Emma Heming Willis On Bruce Willis's Diagnosis, Protecting Your Brain Health, & What Every Family Needs To Know About Caregiving

**Michael Bosstick** (0:01)
Welcome to The Bossticks.
Starring Lauryn Bosstick and Michael Bosstick. Together, they are The Bossticks.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:14)
This episode is giving you the blueprint on caregiving and all things brain health. We invited Emma Heming Willis on the show to talk about cognitive wellness, essential brain health tools, and she even opened up about her own caregiving journey with her husband, Bruce. Emma is a wife, a mother of two, a stepmother of three, and she is an author and a care partner. She is so vulnerable on this episode, which is very personal, and I just commend her for coming on the show and being so candid. Emma, welcome to The Bossticks.
One of the things that I find fascinating about you, Emma, is that a lot of people go through something really hard, and then they wait till they're through it to talk about it. And what's so cool about your whole thing is that you're kind of showing us in real time what it's like.

**Emma Heming Willis** (1:07)
I guess so. I actually never really thought about that. I think it's been a coping mechanism for me, being able to have an experience and also be able to share it at the same time. You know, like, not gatekeeping what I have learned, what I know, and being able to share it with another caregiver who, you know, might not have access, time, resources. This is, it's really important to be able to, for me to pay it forward, to pass on the information because caregivers are so unsupported. We're so unsupported.
And that's what, you know, prompted that book that I wrote.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (1:48)
What was the thing that, that sort of pushed you to put this all out there? Would you remember, like, a moment? Was it an epiphany or was it just a slow build?

**Emma Heming Willis** (1:57)
You know, there was so much time that was spent in isolation, being really quiet about it, not having a community, not feeling safe to be able to talk about it to anyone, not even a doctor. You know, I just wanted to protect my husband and protect our family. And it just was really isolating. And it came to a point where I knew I couldn't live like that anymore.
You know, when we received my husband's diagnosis, we walked out of that appointment with no hope, no roadmap, nothing, just to check back in in a couple of months. And we were sent on our way. And I realized really quickly how unsupported we were, the next caregiver would be.
And I had to go and sort of figure this all out on my own. You know, what support do I need? What support do I need for our two children who were 8 and 10 at the time? You know, what do I need to do to figure out what to do with this diagnosis that I did not fully understand or grasp?

**Lauryn Bosstick** (3:05)
Do you feel like at this point, with everything you've gone through and writing a book on it, that you feel like, ah, I figured this out, or is it still something that's obscuring, you kind of don't know what's happening?

**Emma Heming Willis** (3:15)
You don't know what's going to come next. I mean, I've really educated myself. I think that's really helped me sort of settle my nervous system, is to be like a couple steps ahead so I can really understand the disease, understand what we're up against, understand what could happen, might happen, and just be prepared for that. You know, for the most part, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't have this down to a fine science. I have to remember, I mean, I wrote the book that cares for the caregiver. I keep it next to my bedside because sometimes I just need to open it up. And the book is part of my story as a caregiver, but I think what are the real nuggets in there are the experts and the specialists that I bring in who share their insight and wisdom that I need to remember, that I need to hear, because it's so easy to forget when you are in the midst of grief and trauma and, you know, trying to make all the decisions for everyone all the time.
It's hard. It's really easy to get lost in it.

**Michael Bosstick** (4:15)
So for the audience who's unfamiliar with your story, what is the specific disease that you guys have been dealing with and how would you describe it to people?

**Emma Heming Willis** (4:25)
Yeah, so it's called frontotemporal dementia, or FTD for short. It affects the frontal lobe and the temporal lobes.