How Emma Heming Willis Found a New Way to Communicate with her Husband, Bruce Willis

You don’t notice it all at once. That’s how Emma Heming Willis described the early stages of Bruce’s frontotemporal dementia (FTD). 

“It whispers, it doesn’t scream,” she said on The Tamsen Show Podcast. The man the world knew for his voice and presence began shifting in subtle ways, small misalignments in communication, an old childhood stutter resurfacing, a growing sense that something was simply off. And yet, no one flagged it. Not Bruce. Not the doctors. Just Emma, quietly noticing.

It would take years, multiple misdiagnoses, and countless questions before they finally got the right answer: FTD-PPA (Primary Progressive Aphasia), a rare subtype of dementia that targets speech and comprehension. By then, communication had already begun to shift.

Emma didn’t wait for a textbook answer. She began learning new ways to reach Bruce, to still be with him. With the help of dementia care specialist Teepa Snow, she discovered that small sensory changes make a huge difference: avoid wearing black (it looks like a floating head), remove dark doormats (they register as holes in the ground), don’t stand directly in front of someone with dementia (it can feel threatening), and use more hand signals than words.

“It doesn’t look like the norm,” she said. “But we’re not dealing with anything that’s normal.”

And yet, even as the disease progresses, Emma insists joy is still possible. There are still laughs and still moments where love shines through the limitations of language. 

“We’ve just learned to communicate in our own special way that works for us,” she shared.

What if we stopped fearing dementia as the end of connection and started learning new ways to connect? What if we recognized that dignity can live even in decline?

If you’re seeing subtle signs in someone you love, listen to this powerful conversation with Emma. It may help you understand what’s happening and remind you that even in silence, there’s still so much to say.

If this spoke to you, listen to the full conversation with Emma Heming Willis on The Tamsen Show Podcast.