For several years, Justine Van Den Borne has been struggling with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, or MS. The condition makes it more challenging for the woman to go about her day and requires her to get access to a handicapped parking spot so she can be closer to buildings when she needs to enter and exit. However, the woman recently took a trip to the Mitcham Shopping Centre in Melbourne, Australia, where she parked in the disabled parking spot only to have someone post a note on her vehicle’s windshield that made it abundantly clear that the note-writer did not support Justine Van Den Borne.
The hateful note was short and not so sweet. It stated, “Did you forget your wheelchair???” The note was written by someone who witnessed Van Den Borne exiting her vehicle without a wheelchair despite being parked in a disabled person’s parking spot.
Van Den Borne decided not to take the note lying down. She shared a picture of the note that was left on her windshield and uploaded a message to her Facebook page, explaining how she had been diagnosed with MS and required the use of a handicapped parking spot so she could access the building better.
In her Facebook message, Van Den Borne made it clear that some days are better than others for her. Her MS symptoms can flare up and cause her to struggle more with mobility issues on some days than others, and it all depends on the way the wind blows, so to speak. Just because she was not bound to a wheelchair does not mean she is not struggling with a disability that inhibits her life and makes it more challenging for her to move about and go about her daily life, like shopping at the Australian mall.
She wrote, “I am sick of people like yourself abusing me on my good days for using a facility I am entitled to. A disability doesn’t always mean a person has to be wheelchair bound, but lucky for you, one day I will be.”
Since she shared her experience on Facebook, Van Den Borne inspired thousands of people to look beyond the disability. Her post received more than 17,500 likes and thousands of shares when it was originally posted to Facebook back in 2015.
Van Den Borne finished her Facebook message with the following note to her friends and followers on the American-owned and operated social media platform.
“Before you ruin another person’s day, remember you don’t know everything, and just because you can’t see it, it doesn’t mean a person isn’t struggling to put one foot in front of the other.”
She added: “Because of my age, they look at me and automatically presume I’m doing the wrong thing. But actually, I can’t carry my own shopping, can’t walk long distances, I have the bladder of an 80-year-old.”
Van Den Borne is forty-one years old and was diagnosed with MS when she was thirty-five.