Story table 2

Two-column story table:	Eva's passion
A lively and bright university student, Eva, was failing college classes: she couldn't quite bring herself to attend lessons and discussion groups, was missing deadlines for class work, and already failed a year's worth of exams.
Having at first put this down to her own inadequacies, sadness in general had given her another explanation.
But this clearly was not the entire story.
Eva had a passion for art, in particular drawing. She explained to me that as soon as she started drawing and painting, she felt at home.
What was interesting was that, even though feeling down was interfering with her daily activities, she had no difficulty painting and drawing and actively preparing her portfolio for the admission to Fine arts at her university.
We began to get interested about what this discrepancy between her current major and fine arts might mean.
Eva said that she has always remembered her first encounters with the wide, flat stretches of poppy fields at the small village nearby her hometown where she started 1st grade. She enjoyed talking about the emotions evoked by the memories of her year spent in the village and the colors of grass covered with a light and playful red poppy throw.
Eva had started to paint. She did not use watercolors because she felt that a watercolor painting was too mellow, with no individual brush strokes. A watercolor painting would make a soft landscape where the edges merge into each other. She used bright colors and sharp strokes to express excitement and contrasts and shades of color for different emotional tones.
Eva told me that she started Life drawing classes at the Museum of Fine Arts. She was drawing models who were rapidly changing poses and gestures.  After gaining technique of the contour and gesture sketching, Eva went to Paris for a short vacation. When she returned, she talked with a huge enthusiasm about sitting in Paris bistros, morning after morning, doing 30 second sketches and capturing faces and bodies in action.
After a few months of our working together, Eva allowed herself to voice what she had never admitted before – even to herself: that above all else, she wanted to be an artist.
At university, she had never quite managed to apply herself to her studies because, deep down, the studies reflected her desire to do what she thought was right, rather than pursuing what was her passion.
Drawing and painting felt truly right for Eva and as long as she refused to acknowledge her passion to herself as well as others, something inside was being impaired.
By admitting to herself what it was that she most wanted from life, Eva had begun the process of claiming and honoring her authentic self.