Her life with Levi, 8, wasn’t “Insta-perfect.”
Samantha Bishop was spent. A single mom, she’d dedicated years to fighting for her son, who has autism. Privately, she wrestled with his diagnosis, feeling alone as she watched everyone else on social media post photos of their beautiful lives.
“I fell for the pressure of having an ‘Insta Perfect’ life and posting adorable photos of my child smiling happily and looking at the camera,” she wrote on Facebook, saying she “prayed for a normal day, a normal life.”
Her life with Levi, 8, wasn’t “Insta-perfect.” It was actually the opposite, because even though Bishop is a professional photographer, she couldn’t get a good photo of her son. He didn’t like eye contact, and certainly not with a camera. Smiling on command was out of the question.
Then one day a few weeks ago, she came up with an idea. Levi liked costumes, and he loved dinosaurs. Here, she told him, put on this T. rex costume, and I’ll take your picture with your cousin.
They went to a field near their home about 50 miles outside Atlanta and ran around and goofed for a while as she took photos. Everyone had an awesome time.
You couldn’t see Levi’s face, but the pictures showed his personality. This was her beautiful life to show to the world, Bishop realized. This was a small pleasure of parenthood to help balance the hard work and stress.
She wasn’t ready, though, for what happened when she posted pictures on Reddit and Facebook of Levi as a T. rex, chasing his 5-year-old cousin, Lola Curiel.
In just a few days, said Bishop, 26, the photos were viewed nearly 1 million times on her Roaming Magnolias Photography Facebook page and blog, and have reached more than 1.4 million interactions on social media.
[Grocery store worker lets autistic teen stock shelves, causing a ‘miracle in action’]
Some people criticized her for emphasizing Levi’s autism in her posts, but for the most part, the response was overwhelmingly supportive, with many parents sharing stories of their own autistic children.
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