulties of care giving.

She’s now written a book, The Unexpected Journey, which helps those in situations like theirs, and added that being able “to help someone else feel less alone” is “the only way I can get through this.”