(NewsNation) — An emotional Emma Heming Willis addresses the blowback she’s received over moving her husband Bruce Willis into a separate home as he battles dementia.
Speaking at the End Wells 2025 conference on Nov. 20, Heming Willis talks about the “impossible” situation she was in, according to Us Weekly.
“These are hard decisions. These are impossible — I’m getting choked up thinking about it. They’re impossible decisions. This is not how I envisioned our life,” she said. “I had to make the best and safest decision for our family, and I knew by being honest and open about it that it would be met with a lot of judgement.”
Despite judgment from the public, the author of “The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope and Yourself on the Caregiving Path,” said she has received support from her family.
“Because they know, they’re in it, and I’ve got this beautiful, blended family,” Heming Willis said on the End Well panel. “I also have Bruce’s mother, who is in her 90s. I have Bruce’s brother and sister and cousins, and they have been so loving and supportive and nonjudgmental.”
Bruce Willis moved to new home after dementia diagnosis
In August, Heming Willis shared that she moved the “Die Hard with a Vengeance” actor into a second home following his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.
“It was one of the hardest decisions that I’ve had to make so far,” Heming Willis said in in “Emma and Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey – A Diane Sawyer Special.”
“But I knew, first and foremost, Bruce would want that for our daughters. You know, he would want them to be in a home that was more tailored to their needs, not his needs.”
The additional home is a one-story house where the “The Kid” star lives with an around-the-clock care team. Heming Willis said the second house isn’t far from the family’s first home.”
Emma Heming Willis: Caregiving can be very harmful to health
In an interview with NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas, Heming Willis discussed her New York Times bestselling book, which offers guidance she wishes she’d had three years ago.
“What I really needed was the permission to be able to ask for help,” Emma Heming Willis said. “Caregiving is not a solo mission, and this narrative needs to be changed.”
She said more than 63 million Americans are caregivers with little to no support, and experts say caregivers wait too long to ask for help until their support systems collapse.
“That was a call for me to start taking care of myself, because I needed to see and make sure that I could sustain this journey.”