Emma Heming Willis reflected on her husband’s illness during the holiday season.
In an emotional Instagram post, Emma shared thoughts about grief, love, and family life after Willis’ diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia [FTD] in 2023.
Emma, 47, shared a blog post about “how this season can bring up grief, loss, love, and moments of meaning all at once.”
“The holidays don’t disappear with a dementia diagnosis. They change. And while that change can ache, it can also make room for new traditions, softer joy, and connection that still matters deeply,” she said. “I wrote this for anyone moving through the season while caring for someone they love and holding a lot at once.”
The model and actress said that Willis was “the center of it all” during the holidays.
“He loved this time of year—the energy, family time, the traditions. He was the pancake-maker, the get-out-in-the-snow-with-the-kids guy, the steady presence moving through the house as the day unfolded. There was comfort in the routine of knowing exactly how the day would go, especially since I’m a creature of habit," she wrote.
Heming Willis added that she “[misses] the way he once led the holiday charge.”
“I hold the memories of Bruce as the man who once carried this season for our family, and I hold the reality of who he is now, with the same love. I hold tears and laughter in the same breath, often in the very same moment," she wrote in the emotional essay.
Willis, 70, was moved into a separate home in August 2025. Emma said it was “one of the hardest decisions” she had to make, but that it was best for Willis and their two children, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11.
The actor now lives in a home close to his family’s home and is cared for by a full-time team.
His daughter, Rumer, from his first marriage with actress Demi Moore, recently shared that her father is not always able to recognize her.
“I’m so grateful that when I go over there and I give him a hug, whether he recognizes me or not, he can feel the love I’ve given him and I can feel it back from him,” Rumer, 37, shared on Instagram in November.
Willis’ second wife shared that she feels a connection with her husband despite his memory lapses and as he grapples with dementia.
“He’s holding our hands. We’re kissing him. We’re hugging him. He is reciprocating. You know, he is into it,” she told ABC in August. “And so that’s all I need, you know? I don’t need him to know that I am his wife, and we were married on this day, and this is what it—I don’t need any of that. I just wanna feel that I have a connection with him. And I do.”
Emma published The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on The Caregiving Path, a book about caregiving and family life, in September of this year.
