“It was just immediate. You’re like, 'That’s my granddaughter.”
Emma Heming Willis is sharing a poignant message on this Father’s Day.
Alongside a photo of one of the two daughters she shares with husband, actor Bruce Willis, hugging her father, Heming Willis wrote “Happy Father’s Day to all the dads living with disability or disease, showing up in the ways they can and to the children who show up for them.”
Heming Willis continued saying that Willis teaches their daughters, Mabel and Evelyn, lessons that go “far beyond words.”
“Resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength in simply being present,” Heming Willis wrote, noting that the pictured she shared of the father and daughter “says so much.”
“Love deepens. It adapts. It stays, even when everything else changes,” the model and activist shared. “But to be fair to myself, these symbolic days stir up a lot.”
“I’m profoundly sad today. I wish, with every cell in my body, that things could be different for him and lighter for our family.”
In March 2022, the Willis family announced in a joint statement that the actor had been diagnosed with aphasia, a condition that affects his ability to communicate. A year later, in February 2023, the family shared another statement revealing that Willis received another diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.
According to the Association for Frontotemporal Dementia, FTD “represents a group of brain disorders caused by degeneration of the frontal and/or temporal lobes of the brain.”
Willis has since retired from Hollywood and Heming Willis has become an advocate for her husband and caregivers.
“As they say in our FTD community, ‘It is what it is,’” Heming Willis continued in her Father’s Day message. “And while that might sound dismissive, to me, it’s not. It grounds me.”
The mom of two says that saying “helps me return to the acceptance of what is and not fight this every step of the way like I used to. Today, let’s celebrate the bad*** dads, those who are here, and those we carry with us. Onward.”
In addition to Mabel and Evelyn, Willis is also a father to Rumer Willis, Tallulah Willis, and Scout LaRue Willis with his ex wife Demi Moore.
