The name Leporinos comes from my own experience.

In many places, especially in the medical world, terms like cleft lip are preferred, and words such as harelip or leporino are often avoided because they may carry negative connotations. Historically, the English word harelip compares the condition to the split lip of a hare, which is why many medical organizations discourage its use today.

My story, however, grew in a very different context.

I was born in a remote region of Colombia, where the word leporino is simply the way many people describe this condition. Sometimes it can be used carelessly, and sometimes even unkindly. But I also learned that language alone does not define who we are.

As a patient, I am the one who walks into the world with the scars on my face. I am the one who lives this experience every day, far beyond the hospital walls. For me, the journey of surgeries and healing has already been demanding enough. I do not believe that others should decide which words have the power to define me.

Instead of rejecting the word, I chose to reclaim it.

For me, what matters most is not how others name a condition, but how we choose to live our own stories. 

Leporinos transforms a word that once carried discomfort into something I claim with pride, a symbol of identity, resilience, and beauty.

Through my art and through the foundation, I hope to invite others born with cleft lip and palate to do the same: to own their story and write it in their own way.

We cannot change the circumstances we were born into. But we can decide how we live our lives, how we see ourselves, and how we choose to move through the world.

And that freedom, the freedom to define our own story, is something no one else should take away.