PUYALLUP, Wash. — For Liam Holley, the first six years of his life have been an adventure.
“Full of life. He is not shy,” said his mom Sarah.
Her words describe his personality; the moments she captures reflect his spirit.
“He brightens up the whole room wherever he is,” she said.
Sarah has a photography business - Sarah Holley Photography - and the talent is obvious. When Liam’s in front of her camera, she’s focused on the bigger picture.
“He has a long road ahead of him, and I've always been the type of person where optimism leads the way and I just want to make sure that he sees how with hard times, good things can follow,” Sarah said.
Liam was born at Seattle Children’s Hospital with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, which meant corrective surgery when he was just three days old. After about three weeks in the hospital, that included a visit from Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, Liam got to go home.
“Due to that surgery, Liam ended up getting scoliosis,” Sarah said. “The spine ended up starting to gravitate toward where the surgery was and then we got the diagnosis around 2.”
“Scoliosis is a curve in the spine…it's a curve from side to side,” added Todd DeWees, a certified prosthetist and orthotist (CPO) at Portland Shriners Hospital. He and a team build thousands of devices each year for kids, from prosthetic limbs to braces, including Liam’s.
“Getting them to wear that brace as long as Liam is going to have to, you really need the family to buy in, and this family really has, they've done a fantastic job,” DeWees said.
If you look closely at photos Sarah has taken, you’ll see her creativity goes beyond the lens. She uses his back brace as the centerpiece of sometimes elaborate photo shoots.
“And it started as a fluke,” she said. “He had a tummy flu and he had a cast at the time, and it goes over his whole body and he wanted it off because his stomach hurt. Out of a panic, I grabbed a sharpie and I turned it into a Spider Man and I said, 'See you want it on! You're Spider Man, it's fun!'”
Captain America, Thor, Batman and Obi-Wan Kenobi are just a few of the characters Liam has dressed up as. He even reunited with Wilson at Seahawks training camp last year and has the picture to prove it.
“Some people would say, ‘well it’s just cosmetic, it’s just window dressing,” said DeWees. “But it gets Liam to buy in to wearing it.”
Liam will eventually need more surgery, and while the braces help him grow, it’s his family making him stand a little taller.
“There's always obstacles in life, there's always bumpy roads, but if you can find the good, if you can find the positive, if you can show the kids that it's not that bad, that it's actually pretty cool,” Sarah said.