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Bruce Willis’ family shares emotional update

The star's wife Emma Heming Willis has shared details of his 'next chapter' amid a shattering diagnosis
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Just over a year after the family of Bruce Willis revealed his diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia – a degenerative neurological condition that causes changes in personality, behaviour and language –the movie star’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, has offered an emotional update while calling out “clickbait” headlines that describe her husband as having “no more joy” in his life.

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“I can just tell you, that is far from the truth,” she posted in an Instagram video on March 3.

“A hundred per cent, there is grief and sadness, there’s all of that. But you start a new chapter … it’s filled with love, it’s filled with connection, it’s filled with joy, it’s filled with happiness. That’s where we are.”

The couple’s love story started when they met at their mutual trainer’s gym in 2007.

Willis, who turns 69 on March 19, was at the height of fame and amicably divorced from Demi Moore, with whom he shares three daughters – Rumer, 35, Scout, 32, and Tallulah, 30.

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“Before I met Emma, I was very pessimistic about finding that special woman whom I would want to spend my life with,” Willis told Everything Zoomer in 2013. “With Emma, I knew I had found a woman who didn’t need or want anything from me other than for us to be together and be happy.”

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Bruce and Emma (Credit: Instagram/Emma Heming Willis) (Credit: Instagram/Emma Heming Willis)

For her part, Heming, 45, a Maltese-born model who grew up mostly in Southern California, told People in 2020, “I was surprised at how charming, and how funny he was.”

After two years of dating, the couple married in an intimate wedding in Turks and Caicos and went on to welcome daughters Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, 9. They renewed their vows on their 10-year anniversary with Moore as a guest.

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Bruce Willis in an image from Instagram. (Credit: Instagram/Emma Heming Willis) (Credit: Instagram/Emma Heming Willis)

“She welcomed me into her family like I welcomed her into ours,” Heming told Us Weekly of her unusual dynamic with her husband’s ex-wife.

“I have so much respect for how Bruce and Demi worked through their divorce to be able to put their children first. I learned so much from that and grew so much from watching that. It was important for her to be there.”

Now, the whole family is leaning on each other as they navigate the challenges presented by Willis’ condition.

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“What I’m learning is that dementia is hard,” Heming told the US Today Show in September. “It’s hard on the person diagnosed. It’s also hard on the family. And that is no different for Bruce, or myself, or our girls. When they say that this is a family disease, it really is.”

Still, she shared, there are “so many beautiful things happening in our lives.

It’s just really important for me to look up from the grief and the sadness so that I can see what is happening around us. Bruce would really want us to be in the joy of what is.”

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Bruce, Emma, Demi and the family (Credit: Instagram/Emma Heming Willis) (Credit: Instagram/Emma Heming Willis)
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The blended family has shared glimpses of shared happiness online, including a family trip to Disneyland, birthday celebrations and Willis’ delight at becoming a grandfather to Rumer’s 11-month-old daughter, Louetta.

“His face lights up when he sees Louetta,” Rumer told The New York Post in February.

For Heming, finding new purpose as a care partner has been both challenging and fulfilling.

“My experience is that two things can be true and exist at the same time. Grief and deep love. Sadness and deep connection. Trauma and resilience,” she shared on her Instagram post.

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“I had to get out of my own way to get here but once I arrived, life really started to come together with meaning, and I had a true sense of purpose. There is so much beauty and soulfulness in this story.”

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