Emma Heming Willis is speaking out after a report claimed her husband Bruce Willis has "no more joy" after being diagnosed with aphasia in 2022 and frontotemporal dementia in 2023.
"[I] just saw a headline and got clickbaited that had to do with my own family," Heming Willis began in an Instagram reel shared Sunday. "The headline basically says, 'There is no more joy in my husband.' Now, I can just tell you that is far from the truth, OK?"
According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at the National Institutes of Health, aphasia is a condition where the brain's ability to understand or express language is impaired, which can be a result of a neurological disease. Aphasia can be seen in conditions like frontotemporal dementia, which is a type of dementia that impacts one's personality and may cause behavioral changes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Heming Willis, who has been open about caregiving and is writing an upcoming book about the topic, said instead of headlines that are "scaring people," she is asking others to focus on the nuances of cognitive decline.
"Stop scaring people to think that once they get a diagnosis of some kind of neurocognitive disease that that's it, it's over," Heming Willis continued. "No, it is the complete opposite of that, OK? 100%. There is grief and sadness. There's all of that. But you start a new chapter."
"That chapter is filled … with love. It's filled with connection. It's filled with joy. It's filled with happiness. That's where we are," the 45-year-old added.
In a follow-up Instagram reel, Heming Willis also shared what she thought caregivers should really know.
"I'm not saying that dementia is rainbows and unicorns. It is not, but there is also another side of it that is so beautiful. And I just think that when people are writing about dementia, I think they really need to show all sides of it, not just focus on this -- the dark cloud of it -- because dementia is so much more than that."
In addition to Bruce Willis, former talk show and radio host Wendy Williams was also recently diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, spotlighting conditions that annually affect over 180,000 and 50,000 to 60,000 Americans each year, respectively, according to NIDCD and the Alzheimer's Association.
Heming Willis' guidebook about caregiving from the publishing imprint The Open Field is expected to be published in 2025.
