Emma Heming Willis on Being Her Husband’s Caregiver: ‘I Still Rarely Make Time for Me’

Being a full-time caretaker can feel like managing many jobs at once—something that Bruce Willis’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, is all too aware of. The 44-year-old model has been sharing what it’s like to care for a person with dementia ever since her husband’s diagnosis was made public in February. Now she’s speaking out about how important it is to meet her own needs as her family navigates a new reality.

On Sunday she shared an Instagram video of herself enjoying some alone time, writing in the caption, “Bruce and his masterful mic-drop-one-liners. He would say, ‘he just can’t get out of his own way.’ I never really understood what it meant until it hit me in the face the other day. It’s me. I can’t get out of my own way.”

Willis said that neglecting her own needs has taken a toll on her and those around her—which she recently realized while talking to her eight-year-old daughter, Evelyn. “I plan, organize, look after everyone and I still rarely make time for me,” she wrote in the caption. “The kicker came from Evelyn a few days ago when she said, ‘Mom, you need to get out and touch the grass.’ Spoken like her father’s child…. I’m wound so tight that she sees it, they all feel it. How is that serving anyone.” In the post, Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” plays as Willis hikes, and she joked in the caption, “Hi! I’m actually the problem.”

This conversation with her daughter prompted Willis to take some well-deserved “me time” over the weekend. “Today I made time to do something I used to love doing—a 30 min hike and it made all the difference,” she wrote. “[My family is] giving me the permission, almost begging me to make time for myself and I need to shhhh, listen and just go.”

Related: