An Oklahoma mother who claims she was shamed for using a handicapped parking spot while shopping with her disabled son has taken to social media to address what the alleged writer didn’t see. Colleen Scarlett-Stice explained that her 4-year-old son Rowan uses a wheelchair to get around, but that they had left it at home after he had an accident.

“While I can almost appreciate your wanting to stand up for disabled people everywhere by ‘doing something’ about a person parking in a handicapped parking spot, please find another way to advocate for the disabled,” Scarlett-Stice wrote in the Dec. 21 Facebook post. “What you did today truly hurt someone, and you should be ashamed.”

Scarlett-Stice said the note, in which the author described watching her exit her vehicle and carry her son into the Target store, was left on the windshield where her handicap parking permit was in full view.

“You didn’t see that he doesn’t understand that flailing, kicking, and trying to hurl himself backward makes it incredibly difficult, painful, and exhausting to carry him,” Scarlett-Stice wrote. “You didn’t see that his wheelchair was at home because due to an accident he’d had, the cushion had to be removed and washed at home. You didn’t see that I had already carried him through two stores that didn’t have carts.”

Scarlett-Stice went on to write that she often doesn’t use handicapped parking to avoid judgement, but the only available parking spot was too far away.

“It is not your place to judge me or your decisions on where to park. It isn’t your place to shame me the way you did. Don’t let today’s society make you think otherwise,” she said. “I know shaming has become a huge part of our culture these days, but please, please, don’t do this to another person.”



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