On March 21, model and businesswoman Emma Heming Willis uploaded an emotional image to her social networks. It was a picture of Heming Willis with her husband, Bruce Willis, to celebrate their 16th anniversary. “We’ve shared monumental highs and devastating lows, and through it all, we’ve built something timeless,” she wrote. “I’m so deeply grateful for every chapter I’ve had with him and all the ones we’ll continue to write, in our language of unconditional love.”
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This Monday, at the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement Forum, she explained to those in attendance that everything she and Bruce Willis had planned for the rest of their lives went up in smoke the instant he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia three years ago. The year before, he and his family announced that Willis would step away from acting due to ongoing health concerns.
“The day Bruce received his diagnosis, we left the office with a brochure and an empty goodbye. No plan, no guidance, no hope, just shock,” Heming Willis said. “The future we had planned vanished before our eyes, and I was left trying to hold my family together, raise our two young daughters and care for the man I love while dealing with a disease I barely understood.
“I felt lost, isolated and scared. What I needed at that moment, at that appointment, was not just medical information. I needed someone to look me in the eye and say, ‘This seems impossible right now, but you will find your balance. You will survive this and you will grow because of it,’” she continued.
But since she didn’t find that support, Heming Willis decided to write a book to help those facing a similar situation. On September 9, she will publish The Unexpected Journey, the sort of book she wished she had received on the day of Willis’s diagnosis. It’s a supportive guide to coping with the experience of caring for a loved one.
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“This is the book I trust will help the next caregiver,” she wrote in April after revealing the book’s cover on Instagram. “It is filled with support, insight, and the hope needed to navigate this journey.”
Original story in VF Spain.
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