Tallulah Willis is finally talking about how she’s been taking her dad Bruce Willis’ dementia. She is the youngest of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s three daughters.
Willis goes deeper about life following her father’s diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia in her Vogue magazine essay published Wednesday. Despite the actor’s diagnosis earlier this year, Willis says she’s “known that something was wrong for a long time.”
The 29-year-old says it started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up! ‘Die Hard’ which messed with her Dad’s ears. Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and she says she sometimes took it personally.
The actress says she thought her father had “lost interest” in her after having two daughters (Mabel Ray, 11, and Evelyn Penn, 9) with his wife Emma Heming. “Though this couldn’t have been further from the truth, my adolescent brain tortured itself with some faulty math: I’m not beautiful enough for my mother, I’m not interesting enough for my father,” she says. She says she struggled to accept her dad’s worsening condition due to the turmoil of her four-year battle with anorexia nervosa.
“I admit that I have met Bruce’s decline in recent years with a share of avoidance and denial that I’m not proud of,” Tallulah continues. “The truth is that I was too sick myself to handle it. … While I was wrapped up in my body dysmorphia, flaunting it on Instagram, my dad was quietly struggling.”
Willis says she was forced to confront the reality of her father’s illness and its impact on her life while attending a wedding in the summer of 2021.
As she is recovering from her eating disorder, Tallulah says she’s able to approach her relationship with her father with a healthier perspective. “I now have the tools to be present in all facets of my life, and especially in my relationship with my dad,” Willis says. “I can bring him an energy that’s bright and sunny, no matter where I’ve been. In the past I was so afraid of being destroyed by sadness, but finally I feel that I can show up and be relied upon.
She goes on to say that now she can savour that time, hold her dad’s hand, and feel that it’s wonderful. She knows that trials are looming, that this is the beginning of grief, but that whole thing about loving yourself before you can love somebody else — it’s real.
Main Image: Rolling Stone
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