Tallulah Willis Reveals Autism Diagnosis: “It’s Changed My Life”
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Tallulah Willis revealed this week she was diagnosed with autism last summer, writing on Instagram that the discovery has “changed my life.”
Willis, the youngest daughter of Bruce Willis and ex-wife Demi Moore, posted an old family video of herself as a child playing with her father’s ear while on a red carpet to Instagram on Saturday.
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“Tell me your [sic] autistic without telling me your [sic] autistic,” Willis captioned the post. In the comments section, she elaborated: “Actually this is the first time I’ve ever publicly shared my diagnosis,” she wrote. “Found out this summer and it’s changed my life.”
Willis’ announcement is not the first time she has spoken candidly about her health. In an essay published in Vogue last summer, she reflected on her struggle with anorexia, which she said at the time she had dealt with for four years.
“After getting sober at age 20, restricting food has felt like the last vice that I got to hold on to,” she wrote. “When I was 25, I was admitted to a residential treatment facility in Malibu to address the depression that I had lived with through my adolescence. It was a largely therapeutic experience; for the first time, I grieved the 15-year-old misfit me, the ugly duckling. I was also diagnosed with ADHD and started on stimulant medication, which was transformative. I felt smart for the first time, but I also started to enjoy the appetite-suppressant side effect of the meds. I saw a way to banish the awkward adolescent in favor of a flighty little pixie.”
In the same essay, Willis also opened up about her mental health amid her father’s decline following with diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.
“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,” she wrote. “The truth is that I was too sick myself to handle it.”
Later, she added, “Now that I’m feeling better I ask myself, How can I make him more comfortable? It wasn’t easy growing up in such a famous family, struggling as I did to find a patch of light through the long shadows my parents cast. But more and more often I feel like I’m standing in that light.”
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