“His needs are met 100% of the time, as well as our two young daughters’. So I’m not gonna take a vote on that,” Emma said

Emma Heming Willis on Good Morning America Sept. 9, 2025; Bruce Willis in New York City on June 6, 2016.Credit : GMA/Instagram; Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty

Emma Heming Willis is not going to argue about what is best for husband’s Bruce Willis’ care.

Speaking with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America Tuesday, Sept. 9, the author and caregiver advocate defended her family’s decision to move the actor to his own home amid his dementia journey, which she writes about in her new book The Unexpected Journey.

After Strahan noted that the decision “kind of created a debate online,” Emma, 49, admitted she “knew it would.” But at the end of the end of the day, despite it being “a hard decision” for the family, it “was the safest and best decision — not just for Bruce, but also for our two young girls.”

“And, you know, it’s really not up for a debate,” she continued. “Now I know that Bruce has the best care 100% of the time. His needs are met 100% of the time, as well as our two young daughters’. So I’m not gonna take a vote on that.”

Emma first shared that Bruce 70, now lives in a separate home from his family for his treatment and safety during a recent interview with Diane Sawyer in the couple’s ABC News special, Emma and Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey.

And while she faced some critical comments about the decision, “I feel like caregivers are so judged, and it just goes to show that people sometimes just have an opinion versus really having the experience,” she told Strahan, 53, on GMA Tuesday.

“And I’ll say that dementia plays out differently in every household. If you’ve seen one case of dementia, it’s one case of dementia,” Emma continues. “So you have to do what is right for your family and what is going to keep your loved one safe, as well as your young children.”

For Emma, her “wakeup call” to change her husband’s living situation was a statistic that his neurologist shared with her: “that sometimes caregivers die before their loved ones.”

“I think that was my wakeup call to realize that I need to get help, and I’m not a failure because I need help. It’s okay for me to raise my hand. I didn’t realize that,” she said. “I really needed permission for someone to tell me that it’s okay to get help.”

“That’s what I hope that this book does for caregivers: It just gives them the permission to be able to care for themselves because if they don’t, how will they be able to show up and continue to care for the person that they love?” Emma added.

Bruce and Emma Heming Willis in New York City on Jan. 15, 2019.Dia Dipasupil/WireImage

Emma told PEOPLE in a recent cover interview that the decision by her family to move Bruce into his own space “was the hardest thing,” explaining that Bruce’s progressive frontotemporal dementia (FTD) disease “requires a calm and serene atmosphere.”

Considered the family’s “second home,” the one-story house nearby is more conducive to Bruce’s specific needs — a quiet, comfortable and safe environment with round-the-clock care — and has allowed their daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, to be their high-spirited kid selves, she said.

Quick to acknowledge how fortunate they are to have means to facilitate the new living arrangement, Emma is grateful for what it’s meant for the family.

“Everything just feels a lot calmer, more at ease now,” she said.

The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path is available now wherever books are sold.