Originally appeared on E! Online
Bruce Willis' family wants his fans to learn from his health battle.
Nearly a year after sharing that the "Red" actor was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, his daughter Tallulah Willis explained why the family—including her mom Demi Moore, stepmom Emma Heming Willis and sisters Rumer Willis and Scout Willis—have been so open about his condition.
"I think on one hand, it's who we are as a family," she said on the Nov. 8 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show. "But also, it's really important for us to spread awareness about FTD."
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The 29-year-old continued, "If we can take something that we're struggling with as a family and individually, to help other people, to turn it around, to make something beautiful about it, that's really special for us."
Also special for Tallulah Willis? How she's preserving her dad's personal items. "Part of what's been a really beautiful way for me to heal through this is becoming like an archaeologist to my dad's stuff," she said, "his world and his little trinkets and doodads."
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As for her dad—whose cognitive disease impacts his communication skills—his condition has remained the same as of late.
"He is the same, which I think in this regard I've learned is the best thing you can ask for," she said. "I see love when I'm with him, and it's my dad and he loves me, which is really special."
Though they're unsure just how much the 68-year-old is aware of, Heming Willis previously explained, noting it was hard to know whether he was even aware of his health battle.
"What I'm learning is that dementia is hard," the 45-year-old—who shares daughters Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, 9, with Willis—said on Today in September. "It's hard on the person diagnosed, it's also hard on the family. And that is no different for Bruce, or myself, or our girls. When they say this is a family disease, it really is."
