10 Things We Learned From Emma Heming Willis’s New Memoir

When the model and entrepreneur Emma Heming married Bruce Willis in 2009, she could never have predicted that less than 15 years later, he’d be diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), an incurable brain disease that would lead to his slow cognitive decline.

In her new book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path, Heming Willis, 47, recounts her experience — in surprisingly frank terms — as her husband’s care partner (a term she prefers to “caregiver”). She tells how her relationship with Bruce, who’s now 70, unfolded, what it was like to receive the devastating diagnosis and all that she learned in its challenging aftermath — when she nearly lost herself in a stew of guilt, grief and loneliness while trying to maintain some sense of normalcy for the couple’s two young daughters: Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11.

Heming Willis, who spoke with AARP about her experience, also acknowledges that her caregiving experience is easier for her than it is for many: She can well afford caregiving assistance, for one. “I fully recognize the privilege of my position,” she writes.  “But caregiving is caregiving — whether you have support or not, the emotional toll remains.”

Here are a few things we learned from the book (read an excerpt here) about the couple’s life together and Heming Willis’ caregiving experience:

Emma was blasé when she met Bruce for the first time, in 2005.

Her personal trainer, Gunnar Peterson, introduced them after she’d finished a workout. She was engaged at the time and writes, “I didn’t think much of the interaction.” After she left, Bruce told her later, he turned to Peterson and said, “I’m going to marry that girl one day.”

Bruce and Emma in Los Angeles, August 2008

Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images

After Emma broke off her engagement and started dating Bruce, he invited her to a New Year’s Eve celebration in Turks and Caicos — along with his ex-wife, Demi Moore, now 62.

Bruce asked her to join him for a family fete on a Caribbean island. Afraid it would be awkward, she brought a wingwoman, her friend Ali. But Moore and her and Bruce’s three teenage children greeted her with “wide-open arms and huge warm smiles.”

They were total opposites.

She writes, “Bruce was a rule breaker, while I’m a rule follower. Bruce was unpredictable, while I like control, a plan and certainty.” She was a worrier; he “always found joy in life.” 

The realization that something was wrong with Bruce came gradually. 

“At some point, our relationship began to feel off,” she writes, pointing to “crazy marital issues” and “subtle shifts in his personality,” that, she learned later, was one sign of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which is often misdiagnosed as a midlife crisis. 

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan with daughter Patti Davis at President Ronald Reagan's memorial service on June 7, 2004. Davis has been a source of support for Emma Willis.

Rick Bowmer/Gety Images

Patti Davis was a valuable source of support.

Davis, 72, understood Emma’s struggles; she, too, had to face going public with a loved one’s diagnosis — her father, President Ronald Reagan, passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in 2004 — and the grief that comes with it. She became Emma’s friend and role model.