Emma Heming Willis Says This Podcast Has Been a 'Lifeline' to Her After Bruce Willis' FTD Diagnosis

In Her Make Time to Connect YouTube series, Heming Willis says the 'Remember Me' podcast has been a source of support in coping with husband Bruce Willis' FTD diagnosis

Bruce Willis's wife Emma Heming Willis is celebrating some of the people who have helped make her family's FTD journey a little easier since his diagnosis.

Heming Willis, who shared the news of her husband's frontotemporal dementia diagnosis in February, has been highlighting the disease on her YouTube channel in her Make Time to Connect series for World FTD Awareness Week (Sept. 24- Oct.8).

On the Oct. 1 episode of Make Time to Connect, titled "Celebrate," she interviews the founders of the podcast "Remember Me," Maria Kent Beers and Rachael Martinez, both of whom are the moms of young children and who were each caregivers for a parent with FTD.

Related: How Bruce Willis' Family Is Helping Him 'Live as Full a Life as Possible' After Dementia Diagnosis

Heming Willis, 45, says she discovered the podcast in the confusing days after they learned of Bruce's condition. "I didn’t know where to go, what to look up, I’m looking things up and it’s freaking me out," she says in the episode. Heming Willis, who recently launched Make Time Wellness, a brand that focuses on brain health, says "there wasn't a lot" of information on FTD "but you guys popped up. I started listening and I felt like, ‘Oh my gosh I’m so grateful to hear other people’s stories.' "

Related: Bruce Willis Diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia, His Wife Emma Reveals: 'Condition Has Progressed'

The podcast, which Martinez and Kent Beers began in August 2020, gives caregivers and family members a space to share stories about loved ones with FTD.

"The heart of this podcast is to remember people for who they were before this awfulness," says Kent Beers, who lost her mother, Lia, to the disease in December 2020, "One thing people do not understand about FTD – it literally robs people of who they truly are. It’s very hard when you are caregiving every day and you’re seeing this different version affected by FTD. Sometimes it's hard to remember what they were like before. So that’s the best way to celebrate them. Let’s talk about who they really truly are, not what FTD turned them into."

Martinez, whose father died of FTD in November 2020, says the goal of their podcast is "to bridge the gap between the medical and science community and people. We want to make this journey as comfortable and as full of connection as possible."

For Heming Willis, who said in a recent interview that it's "hard to know" if Bruce, 68, is aware of his own condition, it's done just that.

“There’s nothing that levels the playing field like FTD. And I have made some of the greatest connections with other care partners, people like you who just get it – there doesn’t have to be so much explanation," says Heming Willis. "You guys have been so helpful to me. I want to say thank you. I’m surprised I’m not crying because that’s where I go to when I think of people who have been that lifeline for me.”

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.