THE FIGURE 8 is an apt metaphor for expanding self-knowledge, renewed bonds & remodeled family structures for people in the adoption circle: specifically for those at the threshold of reuniting with birth family. The figure 8 morphed with an infinity symbol perfectly illustrates time stilled catching up to the present. The 8 flows freely as the past, present & future are again interlinked. Reunion slowly loosens congealed time & memory.

I do not have access to my original birth records, as an adoptee under the closed system of adoption and the current provincial law. My birth certificate has been altered so that my ‘given’ name and only the first initial of my ‘family’ name is listed, followed by a serial number.

MONIQUE L. 70-05-094559

For me, making a figure 8 traintrack invests meaning in the impersonal nature of numbers and symbolizes my attempts to make whole an incomplete history. I chose the number 8 for its formal properties — the possibility of its double loops intersecting — as it seemed the ideal metaphor for the adoptee: the crossing loops suggesting the past and present; double identities; two sets of families and relinquishment/reunion.

The 8 also relates to the mathematical terms like SUBSTRACTION or DIVISION that often enter talk of the adoptee’s search for birth family. Why is it assumed that the goal in searching for one family is to replace another: can these two families not intersect and touch? Why not use words like ADDITION or MULTIPLICATION to describe the morphing families?

In systems thinking the metaphor of knowledge is a network instead of the Cartesian building. Reality is then viewed as a network of relationships. The family tree is also a network of relationships, and a common image in my work. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an Austrian biologist in 1920 Vienna, coined the term Fliessgleichgewich (flowing balance) to describe the state of dynamic balance of open systems.

The adoption system in North America has recently undergone significant changes to its framework, veering in some cases, to more open practices. With some countries and some Canadian provinces giving adoptees access to their geneological history, the 8’s organic, intertwined shape — similar to the pretzel-like DNA supercoil — conveys the continuous changes for the inter-linked families involved in OPEN ADOPTION.